An extreme emotional response is the trademark of misophonia. Here is a comment someone with misophonia posted on misophoniatreatment.com.
Judy’s Story
“I have only recently found out that there was a name for my condition. I am fifty-four years old have suffered what seems like forever with this problem. One particular person at work drives me crazy sniffing and coughing all the time. At times I get so I angry I think I could kill. I even get to the point of wishing this person would drop dead (bad I know), but I’m sure other sufferers feel the same at times. My poor lovely husband knows how I feel and tries his best not to make the noises I detest. I sometimes don’t know how he lives with me. I know I have passed this on to one of my girls, and my dad had it, too. It’s making my social life a nightmare.” Note that she wishes the person making the noise would drop dead! It is hard for someone who does not have misophonia to understand the extent of emotions that are caused by being repeatedly triggered, especially in a situation where the misophonic individual is trapped and cannot make the triggers stop.
Misophonia in the News
On April 16, 2015, Southwest Airlines flight 577 was taxiing toward the runway at Chicago’s Midway International Airport en route to Manchester, New Hampshire. An elderly, white haired man, Lenny Mordarski, went to sleep and started snoring. The woman sitting beside him stabbed him repeatedly in the arm with her pen to stop him from snoring. Lenny said it felt like he was being stung by bees. The airplane returned to the gate and shortly thereafter took off for Manchester, without the assailant. Thanks to Lenny’s long sleeve shirt, no blood was drawn. The woman in question was placed on a later flight. Feeling trapped with triggers makes the emotional responses worse. The poor woman likely felt trapped but tried to ignore the snoring until she could bear it no longer. It probably didn’t take long for her to reach this point. Her fight-or-flight response took over, and she attacked. Below is a twenty-six-question survey of emotional responses to triggers. I use this survey for my new misophonia clients. As you read through these, you will see that the list of emotions/reactions go from mild to extreme. All of these emotions are often rated as “none of the time,” “a little of the time,” “a good deal of the time,” or “almost all the time.”