Melissa Gilbert is talking about misophonia. Good.
Do certain sounds send you into a potential rage? You might have it, too.
Melissa Gilbert is opening up about her diagnosis of misophonia, classified as a neurological disability. Misophonia is a disorder where certain sounds can trigger intense reactions, where your “fight or flight” response is activated. It’s a nasty thing to have, and something I’ve personally struggled with for years.
If you don’t have misophonia, it’s hard to explain the intense hatred, rage, and desire to run away mundane sounds can suddenly flood you with. Misophonia means “hatred of sound” for Pete’s sake! It’s baked right there in the name!
My triggers are mainly wet mouth sounds: the kind that happens when you eat an apple, slurp your soup, or smack your lips. (Just writing that out sets my teeth on edge.) For Gilbert, some of her triggers are hearing people chew gum, or tap their fingernails. I can’t speak for Gilbert, but the closer I am emotionally to someone, the stronger the feelings of rage are when they inadvertently make the noises that activate me. It makes no logical sense, and it makes you feel like you’re not connected to reality when it happens. Objectively, it’s dumb to be filled full of rage by the sound of someone else eating. People with misophonia know that. It didn’t stop me from quitting a good-paying job because my co-worker noisily ate an apple for a prolonged period of time, every day, a foot from my desk, though. (Yes, I did try to talk to my boss about it at the time. He ignored me and told me to grow up. I was 30. He was dealing with the burden of manufacturing a fake family to show off to everyone at the company, going so far as to let us throw a baby shower for a wife and baby that didn’t exist, though. He was on his own journey then.)
For Gilbert, best known for starring in Little House on the Prairie, it meant that her kids weren’t allowed to have gum in the house, and she had a unique hand signal to let family members know when they were eating too loudly. She told People:
Her own children knew that even the simple act of chewing could set her off. “I had a hand signal that I would give, making my hand into a puppet and I’d make it look like it was chewing and then I’d snap it shut — like shut your mouth!” she recalls. “My poor kids spent their whole childhoods growing up with me doing this. They weren’t allowed to have gum.”
Man, do I feel seen by that quote! I will absolutely leave a room if someone is eating too loudly. I always buy popcorn at the movie theater so I can drown out the sounds of other people eating with my own. Melissa Gilbert, I understand you!
There are steps you can take to address the burden misophonia can take on your life, and it doesn’t involve banning gum (or apples) from your home. She shared with the outlet:
Even though she knew the condition had a name, she didn’t realize there was a way to treat it until last year when she discovered Duke’s Center for Misophonia. “I wrote in just randomly and said, ‘I need help. Please help me,'” says Gilbert, who shared a video about her experience on the center’s website.
The center’s director, Dr. Zach Rosenthal, wrote back telling her, “There’s help. You’re not alone.” That, she says “was huge.” She learned that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an effective treatment for the misophonia, and she underwent 16 weeks of “intensive” CBT therapy.
It’s important to talk about misophonia and to explain what it is because it’s still not particularly well-known. Depending on the severity of your triggers and how many of them are, it can be a debilitating condition where you can’t be around anyone, or leave the house. Gilbert’s point is that there is help if you feel you need it. For misophonia, that message is incredibly important; as I’ve stated before, you feel like it’s something you should just be able to get over, and it’s embarrassing to get activated by mundane sounds. You feel like this is a problem with you, personally, and not a condition that you have.
The discourse around misophonia is evolving, and I’m grateful for anyone who comes forward and talks about it, like Kelly Ripa has in the past, and Melissa Gilbert has now. I feel like the more people talk about it, the more people realize they might have it too, and they’re not alone.
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
