Misophonia Emotional Responses

0) None of the time, 1) A little of the time, 2) A good deal of the time,  3) Almost all of the time

1. You hear a known trigger sound. You may dislike the sound.
2. You hear a trigger sound and feel annoyed or upset.
3. You want the other person to know how upset you are.
4. You want the person to stop making the sound.
5. You want to force the other person to stop making the sound.
6. You feel you must see that the person is actually making the sound or doing what you think they are doing. You want to keep looking or stare.
7. You want to hear something else, so you don’t hear the sound.
8. You want to be physically far away from the sound.
9. You wish you were deaf.
10. You are afraid that if you do something you will hurt others’ feelings.
11. You want to get away from the sound but do not want to make a scene.
12. You want to get away from the sound as quickly as possible, even if it would be embarrassing.
13. You want to push, poke, shove, etc., the person making the sound.
14. You want to verbally assault of the person making the noise.
15. You want to physically assault the person making the noise.
16. You want to physically hurt or harm the other person.

17. You want to scream or cry loudly.
18. You feel anger.
19. You feel rage.
20. You hate the person.
21. You feel disgust.
22. You feel resentment.
23. You feel you need to escape, flee, or run away.
24. You want to get revenge.
25. You feel offended by the person making the noise.
26. You feel despair or hopeless.
27. You feel guilt while you are being triggered.
28. You feel guilt after you calm down from being triggered.
29. You feel fear of more triggers to follow.
30. You feel fear (immediate, at that moment)

One person may respond with “not at all” to a few of these questions, but most people with misophonia experience over 75% of the feelings expressed on this list. In general, individuals will have all of these emotions (rated 1, 2, or 3) except for two or three, which are unique to each individual. Misophonia causes extreme emotions in virtually everyone. In our recent study on the initial physical and emotional responses to triggers, we exposed individuals to a tiny, super weak trigger and asked them to report their physical sensation and emotions. The triggers were short and quiet, and only one at a time. The emotional responses were generally mild, such as irritation, mild disgust, annoyance, mild fear, etc., because the triggers were very weak. The table below shows the emotions reported by the 26 participants who were tested for two auditory triggers and one visual trigger. The categories of emotion are aggregations of similar emotions. For example, aggravation, irritation, annoyance, frustration, anger, and rage are combined into the anger category. All individuals (100%) reported an emotional response to at least one of their tested triggers.