I was sound phobic – are you?
Chewing, slurping, clicking would all send Juliette Wills into a rage – until she was diagnosed with misophonia
It was the prawn salad that pushed me over the edge. I was eating dinner with my boyfriend’s parents in their three-bed semi in suburban Middlesex one balmy evening in the summer of 1989 when I was suddenly overwhelmed. The cacophony of chomping, gulping and lip-smacking as forkfuls of fat, pink king prawns and iceberg lettuce found their way to his mum’s mouth competed with the flapping of her cork sandal repeatedly against the sole of her bare foot… And then she turned up the volume on the television. The tumultuous clapping and whooping of the audience on Catchphrase was so amplified, it was though the volume had been turned up violently inside my head.
I ran out into the back garden, took several deep breaths of honeysuckle-scented air and put this uncharacteristic wobble down to too much sun.
It turns out that I’d actually experienced the first symptoms of a neurological condition called misophonia, which wouldn’t be identified until 12 years later by US scientists Margaret and Pawel Jastreboff.
Misophonia literally translates as “hatred of sound”, with the most common triggers being other people chewing, gulping, yawning, sniffing or doing something repeatedly, such as foot-tapping or clicking a pen.
Such triggers initiate an immediate negative emotional response from those with sound sensitivities, releasing adrenalin and the stress hormone cortisone, putting them in “fight or flight” mode. Reactions can range from moderate discomfort to full-on rage and panic. Unfortunately, and never one to do things by halves, I was – and still am – very much in the second category.
Within weeks of prawngate, I stopped going out for meals because I thought people could hear me eat. I couldn’t have a snack on a long train journey because people might notice, and at work (I was a PA in an advertising agency), I’d pretend I was too busy to eat in the canteen with my colleagues and ate alone at my desk instead.
At home at dinner times, I would simmer with anger, hating the sound of my dad’s jaw clicking as he chewed (which is officially known as mastication rage). I’d mimic the sound – I later discovered that copying the irritating sound is a classic symptom of misophonia – and dad would retaliate by shouting that I was “mentally ill”.
Meanwhile, my poor mum would plead with us both to stop yelling. We decided I’d eat alone, either before or after them. This saddened my mum and angered my dad; if I’m honest, I was also angry with myself. If I didn’t understand it why I felt this way, how could I expect anyone else to? I left home a few months later.
Shortly before I went, my mum explained the situation to our GP, who referred me to the Maudsley Hospital in south London.
“Go home, eat dinner at the table with your parents,” instructed the therapist, “then come back next week and tell me how you got on. You have to deal with these sounds directly to get better.”
Needless to say, I didn’t sit at the table with my parents and I didn’t go back the following week.
But my medical records show I was diagnosed with an eating disorder – a dangerously inaccurate label for a teenage girl who was clearly neither anorexic nor bulimic, whose issue was not with food per se, but how it sounded.
The cinema soon became a no-go zone. The sound of sweets being unwrapped, popcorn buckets being shaken and drinks being slurped made me so enraged, I almost lashed out on more than one occasion.
In recent years, I realised if I went to see a film on a Monday morning in the last week of its run, the screen would be empty.
I would fret the night before flying about who would be sitting next to me, what they might eat, whether they would have a cough or pull out their laptop. Once in the air, I’d scope the plane for two empty seats together and if the person next to me inadvertently annoyed me, I’d subtly ask to move.
In my late 20s, I spent three weeks in hospital. The constant noise and always-switched-on strip lighting above my bed was hell on earth. I was put on a ward with elderly patients – two had dementia, one had an oxygen tank, and two snored so loudly, I could have sworn they were clutching klaxons as they slept.
The stench and sound of the infirm using commodes with nothing but a curtain between us sent me completely round the twist.
After two weeks straight with no more than a few hours’ sleep (despite being prescribed Diazepam and Zopiclone), I was diagnosed with PTSD and moved to a side room, where I was so relieved I broke down in tears.
My misophonia had reached new heights: it was no longer just the noises associated with eating, but every peripheral, unwanted sound imaginable. Police sirens stop me in my tracks, but so does the jet-engine sound of hand dryers in public lavatories. Public transport brings so much peripheral noise. Train doors beeping, the hellish screech of the train on the tracks, people yelling down their phones, bashing their keyboard, watching videos on their phones without headphones (why would you do that?). Everyone hears them, but most people can process them, block them out. I can’t. It’s a relentless attack on my senses.
If you’re wondering how I cope with office life, I don’t: I work from home, in silence – no radio, no television.
Two years ago, my husband bought me noise-cancelling headphones and they’ve helped considerably. I wear them on the train, swapping for Isolate titanium earplugs on the Tube as I’m afraid of getting the headphones snatched from my head. I don’t listen to music through them unless the sound is really intrusive, as that tends to makes me feel disorientated.
At home, the only issue I have is with the volume of the television. During action films (which I love), I’ll yell “Quick, turn it down!” whenever there’s a car chase or shoot-out. I relish silence; it wasn’t by accident that we bought a detached house in a cul-de-sac rather than a flat in the city centre.
I don’t hate all sounds, though – inexplicably I love to listen to animals eating, crows crowing and trains
passing by the back of the houses opposite. And, perhaps strangely, I love music.
Living with misophonia is exhausting. In a desperate attempt to “normalise” my life after 30 years of suffering, I underwent hypnotherapy with Trevor Hoskisson, at the Harley Street Hypnotherapy Clinic. I’ve started incorporating his coping mechanisms: rather than reaching automatically for my headphones and scanning the train carriage for potential “threats” before I’ve even sat down, I give my brain a chance to assess the situation rationally.
I’ll breathe deeply and try to focus on something nice, like a basket of kittens or Tom Hardy in his pants.
I can now go out for dinner, but with no more than two or three people or my senses overload, and never at the weekend. I avoid being seated near children or the bar, where the sound of cutlery or coffee machines sets me off.
When I visit my parents, I can even eat at the table these days, even if I do still find it distressing. I had to find a way to tolerate it or risk ending up estranged from my parents whom I love very much (and, despite everything, still love me).
But should anyone dare bite into an apple, you won’t see me for dust.