Can you imagine getting vehemently angry at the way someone is breathing?

What if every time you heard someone chewing you dug your nails into your hands to stop yourself from getting upset?

What if your roommate's uneven snores led to you getting so irate that you wanted to yell at them at three in the morning.

This is what I deal with every day. I have always had a problem with sounds and the way I process them. I hear quiet things way louder than I'm supposed to and don't react to them the way a "normal" person would.

Misophonia literally means "hatred of sound", but that's not the whole story. Most people have specific noises that really put them off and cause discomfort, panic, or even rage. For me, chewing is my main "trigger", along with any "wet" noises (like lotion being slathered or someone opening and closing their mouth), scraping sounds, or uneven and repetitive noises. For instance, my dad snores really loud, but it's even, so I can generally fall asleep while he's snoring. My roommate snores really unevenly. There's no pattern to it, and because I can't predict it or be prepared for it, it makes it impossible to cope with while I'm falling asleep. I've been known to sleep with head between two pillows with my earbuds in, playing music.

I know that it's not her fault, but I get so angry at her while she's asleep. Neither of us really have control in that situation. When I hear sounds that put me off, I don't really have control over what I do. All I have are my coping mechanisms. If I'm in a situation where I can't leave or make any kind of scene, I dig my nails into my hand until I'm so focused on that pain that I stop focusing on the noises.

If I'm sitting with a group of friends and one of them is chewing gum, I will sometimes pull out headphones and just play music loud enough to drown out all the noises. Sometimes I can just remove myself from the situation, and sometimes I get so full of rage that I cry.

It's not easy to get so mad at someone who doesn't even know what they're doing to upset you. What's worse when you tell someone that their chewing is upsetting you and they look at you like you're a freak. Some people like to make light of it, chew loud on purpose to upset me. These are people that are supposed to be my friends, but they make it so hard when they play down my conditions and try to minimize it to "just a silly thing I do".

Of course, I have good friends too, friends that always make sure they're not chewing too loud, friends that can sense when I'm tensing up and will try their best to solve the problem.

There's not really any treatment for misophonia right now, so for the moment all I can ask for is for people to understand.