Someone contacted me and asked: “What has worked for you? What hasn’t worked for you?”. She doesn’t have Misophonia but her loved one has and she is trying to understand more about Miso.
It’s a really difficult question and there’s not a simple answer to it. And, I may be a wrong person to ask, you’ll see that when you read what I wrote…
After 20 years of dealing with Misophonia, I could answer as simple as possible and tell: “Nothing has worked for me.” Really, nothing.
Maybe it’s better for people who would read this to find a more appropriate way of saying this but I really can’t. That’s the true and that’s the biggest problem with Miso.
I can only talk about small successes I made over the years in terms of dealing and living with Msiophonia.
I can’t say I had a normal childhood, growing up wasn’t easy. I can’t even remember when Miso started but I can remember the amount of rage I was feeling. Being a teenager with those hormones wanting to explode didn’t help either. For years I was fighting Miso with rage.
Needless to say that you can’t fight Miso with rage… Misophonia itself is producing a rage. On top of that I was so mad and angry at myself and my feelings that I was a ticking bomb, literary. My memories in that period of life are all colored by rage and anger. Looking at myself from the spot I’m standing in now, I feel sorry for that girl. Being hit daily by problems that weren’t under my control and by sounds so trivial and yet so powerful…
Can’t fight a rage with rage! Can’t fight anything, as a matter of fact, with rage and anger.
… But I was doing that for years. It was the only way I know and it was the easiest way. It really is the easiest way. It’s in a human nature to answer the rage with rage. You can spend years trying to resist and you wont be able to, until you wake up one moment and realize that you’re destroying yourself. I went all the way and felt anger the whole day every day, and responding to every situation with the rage and anger. Only happy moments were the moments outside of my house, with friends. I’m not talking here just about Miso, to be clear.
My wake up call was when at the age of maybe 17 I almost fainted in the middle of the street out of the amount of anger and rage I felt. The reason was trivial, my mother was late and I was waiting for her for 5 minutes. Feeling a large amount of bad feelings on daily basis made my body physically react to that point that I couldn’t speak, move or anything else. I leaned on the building in order to try to not faint. My mom showed up, laughing and trying to explain me why she was late. I couldn’t hear her, I couldn’t speak, I didn’t have my voice for almost an hour. All I could actually hear is the tone of her voice and that tone was killing me. When we finally got home I passed out on the bad crying.
That was the turning point for me. I had to save myself.
Through a long processes and years to come I accepted myself as an awful, terrible and horrible person because I have to be that kind of person if feeling all that feelings. So, ok, that’s just who I am and I need to live with myself. People are not responsible for their breathing, eating, yawning and else, those are all part of a normal behavior. I am on the other hand responsible for myself and feeling those feelings.
Somehow during the years I learned to handle my anger differently. I was always a very systematic person when it comes to my behavior and feelings.
I don’t lie to myself and make things easier for myself. I analyze every possible bad feeling about every possible action a person makes that I’m bothered with.
I shredded “the eating” “the breathing” “the chewing” “the gesticulations” into small little pieces that mean a lot about my relationship with that person. I’ve been analyzing myself the whole my life, and that helped me to keep sanity.
Trough the process of being honest with myself and being my own shoulder to cry in difficult times, I got stronger and I dealt many issues I had. Everything I fixed except Miso!
I analyzed every feeling and every situation related to feeling raged and agry, daily… I could tell you everything about my life… After time it only get easier to accept the real truth… I went trough all phases of acceptance and healing processes, but nothing nothing helps with Misophonia.
So, I lived that way, until recently, when I found out about Misophonia.
My initial reaction was that finding about Misophonia means that I need to change the whole perspective of myself. And it’s not easy.
For a half of hour I was happy, excited to found other Miso people…in another half of hour I was panicking. I didnn’t believe truly that Misophonia exist. I was seeing people speaking about the cure and I was thinking, what cure? That’s me! You can’t cure my anger, you can’t erase the reasons I want to scream out loud! That’s me! You can’t be feeling the same…
I’m so used to being the only one, the serious one, the “nervous all the time” one and now you’re telling me that I’m a normal one?
I struggle with accepting or assigning my bad feelings to Miso. I can’t leave that “I’m awful person” luggage I carried all my life. Actually, I can call it Miso but I still think I’m awful and I have that specific ugly guilt after Miso attacks.
So, I can’t tell what has worked for me so far. It’s a daily struggle and sometimes is easiers to handle and other times is not.
It truly means a lot having a support from other Miso people. I’m still in process of transition between “I’m a bad person” and “I have Miso”.
Practicle advises I can offer. Wear earplugs if you can… They helped me for years, bu I can’t wear them any more, they cause me pain. Accept your Miso and don’t fight it with beeing angry with yourself. Learn how to meditate. Learn how to be a friend to yourself. Tell your loved ones about Miso and ask for their support.
There’s no cure yet, but there is a very nice and helpful energy of support from other Misophonia people out there. Join some Miso support group on the web. You can tell them excatly how your rage looks like and everyone will understand without predjudice and without asking stupid questions.
If you, my reader, have something to say, to help others, please comment, I’m sure it will be helpful for someone who stumble upon this blog.
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