Remember the misophonia we told you about years ago? New research published in PLOS ONE and conducted in the UK, suggests that significantly more people suffer from it than previously thought.
Specifically, the sounds that cause annoyance are varied, and include for example actions such as chewing, drinking, snoring and breathing. Individual responses can also range from mild irritation or anger to outright anger to the anguish that interferes with everyday life.
“Our survey has captured the complexity of the condition. Misophonia is much more than being bothered by certain sounds, it means feeling trapped or helpless when you can’t get away from these sounds and miss something because of it ‘explains University of Oxford clinical psychologist Jane Gregory, co-author of the new study.
King’s College London psychometrist Silia Vitoratou along with Gregory and colleagues, used an algorithm to distribute volunteers across gender (including non-binary), age and ethnicity, to reflect UK census data, resulting in a well-representative sample of people over 18.
The 772 volunteers completed a questionnaire about potential trigger sounds and their emotional responses, which probed 5 aspects of misophonia: a sense of emotional threat, internal and external evaluations, outburst and impact.
However, it is important to underline that many of the sounds that can trigger misophonia (such as strong chewing) are not very popular even by the “healthy” population. Nonetheless, there were mainly two differences which appear to be fundamental among subjects with misophonia and the general population.
First, negative feelings about universally disliked sounds were most often accompanied by anger and panic in the more sensitive subset of the population, where participants reported feeling trapped or helpless and totally unable to escape the noise. “It’s about feeling like there is something wrong with you for the way you react to sounds, but also of not being able to do anything about it. This can then lead to guilt, shame, anxiety and withdrawal“, say the researchers.
Secondly, people with misophonia had more likely to be disturbed by sounds such as normal breathing and swallowing, while the same sounds did not elicit any reactions in the general population
The results speak for themselves: around 1 in 5 people in the UK experience intense misophonic reactions. However, the even more shocking figure concerns the fact that less than 14% of the sample was aware of misophonia before the survey, demonstrating how the subjects did not have a name to describe what they lived on a daily basis.
After seeing why ASMR calms some people and makes others nervous, highlighting a concrete application of such ailment, this new questionnaire can be considered a useful tool to help other clinicians and psychologists identify early anyone who is troubled by the condition.