Misophonia Counselling
“There are no rules about how you should feel with misophonia. What you feel is real and valid, even if you think it makes no sense at all.”
- Dr. Jane Gregory
Understanding Misophonia
Focusing at school or work, being able to rest at home, or going out to the movies or a restaurant, can all feel challenging or impossible when specific sounds cause you to feel intense rage, panic, or even helplessness. Or you’re anticipating that these sounds will happen, leaving you tense, anxious, and on edge.
This can be a really exhausting and isolating experience, especially when others (or even perhaps yourself) don’t understand what’s happening or why. You might even feel like you’re losing your sanity – you’re not alone with this.
Despite being a lesser-known experience, misophonia significantly affects about 5% of people (1 in 20), that’s a lot! Misophonia is a neurophysiological condition where hearing specific (often everyday) sounds, triggers a survival fight-or-flight response. These triggers are commonly mouth, nose, or throat sounds, or repetitive environmental/mechanical sounds. Misokinesia is similar, triggered by seeing specific movements, and often co-occurs with misophonia.
Therapy for Misophonia
I have several loved ones in my life with misophonia, which motivated me to learn how to support them personally, and inspired me to learn how to support others clinically. While there is no standard treatment or approach for misophonia yet, as research is still quite new, there are strategies we can explore that have been supported by people with lived experience and preliminary research.
Exposure to triggers has not been consistently found to improve tolerance, so exposure therapy is not something I’ll ask you to try for misophonia.
We can start by discussing:
- Your specific triggers, so that I can avoid accidentally triggering you during our time together and make counselling as safe a space as possible for you.
- How misophonia has affected your life, in whatever ways you feel comfortable sharing.
Then we can explore:
- How to cope before, during, and after triggers, so they’re easier to manage.
- Formal or informal accommodations for school, work, home, and when out-and-about.
- How to support your mental health in the meantime to improve your overall well-being and stress levels, which may increase your tolerance to triggers when they do happen.
Misophonia may be just one part of many in your life that you could use support with
Together, we can figure out where to start by finding what can bring you some relief and could have the greatest impact first, and work towards your longer-term goals from there.