Misophonia: Misophonia is a condition where specific stimuli cause an extreme emotional response. This response to triggers includes both emotional and physical reflexes.
Relaxation and Misophonia: This app helps you increase your general health and wellness and develop the skill of relaxing your muscles on demand. Both of these can greatly reduce your misophonia severity. When you relax before and through a trigger situation, your response will be less and your misophonia will gradually decrease. Muscle Relaxation Training (progressive muscle relaxation) is a technique that takes many sessions to develop the physical/neurological skill of relaxing your muscles on demand. If you want to get the full benefit in reducing your misophonia, you need to do Muscle Relaxation Training for one hour every day for the first 4 weeks, then continue at a rate of 15 to 30 minutes a day for the next month.
This App: With this app, you do Progressive Muscle Relaxation sessions, where you focus on the feeling of the muscle when tense and relaxed. Doing this creates new neuron connections in your brain that allows you to relax that muscle on demand.
How to use this app: For the quickest reduction in misophonia, do three Muscle Relaxation Training sessions every day, spread throughout the day. Alternate between session 1 and session 2. After 14-20 relaxation training sessions you will be ready to practice Sequential Relaxation and Total Instant Relaxation (or Ragdoll). Do the Sequential Relaxation (with or without the app) 3 times a day and the Total Instant Relaxation (Ragdoll) 5 times a day when you are not trigger.
QUICK START (Basic App): Select Beginner 1 and Edit. Select the background music, and background sound. Start the session (Start then Play) and follow the instructions. You should lie down or sit with your full body supported. Simply listen and follow the audio. Alternate between Beginner 1 and Beginner 2. After a few session, you can switch to Expert 1 and Expert 2.
HELP INFO:
Muscle Relaxation Training: This allows you to do a Progressive Muscle Relaxation training session.
Beginner vs. Expert Sessions: Beginner sessions have more explanation of how to do the training at the start and end of the session. The muscle training work is the same for Beginner 1 and Expert 1 sessions.
Session 1 vs. 2: There are some differences in muscles in the 1 vs. 2 sessions. That is why we advise alternating between 1 and 2 sessions.
Advanced User Options: The basic app allows you to only select the music and background sound for the session. Only Remy voice is available.
– Voices: Advanced (paid) allows you to choose between 10 voices. One is Remy-de-essed. Another Duke, a live recording. The other voices are high quality computer generated voices, so there is no lip-pop sounds. You can choose between American, British, Australian, and Indian accents.
– Muscles: Advanced allows you to choose which muscles you want to use. With this feature, you can customize your work to focus on the part of your body that needs extra relaxation training.
– Duration of Tension: This is the time that each muscle is tensed. Advanced allow you to set this value. It is recommended that this be 5 to 10 seconds.
– Duration of Relaxation: This is the time that each muscle is relaxes. Advanced allows you to set this value. It is recommended that this be 7 to 20 seconds.
– Select Beginning: This is what you hear before you start individual mucles. Choices are Beginner, Expert (shorter), and Short (very short).
– Select Ending: This is what you hear after you complete the work on muscles. Choices are Beginner, Expert, Short, Long (extra general relaxation), and Sleep (designed to use when you are trying to go to sleep).
Help Going to Sleep: If you have trouble going to sleep at night, you can use this app to put you to sleep. Select any session (even the Basic app sessions). If you have Advanced app, select the Sleep ending. Start the app and lock your phone. Tense your muscles lightly and release quickly. Focus on your muscles. This will stop your mind from running and allow you to go to sleep. It really works.
Personal Help with Misophonia: Tom Dozier is available to help individuals by video-chat. You can email him at [email protected] and he will usually reply within 48 hours. If he does not reply, something went wrong, so email him again or call.