chewing

My kid is learning about sound in her science class.  I was asked to come up with something fun to do with the class.  I ended up doing the whole cup string walkie talkie thing because Smart Me knew it'd be better than my first subject choice: "Hatred of Sound".   I was going to give each kid their own little personal box of cereal to munch on along with a field journal so they could document how long it took for the scary lady to start screaming and throwing text books.  I'm sure this would've been frowned upon as "Fringe Science", so I played it safe.

A couple of years ago, I began to notice the term "Misophonia"  floating around on social networks.
Misophonia:  A strong reaction to specific sounds.
*Rare.
*Fewer than 200,000 US cases per year.
*Usually self-diagnosable.
*Lab tests or imaging rarely required.
*Chronic: can last for years or be lifelong.
~ Misophonia may cause a reaction to sounds such as dripping water, chewing, snapping gum, or repetitive noises, such as pencil tapping. People with misophonia can become irritated, enraged, or even panicked when they hear their trigger sounds.Treatment might involve therapy or lifestyle recommendations, such as using sound protection or creating "noise-free" zones within living spaces.

Not many institutions take misophonia seriously but the ones who do claim the disorder usually starts between the ages of 13 and 14...."when most psychiatric disorders start occurring."  I beg to differ.  See that picture up there?  That's me.  I was four years old and already a veteran hater of sound.  The pain on my face is from trying to block out the other "Crazy Cow" cereal eaters at the table.  There are pictures of me at the breakfast table completely surrounded by a barricade of cereal boxes set up strategically as a sound buffer.  Naturally, this was frowned upon.  I'd leer at my brother through the cracks of my barricade and hiss, "Why are you breathing and requiring sustenance in such an unbearable fashion?!"

You say "breakfast at the table", I say "drag my face on 50 miles of unmaintained concrete". And it's not just the sound of other people eating that send me into fits of rage.  I also can't stand to hear people breathe.  I know!  How presumptuous of me! Over the years I've learned to cope.  Sort of.  Actually I've only got two coping skills.  Obnoxious mimicry and fleeing the scene.  I flee because it's a whole lot easier than telling another person that their intrusive and invasive behavior is triggering extreme annoyance and irritation that will swiftly turn to anger and rage followed by a suffocating feeling of entrapment.  Truth be told, I don't think there's an actual medical term for what I have.  Because it's not just the chewing and breathing.....it's an over-sensitivity to ALL sound.  So I've adopted the universal precaution of wearing earplugs all the time.  Occasionally I take them out, but it's rare.

We all have that one friend who tries to make us feel better about our unidentifiable ailments.  Recently a friend of mine sent me this article with a note that said, "Aww.  See?"  The article came from Northwestern University and talked about how Creative Genius is Driven by Distraction.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that literary great Marcel Proust also wore earplugs due to the inability to filter out irrelevant noise!

It's becoming painfully obvious that my daughter is walking in my leaky sensory gating footsteps.  But I don't want her to view this negatively.  I prefer to tell her that she's at high risk for real-world creative achievements and that there's no shame in wearing ear plugs to dim down the shrill distraction of societal norms and conventional expectations.

 

"For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill."  ~Marcel Proust