Dominoes: My Story of Misophonia, Disordered Eating, and Recovery.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
This post is the author’s personal story. At the time of this posting, there is no data to suggest that disordered eating and misophonia are connected outside of the author’s personal experiences. Neither soQuiet nor the author wish to imply that there is a known connection between these separate disorders. We share it with you, the reader, in the hopes that you might relate to it and find that you are not alone in your own struggles and experiences. You are encouraged to contact the resources at the bottom if you feel you need help.
TRIGGER WARNINGS:
This post includes frank talk about misophonia, eating disorders, depression, and suicidal ideation.
Eating was my first activator.
Unless I’m under stress, it doesn’t affect me anymore. But, during my adolescence, it (or rather, I) destroyed my relationships—including the one I had with my body.
When I was little, other than my family’s fear of food insecurity and their insistence that I always clean my plate, I had a healthy relationship with food. I loved all things chocolate and didn’t see my hunger as a source of shame. Sure, I’ve never been perfectly happy with my body, but in a culture full of idealized forms, who would be? I knew I’d never look like a celebrity or a cartoon character, and that was fine with me. After all, a couple of extra pounds didn’t hurt my performance on my flag football team, and I know now that my body was preparing for a growth spurt (one I probably stunted).
See, while I pretended not to care about my shape, each year of P.E. and nutrition education at school alongside my family and the media’s diet talk cemented one toxic, almost fatal belief in my brain: everything I disliked about my body was my fault.
First Domino: Misophonia
When my misophonia meddled its way into my preteen brain, naturally, I tried to avoid the dinner table at all costs. And often at first, the simplest way to escape what was once a sociable family pastime was to choose the smallest, fastest portion or to skip the meal altogether.
Within months of rushing from the table to my room, I’d lost a noticeable amount of weight.
Then came the compliments: “Have you lost weight? You look so good!”
And my analytical honors kid brain internalized: not eating = being thin. Being thin = validation.
But it never stayed that simple. My weight cycled up and down throughout my youth, with each experience bringing me closer and closer to mental rock-bottom.
In middle school, I used vegetarianism as an excuse to skip school lunches. I fainted during a choir recital.
In high school, I joined cross country and ran four miles a day on a bowl of bran flakes. I spent lunch periods studying in the library. I stuffed my schedule with theatre and a part-time job so I couldn’t slow down to eat. I fainted again at summer boot camp for the Coast Guard Academy.
When the pandemic took me out of my senior year in 2020, and I had to stay at home with my kitchen, my restriction turned into binging and purging. I’d skip meals in front of others only to make myself consume pounds of food until it hurt too much to move.
Second Domino: Disordered Eating
This struggle against food followed me into college, where I’d sneak take-out containers from the cafeteria back to my dorm because I was afraid of my peers seeing me eat.
My avoidance of eating had devolved from me not wanting to be around others to not wanting others to be around me.
My personal wellness course convinced me that my issues with weight would be solved if only I would add exercise to my routine and add fruits and vegetables to my plate. So I did: I’d walk for hours each day, lift weights, and refuse to eat anything but fiber-rich foods.
Finally, I had beaten my insatiable hunger. I still thought about food constantly, but I couldn’t fit anything else into my stomach. I felt physically full, and for the first time, I felt healthy.
But along with my weight, I lost myself.
Third Domino: Complications
I was bitter all the time—my misophonia activators had never been stronger, and when my senses weren’t heightened, I couldn’t think at all: I lost months of my life to brain fog.
While I wouldn’t admit it, I knew my “healthy” relationship with food was anything but. Some nights I went to bed terrified that I wouldn’t wake up, and as time went on, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I started donating most of my belongings since nothing I owned felt like it belonged to who I had become. I deleted all but a handful of contacts from my phone, fearing that every close relationship I built would inevitably result in more activators.
I waited to die.
And my body said no.
Stopping the Chain Reaction
I spent my first week of the Fall 2022 semester with a tube down my nose, sucking out all the high-fiber foods my digestive system hadn’t had the energy to process.
I stopped calorie-counting, stopped compulsively exercising, and I worked my way through the horrors of extreme hunger.
And it is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It still is. Each day, each meal, I have to face what diet culture tells me and eat until I’m satisfied anyway. I have to trust my body in a society where so few of my teachers, my family members, my friends, even my therapists saw just how much I was struggling because I was never thin enough. Hardest of all, I have to confront that person I know I can become: a person so lost in his starvation that he feels nothing but anger toward himself and his loved ones.
I’m done damaging the people who matter to me—and that has to include myself.
Now that my brain is well-nourished again, my activators don’t bother me nearly as much. Food didn’t cure my misophonia, but it removed a major source of stress and took me out of survival mode. And somehow, the sound of eating doesn’t bother me anymore. I can’t prove anything, but I think subconsciously, my brain recognizes that food is no longer my enemy, and that it nourishes the people around me, too.
And no matter how noisy of an eater someone may be, I’m never using my misophonia as an excuse to skip meals again.
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Resources
If you or a loved one are struggling with disordered eating, please reach out to the National Eating Disorder Hotline: (800) 931-2237 or at their website, www.nationaleatingdisorders.org.
If you feel that you might harm yourself or others, please call the National Crisis Lifeline in the US at 988 or look at this link for international crisis hotlines.