Misophonia Bootcamp
Advice for Preparing to Deal With All Things “Misophonia”
“Don’t force yourself to be in that situation and don’t feel guilty for finding an excuse to leave whatever situation you may be in.” #misophonia
Misophonia is like a war, the enemy (any activating sound in this case) can strike at any moment! It’s spontaneous and ruthless. It doesn’t send a warning signal for the mental warfare yet to come or wave a white flag when it's decided that it has exhausted all of your mental resources. Yet, sometimes the battlefield is empty and a plan of action hasn’t been implemented in order to fight off the bad guys. You’ve gotta be ready to attack at any moment, soldier!
—Battling misophonia every single day is certainly a daunting task. Waking up every day knowing that you must prepare to fight your misophonia activators and prepare for the mental combat in your own mind is terrifying. But, that doesn’t mean the strategies to cope with it have to be challenging and dreadful in order to control your emotions in the midst of the overwhelming feelings that come with it.
—As someone who has dealt with misophonia for over 5 years, I’ve developed a few tricks up my sleeve to help me maintain my composure, calm my anxiety, and prepare myself for the mental war I call misophonia. Although everyone experiences and deals with misophonia differently, here are a few things I’ve done (and even apps I’ve downloaded) to help me personally prepare for battle. They may seem pretty simple or obvious at first, but actually putting them into practice has turned out to help me a lot!
1. Listen to music or white noise
—I’m an avid music lover, I love all things music and try to constantly expose myself to new music or find more music in the genres I already know and love. No matter how horrible my panic attacks have been during fits with my many instigating sounds, there's nothing like the relieving feeling of putting on my noise-canceling headphones and hitting play on my music playlist. The warm hug of the soft leather ear pads of my Bose headphones and that peaceful moment of absolute silence as the trigger sound drowns out promptly when I switch the on button is indeed, a blissful moment. Quite honestly, you could make me believe that I was being sent to the gates of heaven with a few cherub angels singing softly in my ears. Even putting in any regular old earphones gives me that same euphoric relief of having my favourite music blasting in my ears over an activating sound.
—I have a go-to playlist that is pinned to the top of my Spotify account so that it's ready to be played even in the most unexpected of cases of a trigger sound. I find this to be especially helpful when I’m already starting to get frustrated and anxious in these situations and don’t want to think about or search for what sound I can play to replace the trigger sound. Essentially, my Spotify playlist is my safe place I go to in times when I need help with my misophonia outbursts so I suggest making a playlist with either your favourite music, podcasts, or even white noise.
—Because lyrics and rhythmic beats give my brain more to think about, white noise is my second choice to play in these cases. However, in my experience, white noise is certainly still better than nothing as it can help to dim the volume of a problem sound and reduce anxiety with its static and soft sound.
—I recommend downloading either the “BetterSleep” app to customize your own list of soothing sounds or the “Misophonia” app to engage in the misophonia community as well as enjoy the pre-made list of soothing sounds! There’s also a really handy panic button that you can press in case of an emergency trigger sound.
“Music and white noise act as a sort of cushion to a trigger sound”
—Music and white noise act as a sort of cushion to a trigger sound, it sustains the blow of the bad sound and engulfs you with the safety of a more soothing or enjoyable sound.
2. Exercise
—I’m definitely not the most fit person in this world and sometimes even the thought of exercising is mentally draining and I just want to sink into the softness of my bed and just watch Hell’s Kitchen all day. But I know that taking negative energy from misophonia and transforming it into productive energy, such as a small exercise, is my own version of revenge to misophonia.
—I’ve always loved to ride my bike during the spring and summer. I always put on my same white Converse™, put in my earphones, turn on my music, and just ride around my neighbourhood wherever my heart desires. I find that doing both biking and listening to music more effectively distracts my brain and recovers my sanity from an outburst than just doing one or the other. However, whenever I’m not able to ride my bike due to weather (we get heavy snow here in Canada for most of the year), I love to find short exercises on Youtube that are suitable for me to do!
—Most recently, I’ve been doing a few different exercises from the youtube channel “Growwithjo”. Her exercises are challenging but not mentally draining, and–best of all–they don’t involve pushups! As someone who cannot deal with joint pain of high impact exercises, the exercises on this channel have been an absolute heaven sent. Even doing one of her short exercises have helped me deal with my negative emotions from misophonia. No matter what you choose to do, whether you are engaging in your favourite sport or doing a Youtube workout video, I found that getting in even a small amount of movement during or after hearing a trigger sound can greatly help to relieve stress and reduce anxiety.
3. If possible, ask for accommodations at your school or work
—As a university student, I knew it would be a challenge to focus on in person lectures and write in person exams with the multitude of trigger sounds found in the average classroom. So, getting accommodations as quickly as possible was my main goal in my first semester of university.
—It was a long and difficult process but, in the end, I did end up getting the accommodations I needed and they have helped tremendously in performing better on exams and focusing more on the content in my lectures.
—If possible, try to seek help from accommodation offices at your school or work. You could begin by asking the general administration office at your school or your boss at work if accommodations are available and they should be able to direct you to a more specific person to help you get accommodations. Try your best to explain misophonia, why you require accommodations, and what type of accommodations you would require.
—Some schools or places of work may require you to provide a doctor's note of your misophonia diagnosis; however, this depends on the school or job. In my case, I had to see a doctor (which is also where I got diagnosed with misophonia), get a note from the doctor stating my misophonia diagnosis, and provide that to the accommodations office along with some other documentation they needed me to fill out.
—It may be a tedious process at first but, all the work to get the help you need to be more successful in either your school or work life can make a world of difference in your mood, motivation, and performance.
4. Remove yourself from a situation before it gets bad
—Knowing when and where an activating sound may occur gives you a great advantage because you can either bring headphones or earplugs to help prevent you from hearing them or, even better, you can ask to excuse yourself from the situation altogether before it even happens.
—Yet, this may not always be the case. Many trigger sounds occur unexpectedly which can cause a surge of panic. It may be awkward at first to ask to remove yourself from whatever situation it may be but, if the possibility is there, it doesn’t hurt to ask! If it so happens that a problematic sound occurs and you haven’t expected it, just remove yourself from the situation even if just for a few minutes. You can simply say you need to go to the washroom or that you need to go for a short walk to regroup your thoughts.
—Taking just a few minutes away from whatever area the sound may be in can greatly help to reduce any negative feelings and emotions you start to feel. Usually, if a sound is really bothering me in a situation, I go to any nearby washroom and just play a game on my phone, listen to my Spotify playlist, scroll through my Instagram feed, or practice some breathing techniques. Basically, I do anything to get away from the sound and keep my mind occupied on something other than the activating sound, no matter how that may look.
—I noticed that even if I absolutely must come back to that situation with the sound, I’ll be a lot more calm, collected, and even more able to sit through the situation after a small break versus if I forced myself to sit through the sound that bothers me.
—If people question why you had to leave and you don’t feel comfortable about telling them about your misophonia, just say you needed to take a break or that you had to take a phone call. Be honest to yourself about how you feel. If it feels as though the sound is beginning to cave in on you and it feels like it may start to eat away at your mind, listen to your body, get up, and leave the situation. Don’t force yourself to be in that situation and don’t feel guilty for finding an excuse to leave whatever situation you may be in.
5. Talking to family and friends
—This one is definitely the hardest out of all of the strategies I’ve listed here. However, I think it’s one of the most important things to do if possible. Unfortunately, not everyone is equally understanding of misophonia. In my experience, friends are usually a lot more understanding than family.
—No matter how difficult it is, telling your loved ones about misophonia and the way it makes you feel, react, and what your misophonia activators are is super important to their awareness of your mental health and wellbeing. Even if they are not understanding or indifferent to what you tell them about misophonia, at least you know that you tried your best to educate them and make them aware of the condition. It’s up to them to respect you and your sensitivities with misophonia, but you need to understand that it’s also your responsibility to tell them about it.
—The responsibility of having to explain yourself and this weird, confusing condition definitely feels like a burden. The fear of being judged or rejected by your friends and family for having misophonia is definitely something really scary. You don’t want people to change the way they perceive or treat you, so I definitely understand that this might or might not change if you decide to finally spill the tea to them. But, I definitely believe this is a stepping stone towards gaining empathy and understanding from the ones you love most. It was easy for me to tell my closest friends about my misophonia, but when it came to my parents, it was really challenging. In fact, they didn’t find out until pretty recently and I told my mom before I told my dad about it.
—They still struggle to understand exactly what it is, why I have it, and why I react the way I do to certain sounds. I get emotional when explaining misophonia verbally as it's a very personal issue for me, but whenever I get the chance, I try to verbalize my struggles with it no matter how my loved ones feel about it. All in all, not everyone is gonna understand what you mean when you say “I have misophonia”, and they may not understand how to treat you because of this, but at least you will put it out there into the universe and, at least to me, that’s where inner peace begins.
Conclusion
—You’re a soldier in this battle. You’ve fought long and hard to be where you are today in your misophonia journey, but we could all use some more boot camp to help deal with the unexpected events that come with it. Ultimately, I think it's really important to fight back with opposing energy. And what I mean by that is, when you begin to feel that disturbing surge of anger, sadness, disgust, panic, or anxiety when hearing a misophonic initiating sound overwhelm you, stop for a second and think to yourself: what can I do right now to make me happy? To make me calm? To defuse the land mine of emotions I know will implode if I do not do something at this very moment?
—Take the negative emotions associated with misophonia and try your best to transform that negative energy into doing something productive, something positive, something that makes you smile (even if just for a few seconds). It’s so incredibly easy to feel as though misophonia is the cloud ready to rain on your parade, yet, you can take this as a sign to take time for yourself and just do something strictly for YOU.
—Hopefully, my list of strategies has helped you (even if just a little bit) or has given you some insight into a new mindset of how to deal with misophonia.
Keep your head up, soldier; you got this.