To know the misphony and what it means, let’s look at this story: “I’ve spent my whole life like this, it’s terrible. Any means of transport has driven me completely crazy. If I don’t have a stopper or earphone to listen to The rhythm of the music, I’m very nervous and irritated. Do I hear the sound of the computer keyboard, people chewing gum, biting the metal of the fork while eating or sucking noisy straws?I dream of one day being able to be calm and not have to be alone with my headphones, not fail or look bad at the people who make the sounds?I can’t have a stable relationship, is it normal to end up hating someone like me?
What you just read is a real account of someone with misphony. So what is misphony? Basically, the disease is defined as a great sensitivity or hypersensitivity to a certain type of sound.
- The reaction is mainly anger.
- Not sadness.
- The dominant emotion is anger.
- This sounds like a normal response.
- But it happens quickly in an exaggerated way.
- ?- Doctor Sukhbinder Kumar.
- University of Newcastle-.
This is one of the conditions involving low tolerance to sound, along with hyperacusia and phonophobia. In people suffering from mysophony, the body reacts in a certain way to certain sound stimuli.
The word misofony was coined by the mediums Pawel Jastreboff and Margaret Jastreboff in the 2000s; this term derives from the Greek ‘misos’, which means aversion, and ‘dark’, which means its; In this way, misphony can also be defined as a “selective sensitivity to sound”.
As we have already said, misphony is a decrease in tolerance to certain sounds, people with the disease cannot tolerate hearing specific sounds, these are for most people background sounds, for others they are deeply unpleasant sounds.
Noises such as chewing, tingling certain cuts or patting the fingers seem unbearable for people suffering from misphony. Some of the annoying sounds are of a relatively low intensity, in the range of 40 to 50 decibels.
This aversion to sounds is magnified if the people who make them have an emotional connection with the person with the disease. For example, if they are from the same family or are close friends, irritation is greater. Baltimore elementary school teacher Meredith Rosol, diagnosed with myophony, says she can’t even eat with her parents. You only eat next to them if you put a plug in your ears.
One of the problems patients face is that this disease has a difficult diagnosis, so the chances of effective treatment are also complicated: until recently it had not even been classified as a disease.
Some argue that misphony is not a psychological disorder, it is not a phobia. This would be the case with a neurological condition. This neurological disorder is likely to be located in certain structures of the central nervous system.
Exactly where this gut reaction comes from is still unknown. This could have something to do with damage to the middle prefrontal cortex, similar to what causes another medical condition called tinnitus. Tinnitus is a phantom tone or other noise in the ear. perception usually caused by hair cells located in the cochlea of the ear.
Can people with this disorder or disease experience discomfort, anger, anger, panic, fear?, can they even imagine attacking the person or something that makes the sounds, these can be quite common and normal sounds like those emitted when eating, drinking. , suck, breathe, cough, etc.
These people may also feel uncomfortable by other repetitive sounds, such as chewing gum, popping balls with it, breaking bones, etc. People diagnosed with the disease have anxiety and behaviors to prevent people from making noises. In some very serious cases, the person may become so intolerant that he or she ends up exhibiting violent behavior towards the object, individual or animal involved.
Then you can develop a true obsession with sounds, hypersensitivity, in this way, spreads and intolerance occurs towards people or situations in which noises will be present.
People who suffer from misofony can develop serious psychological problems, may become aggressive, or make decisions to avoid situations that precede or motivate their discomfort, so they can become isolated or feel a deep loneliness.
Due to limited resources to treat the disease, there is not much solution for social integration, the only option available is to use earplugs or hearing aids to listen to music, that is, not to listen to sounds that cause discomfort. Don’t listen to anything else It’s not the best solution, but cut the evil into the egg.
We do not know the prevalence rate of misphony in the population, victims suggest that this is more common than you think, in patients with tinnitus a rate of up to 60% of those diagnosed is reported.
Hearing problems are more common than we think, there is often adequate treatment, but other times it is more difficult to achieve effective treatment, especially when the problem is hypersensitivity to certain sounds, this is because physical and psychological factors interact with generating such problems.
There is currently no cure for misphony. Some patients have already achieved some improvement with cognitive behavioral therapy and tinnitus rehabilitation therapy; in other cases, these interventions have been ineffective. Many doctors are unaware of the existence of this disorder because it has recently been recognized, implying that in many cases it is not even diagnosed.
There are psychological and hypnotic treatments that have also given effective results in some patients, however, in general, it cannot be said that there is a cure for the disease, while waiting for more appropriate and universal treatment, those affected remain doomed to live in a state of constant anxiety or isolation if they choose to avoid unbearable sounds.
References
Herriz C. (2005). Pathological mechanisms in the genesis and chronogification of acefene. Act Otolaryngol Esp 2005; 56 (8): 335-42.
Herriz Puchol C, Hernandez Calvon FJ. (2002) Acefenos: Update. Barcelona: Ars Medica.