When Jake Eaton was a teenager, he was driven to the brink of insanity by the way his father’s jaw popped when the family was at the dinner table. Eaton didn’t know it at the time, but has a condition called misophonia, where everyday sounds can trigger intense distress.
From his essay in Asterisk magazine called “The Unbearable Loudness of Chewing“:
Every time he took a bite, the disc of cartilage that cushioned his jawbone would slip out of place and snap back. Chew, click, chew, click. Like a drum, his mouth reverberated the sound, which changed in pitch each time he opened to take a bite. Layered beneath all of this was the wet percussion of normal chewing. The trio — jaw pop, meat squish, fork scraping teeth — became inescapable. And it drove into me, first through my chest, a surprising shock of affront and disgust that then suffused through my whole body. It was the first time I ever got scared that I wasn’t in control of what was inside my own head.
The condition remained virtually unstudied until 2011, when a New York Times article sparked public interest. Before that, the term “misophonia” appeared in scientific journals just 15 times between 2002 and 2013.
Misophonisa, typically emerges around age 13, and while a large proportion of people (78.5%) report sensitivity to trigger sounds, only 4.6% experience clinical levels of misophonia. Over half of misophonia sufferers report eating sounds as their first trigger.
“I don’t think there is a cure,” writes Eaton.
[Via The Browser]
Previously:
• How misophonia, aka ‘sound rage,’ can destroy relationships
• Scientists uncover the real reason why loud eaters and mouth breathers gross us out
• The sound of horses crunching carrots is so satisfying!
