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Comment by goodells | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting insight, but I don't think it's even close to telling the whole story of the pathophysiology of misophonia.

The researchers seem to focus mainly on the mouth and throat sounds that bother many people. It's probably the most relatable disgusting kind of sound that a lot of neurotypical people can sympathize with hating too. But newer research (like that from Dr. Zach Rosenthal and CMER at Duke [1]) is showing that the root of misophonia has something to do with trained aversive reactions, and that meshes a lot better with my own experience. It's very common for people with misophonia to develop more triggers over the course of their lives such as footsteps, doors closing, car engines, etc., and even for associated visual stimuli to cause similar triggers.

[1] - https://www.misophonia.duke.edu/content/research-overview

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I find that a lot more plausible as a primary cause. I've had a lot of that sort of misophonia, and ended up doing a kind of trauma therapy over childhood incidents including a situation where my Dad raged at me at the dinner table, parodying my mouth noises (presumably he, too, had misophonia)

Turned out, there was more going on in that situation than it seemed at face value. Revisiting the events with an adult capacity to look at context, suggested that my Mom and Dad were having a fight already and repressing it, and that I'd got in the middle. The total lack of context made it seem like the end of the world, and I'd call that a real specific trained aversive reaction if anything could be.

If this mouth-brain link exacerbates the problem, I wouldn't be terribly surprised, but I don't think that alone can cause it.

Did the therapy reduce the effect of these sounds on you?

Or, maybe, this mouth-brain link is caused by these traumatic events.

In my 20s I would shake internally when I was eating at the table with someone chewing with open mouth. Sometimes I would just walk away from the table to stop hearing them.

Actually now that I am reflecting on that I am hearing this sound in my head and I am getting a bit annoyed.

But through reflection on the nature of it, and focusing on anything but that sound, I learnt to cope with it. I am sure going to hear it and it will be annoying but i am not bother more then that.

I wonder if that’s why older people tend to score higher on life satisfaction scores?

When you’re young, you’re full of emotion towards the world and as you age you either abandon the desires or learn coping strategies. Eventually you’ve abandoned enough desires ranging from the “holy shit! I wish BOB WOULD STOP CHEWING LIKE THAT!” rage to the “I’ve gotta work hard to make something of myself!” that you can actually just sit back and enjoy a day.

There are plenty of older people that rage and throw fits, I's say it depends on personal growth and perspective, not age (though both comes with time as we get more experiences).

Sadly some people never look back or inward and never grow beyond their basic instincts.

This meshes well with some advice my audiologist gave me, too. I had suggested using earplugs to muffle the sounds that bother me, because they tend to be rather quiet. She advised against, over concerns that I would lose the ability to cope without earplugs, and that this could be a bigger problem in the long run than just working on developing more coping strategies.

For me it's other people coughing, especially dry coughs. Productive coughing is fine for some reason.

I struggle to express the sheer negative reaction that happens in my brain, it's like a switch that turns on anger, depression and frustration all at the same time. Imagine someone scraping their folk on a plate, and the unpleasant sound it makes. Now multiple that by 100.

Obviously this has had a very negative effect on my marriage to my wife who suffers from asthma. None of it her fault of course.

Sound blocking ear phones work to some degree. I have wandered if meditation could help, or to take an extreme course of action: LSD.

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