Misofonia: | I woman

VI submit a riddle. At the cinema, a woman is sitting in one of the best places in the room: a central armchair, in a row about two thirds away from the screen. Yet five minutes after the start of the film, he moves to the last armchair to the left of the front row, probably the worst place of all. How come?

The answer may surprise you. The fault lies with the popcorn and the woman in question is me.

In fact, I suffer from misofonia, a disorder that I like to describe as extreme emotional reactivity to sounds specifically issued by other people. A wide range of noises of various kinds, but mostly tied to actions – such as chewing, breathing, tossing, pulling on with the nose, drums the fingers, scraping the dish, click Clac with the biro – that every human being, as Such, he performs daily. The reactions can be equally varied of the triggering causes: as far as I’m concerned, it is as if someone rubbed a metal grater on the cerebral cortex, causing the contraction of all the muscles of the body; Other people accuse tachycardia, sweating or even nausea.

“I neanch’io the screech of the nails on the blackboard”, it happens that someone tells me to show themselves understanding. And, every time, my answer is that misophony is something different and worse, given that the world is not full of guy who scratches blackboards near our ears while we are struggling with everyday life. The truth is that, for the majority of people, popcorn is an integral part of the pleasure of an evening at the cinema, while for me they are a source of extreme physical and psychological discomfortwith all that scrouting strident they produce, when they are poured into the mouth in Manate, by sochiollo so huge that could feed a full family for the entire duration of the trilogy of the Lord of the rings (complete series). For me, the outputs in the cinema show most of the time in a popcorn armageddon.

Session far from family members

If you had never heard of misophonia before, don’t worry: The term was coined only in 2001 by American audiologists Margaret and Pawel Jasteboff, After observing the intense emotional responses that manifested some subjects to the production of certain sounds. Before then, those like me suffered from this disorder did not have the tools to understand why so strong and irritated reactions arouse common noises. Not being able to attribute a name to what I felt, the only answer I could give to myself is that I was a terrible person, a monster of intolerance towards which I had a profound shame.

I didn’t talk about it with anyone, I just endured in silence. At home, I sat down to eat as far as possible from my family members, with an index planted in the ear. On public transport, I improvised the game of chairs to get away from the passengers who ruminated Chewing Gum by my side. At work, I hid in the bathroom waiting for the desk neighbor to end up biting an apple. I have even survived two years in Japan – where to suck noodles is considered a gesture of great courtesy – without unleashing diplomatic accidents (indeed, I would have deserved the Nobel Peace Nobel Prize).

You are wondering what the problem is then. After all, the world is a somewhat rowdy place. There will certainly be thousands of other harmless sounds on which my brain could dwell. Alas, no. Unfortunately, the miso -firm brain concentrates its immediate and unshakable attention precisely on the harassing sounds. He does not escape one. Therefore, everything I can do is resist (= immobilize myself), change room (= escaping), or insistently fix the offending person (= fight, as we mean we middle -aged bourgeois).
Thanks to the internet, at least now I know I’m not alone. According to a 2023 British study, in fact, misohophonia disorders would interfere significantly on the quality of life of over 18 percent of the country’s population. The research on the causes and possible treatments of the disorder is still at the beginning, but, as far as I am concerned, frankness has proved to be saved.

In a gradual, but decisive way, I opened myself with colleagues and friends, which did not completely foam the arms of the popcorn, but it has meant that during family meetings or the meetings with buffet, tigged appetizers are increasingly chosen Silent (instead of the usual bowls of chips!) And that no colleague shell more handed than almonds to a span from my ear when I reach it at the desk to help it arrange the formula of an Excel sheet. But above all, he meant that nobody thinks he said something bad, if suddenly I raise myself from the chair and abandon the room.

I would like to add that misophonia does not only involve disadvantages.
I like to think that, from an evolutionary point of view, the human species benefited from misoophonics. Thanks to us, the hunter-ancestors ancestors may have learned to intercept those predators who used to gnaw the bones of their victims or those with a too noisy breath (I call them “nasophaiscianti”). They may have learned to chew with their mouth closed, limiting without realizing the spread of germs and improving their digestion. And it is likely that, through us, contagious people have been able to dodge in time, not because we were able to grasp their infectivity, but because they aroused the unstoppable instinct to strangle them with bare hands, as a fury of hearing them tossy and pull up with the nose.

But hypersensitivity to sounds can also prove useful to the present day. Often misoophysics are the first to intercept acoustic signals that others ignore: For example, the cycline of the urban clearness truck a day in which we forgot to bring out the garbage, the metallic croak of a YouTube video on the iPhone of a teenager well beyond the evening time in which it is allowed to keep it on, or The strange gurgling of the dog for a moment before they vomited on the new carpet. We are even able to identify a chewing gum chewing chewing chewing, a talent that perhaps could return practical only to Singapore, where chewing tires are (rightly) banned by law.

Salvation in the cinema with Bluetooth

Let’s also say that, as misophonic, they are a sort of superhero. Okay, you don’t need to thank me. On the other hand, I ask you to dwell on this second riddle.

The same woman as before is sitting in the central place she had chosen and there remains for the entire duration of the film. He does not twist on the armchair nor does he stop his ears with his fingers. It is not continuously turned to the neighbors to electrocute them (in vain) with the gaze. How come? No, she has not miraculously healed by misophonia. Simply, it is located in a cinema that has equipped itself with the much -sighted Bluetooth connection to allow spectators to connect with the headphones to the audio of the film, or that has prepared some special projections in which it is not allowed to introduce food. A small change for cinemas, the guarantee of a more serene future for misoophonics around the world. All that remains is to hope that 2025 will transform all this in reality!

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