Originally published at: How misophonia, aka "sound rage," can destroy relationships | Boing Boing
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[Takes ballon and makes it squeak, never breaking eye contact.]
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Still does not explain why my tendency to sing - all of the time, for no reason - goes from endearing to infuriating in a… checks notes…5 to 7 year cycle
Edited for clarity.
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It seems awfully presumptuous to diagnose the listener with ‘misophonia’ when the world is just loaded with people clearly guilty of essential acoustic depravity.
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My girlfriend clicks her pen repeatedly when we work or screen together. At times distracting, but it’s the sound of her soothing herself. Since I also like to soothe her, I realize the pen and I are on the same team.
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I worked with a guy who was like this. I tried to be respectful, but man he was a jerk about it. Bag crinkles would set him off. I’d open a bag of something, and put it in a dish. If I can make the effort to minimize the sound, you can deal with the one second of opening before pouring in contents and throwing it away.
Protip - use chop sticks with snacks to keep keyboard clean.
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[Maintains eye contact]
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This is unironically sweet. Good on you.
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She is keen. I’m sure I’m noisy/annoying some/many ways. I feel lucky.
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I’ve always had a severe reaction to people chewing, but found over the years that I can cope with the addition of some background noise, music is best, but also lots of conversation, so my family and I compromised on having music in the background at dinner. It’s really helped us all deal with me. In bad situations with others where there’s no chance to do that, I just excuse myself.
The worst is meetings where people bring lunches and I can’t leave, but for this and other reasons I’ve worked 100% remote since the 90s.
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Just about any ASMR video, especially the ones with whispering, makes me want to go on a murderous rampage.
Weirdly, while I also can’t stand the sound of people eating, the sound of animals eating has the opposite effect. I love listening to puppydogs scarf down food.
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Wow. Yes, exactly the same. Animals eating don’t bother me at all and it’s just cute.
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I hate that word “misphonia” – I’m not hearing wrong. You’re making useless noise.
Holding loud conversations on my streetcorner waiting for the bus to drop off your kids. Running the leaf blower at 7AM. Leaving your dog outside to bark for hours. Whistling out of tune while I’m cooking.
My wife says “ignore it” but I’m not wired that way.
As quoted in Tár, Schopfenhauer equated intolerance of noise with intelligence, and there’s some scientific evidence for that.
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I suspect that there’s a self-referential part of this effect. That it’s not just the noise, it’s the reflexive “I would feel bad/ashamed if I made that noise, so why don’t they feel bad/ashamed as I would?” That probably wouldn’t kick in with animals
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Interesting that all the examples you cite of “useless” noise are useful to the people making them, just not you.
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I used to have a weird, seemingly uncontrollable anger reaction to human eating sounds, and I discovered that thinking fondly of how we are all animals–we eat, we digest, we live in bodies–made the anger reaction disappear. It’s easier if I genuinely like the person making the noise.
I can now sort of enjoy the sounds of human animals eating, just like I do the sounds of other animals.
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Leaving a dog outside to bark and bark and bark for hours is never good for anyone.
Some noises have always bugged me, but effects from a few have gotten worse since menopause. I don’t object to loud noises, as long as they’re interesting - I was in a V noisy industrial group, after all. Sudden crashes now make me almost angrily jump outta my skin, which can be messy.
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Ice chewers.
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