By Jane Pendry, Sense-Ability Hypnotherapy & Coaching

The Sense-Ability Manage and Master Misophonia Pathway

A Solution Focused Approach to alleviate auditory sensitivity to specific sounds

What is misophonia?

Misophonia is a debilitating and distressing condition characterized by an intense emotional reaction to specific sounds. Irritation, frustration, disgust, fear, anger, even rage, can be triggered by noises such as chewing, tapping, breathing or other repetitive or grating noises.

Misophonia is also known as sound sensitivity syndrome or selective sound sensitivity. The condition is characterized by a heightened emotional response when exposed to specific auditory triggers.

What does misophonia feel like?

People with misophonia don’t have much control over the emotions they feel. However, they can learn to manage and control their reactions better, making life more comfortable and less distressing.

Imagine the volume has been turned up on those subtle background noises that most of us screen out automatically? Imagine those noises now sound loud and overwhelming, and your instinctive fear and anger response is triggered as if by a threat? What happens? Your heart beat would go up. Your body would tense. You would feel overwhelmed by intense emotions; yet no-one else is reacting. No-one understands. How frustrating.

You can imagine how debilitating misophonia might be. Overwhelming, and seemingly irrational, intense responses to everyday sounds can significantly impact daily life and damage relationships.

What causes misophonia?

What we hear and how we react to noise are part of our brain’s innate self-protection system. Any threatening situation can elicit strong emotions like anger, disgust and fear.

There hasn’t been sufficient research to determine what causes misophonia, however there is some evidence that suggests there are differences in brain structures in some sufferers.

Misophonia may be inherited or partly genetic, and it can be associated with trauma and high levels of stress and anxiety. It may be a condition that is persistent and enduring, or one that happens under certain circumstances.

That means misophonia might be a condition that needs management through a variety of means. The Sense-Ability Manage Misophonia Pathway is a complementary approach that works alongside other interventions.

What does misophonia feel like?

The innate alarm system of the human brain - the amygdala - lodged deep in the primitive survival mind, warns us when we are in danger. Then our hypothalamus pumps out stress hormones. Our heart races. We feel cold but sweaty. We are in fight or flight.

With misophonia, the primitive mind responds as if some specific noises are a threat.

What if our primitive mind was too highly tuned, like a car alarm that’s so sensitive it goes off when a leaf falls on it? The anticipation of the alarm going off again and again would make us feel tense and anxious all the time. Then imagine every time it went off it was deafeningly loud and grating, you would jump out of your skin; and when I wasn’t going off, you’d be coiled and tense waiting for its screeching wail.

This is what misophonia feels like.

How is Misophonia usually Treated?

There is no simple or definitive cure for misophonia. Various therapeutic approaches have been explored to manage intense emotional responses caused by specific noises. Misophonia is not recognised as a psychiatric disorder, however treatments for OCD or PTSD have been found to be effective for many people.

An audiologist can give professional advice on sound therapies that can help, and can check that there isn’t an issue with hearing.

Some people invest in noise cancelling headphones or ear-plugs, including the innovative Calmer ear-plugs (designed to reduce the volume of irritating background noise without blocking the sounds you want to hear). Background noise can be helpful, eg. white, pink or brown noise, the noise of rain or some soothing music.

Reducing stress and anxiety can help to reduce the intensity of the negative reactions to noise.

The Sense-Ability Misophonia Management Pathway

Even though misophonia is not a complex phobia, the impact and the pathways in the brain and body that are affected are very similar. This led me to wonder whether I could work with misphonia in a similar way to how I work with complex phobias.

Working with the mind and body

Sense-Ability Complex Phobia clients learn to change their thoughts, actions and reactions to triggers and fears, with regular Solution Focused hypnotherapy, sessions L, breathing practices and other somatic practices that work with the mind and body.

When clients with misophonia contacted me for support with hypnotherapy, I soon realised that the tools and techniques I use to help people recover from emetophobia - in which I specialise - and other complex phobias, also helped people with misophonia. In particular, where the strong reactions to sound are linked to past traumas, the Rewind Trauma Technique has proved effective for many clients.

Hypnotherapy: An Overview

Hypnotherapy is a complementary therapy that utilises the natural fluctuating alpha to theta brain wave state - often called trance - to create a state of heightened focused attention and deep relaxation in individuals. This natural state of consciousness allows clients to be more open to suggestions, and to changing subconscious patterns of thinking and reacting. Some people are alarmed by the word trance, however it’s simply a sustained and induced natural state that feels like something between light sleep and day-dreaming and is perfectly natural.

Hypnotherapy for Misophonia

Hypnotherapy can help clients with misophonia to better manage their emotional reactions to trigger sounds.

Hypnotherapy is a known therapeutic approach to alleviate the experience of auditory sensitivity, whether that’s tinnitus (that annoying ringing in the ear) or misophonia in many people. Additional somatic techniques also help clients manage physiological responses to stress, like a raised heart rate, shallow breathing and sweating. Things like breathing exercises, EFT tapping and NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) techniques.

The therapeutic trance state

As a trained and accredited Solution Focused Hypnotherapist, I guide each client through various relaxation techniques and visualisations to reach the therapeutic alpha to theta brainwave trance state. Through hypnosis and guided imagery, the client develops better coping mechanisms and reframes and rehearses more helpful responses to sounds that trigger their misophonic reactions.

As Richard J d’Souza explains on the Clinical Hypnotherapy School explains: “Hypnotherapy can help you to detach your emotional reaction in a controlled environment, learning to stay relaxed as you are progressively reintroduced to those sounds. In hypnosis, you can accept positive suggestions or affirmations to target your misophonia reactions. This approach is similar to “Sequent Re-patterning” techniques, and “Exposure Response Prevention” techniques used in the treatment of OCD.”

Imagine, rehearse and embed

Clients can imagine, rehearse and embed preferred responses to familiar unpleasant sounds while in the relaxed hypnotic state. Visualisation helps clients rehearse how they will cope with, or respond to, infuriating noises in future. During hypnosis, clients engage their thoughts, feelings and beliefs to create a vivid imagined experience. As the primitive mind can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality, it possible - although not proven - that hypnotherapy helps to ‘rewire’ the neural circuits that process sounds and link them to emotions. In this way, hypnotherapy can help you change your negative misophonic reactions.

Where profound trauma is associated with specific sounds, the Rewind Trauma Technique has proved very effective. This technique involves a safe, structured way to process past associated traumas, uncoupling the intense emotions connected to the triggering noises. This process can bring great almost instantaneous relief.

The Sense-Ability Manage Misophonia Pathway

1. Identifying Trigger Sounds: First we need to identify the specific sounds that trigger emotional distress. Understanding the triggers enables therapy sessions to be customised.

2. Reducing general anxiety: Through hypnotherapy sessions, listening to a recording and building a simple toolkit of useful interventions that are practiced at home, clients’ overall anxiety is reduced which in turn reduces the intensity of the misophonia responses.The tool kit includes self hypnosis, breathing techniques, mindfulness exercises and NLP interventions.

3. Hypnotherapy: With the client in a relaxed state, the client accesses their subconscious mind. In this state, clients are more receptive to suggestions and can rehearse and embed better ways of responding to unconscious triggers.

4. Resolving past associated traumas: (where applicable): Trauma resolutions and memory reconsolidation processes such as EMDR or Rewind Trauma Technique may be used to help process past association traumas.

5. Cognitive Reframing: During Solution Focused conversations, which focus on now and the future rather than the past, clients reframe emotions connected to trigger sounds. By changing long-held negative associations, clients may develop a more neutral or positive response to the sounds, leading to a significant reduction in emotional distress. Simple cognitive exercises also help clients associate challenging sounds with new or different sensations.

6. Building resilience: Regular hypnotherapy sessions empty clients’ ‘stress buckets’ and gives them ongoing support as they gradually embed and utilise their newly acquired coping mechanisms day by day. The process aims to strengthen positive associations and further diminish the negative impact of trigger sounds. A Solution Focused daily diary keeps them focused on progress and motivated.

Measuring Progress:

Benchmarking and scaling to measure progress keeps clients motivated and focus and the positive outcome they want.

Benefits and Limitations

Hypnotherapy for misophonia has shown promising results for many clients who report reduced intensity of emotional reactions to triggers, and a better quality of life. In some cases, the Rewind Trauma Technique has resulted in a complete and dramatic resolution of the issue

Any complementary therapy’s effectiveness varies from person to person. Individual results depend on factors such as the severity of misophonia, whether it’s connected to trauma or not, a client’s sensory sensitivity, the client’s engagement in the therapeutic process, and how open and comfortable a client is with hypnosis.

It is important to note that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) or sound therapy is also a helpful path for people with misophonia. Listening to brown noise, white noise, natural sounds or music can be helpful. Often just reducing stress can, in itself, has significant impact on the experience of misophonia.

Improving Quality of Life

Sense-Ability Manage and Master Misophonia Pathway offers a safe and approach to managing emotional responses to trigger sounds.

By exploring the subconscious mind and reframing negative associations, reducing stress and building resilience, misophonia sufferers can improve their quality of life, and live more harmoniously with others. They may ‘dial down’ the distracting and distressing noise, or in some cases eliminate the problem altogether.

References:

What Is Misophonia? WebMD Editorial Contributors https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-misophonia

Misophonia: What Does an Audiologist Do?Know what different providers can do to help. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/noises/201902/misophonia-what-does-audiologist-do?amp

Misophonia and Sensitivity to Sound on Boots chemist’s website

Jane Pendry
DSFH, HPD; Reg CNHC, AfSFH, MNCH, ABNLP, ABH, IARTT; BA Hons (London), PGCE (Cantab)
Sense-Ability Hypnotherapy & Coaching, Wheatley, Oxford, OX33 1XJ
Jane@sense-ability.co.uk
+44 (0)7843 813 883

www.sense-ability.co.uk