The Weetabix Complex
By: Michael Kincella
Tags: Disability, Misophonia, Science

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

I love my dad. One of my fondest childhood memories is of making the trip to Scotland to watch our favourite football team — Celtic FC. At my youngest, dad would prop me up on railings. Nowadays, we walk in to Celtic Park together as adults, and he couldn’t lift me if he tried.

So being an all-round good guy, dad didn’t leave me atop Cithaeron as an infant. I also didn’t bash his head in on my way back to Thebes. However, dad did unwittingly start a chain of events I still deal with to this day. A journey filled with guilt, shame, discovery, and acceptance. A journey that started with a bowl of cereal…

Better The Devil You Know

Once upon a time, the nuclear family performed a strange ritual. At certain times of day, each family member would gather around a large, wooden structure called a ‘table’ to share meals. The main motivation was eating, but conversation was encouraged in between mouthfuls. Digestion, in more ways than one.

I loved these rituals. Until one day, I didn’t. Noises normally lost among familial chatter and breakfast bonhomie were suddenly centre stage — the inhaling, the breathing, the chewing. Dear God, the chewing. I can’t pinpoint the singularity, but poor dad and his bowl of cereal sticks in the memory.

In truth, everybody’s eating bothered me. ‘Bothered’ is euphemistic: at a certain point, everybody’s eating infuriated me. Clenched jaw, bunched fists, incandescent infuriation.

Neuroses arrived early, and piled up fast as a youngster. Cleaning compulsions, counting fixations, and depersonalisation complications to name a few. I lobbed this nascent noise-aversion on top, and accepted it as another Michaelism — all the little idiosyncrasies that make me, me.

As I got older though, I outgrew most of the quirks. At some point I realised: ‘Hey, it’s not the end of the world if someone other than me sits on my bed, and it doesn’t really matter if I count to seven before doing something.’

It was difficult. As the afflicted will tell you: when OCD is having a party, logic isn’t on the guestlist. But eventually, I stopped. Alas, no amount of logic helped with The Weetabix Complex — I just couldn’t shake the way listening to people eating made me feel.

All Hail The Interwebs

I was born in ’85, straddling the analogue and digital eras. As a kid, telephones were bakelite ornaments fixed to a wall; now they’re pocket computers. ‘Online’ was a place to hang wet clothes; now it’s shorthand for the abstract, omni-connected dimension we spend our lives tethered to. And it was only when online got its new meaning that I got a chance to connect some dots — to find out if my aversion really was just a Michaelism, or if there were others.

And lo, there were others. It wasn’t just a Michaelism. Kindred spirits abounded, scattered throughout the world suffering the same fight-or-flight response to everyday noises. Our condition even had a name — Misophonia, literally ‘hatred of sound.’

In a stroke of serendipity, the term was coined right around the time I first sought answers — 2001. Up until that point, sufferers shouldered the double-shame of having a weird condition and zero recognition. With no name for their ills, how many people thought they were literally crazy for wanting to punch their families or run for the hills during Spaghetti Tuesdays? We’ll never know.

This strong, visceral, and sometimes violent response is a common symptom among misophonics. ‘Triggers’ — the set of offending sounds unique to each person — vary in nature, but commonly centre on the mouth: eating, breathing, chewing, whispering, smacking of lips. Cases range from mild to severe, but misophonia can drastically affect lives — whatever the severity. And because triggers often come from loved ones, interpersonal relationships get strained even in light of the condition’s growing recognition.

Living with Misophonia

‘Hatred of sound’ is a slight misnomer. For example, I love Stevie Nicks; I detest the sound of people eating. Fleetwood Mac makes me glad to be alive; hearing people breathe through their mouth doesn’t. This dichotomy is what separates misophonia from phonophobia or hyperacusis — both characterised by an indiscriminate sensitivity to loud sounds.

The love/hate dichotomy played out recently. I’m walking round the supermarket, running an eye over the vegetable section, invested in a lively discussion on surveillance capitalism. Both me and the podcast are motoring along nicely, when out of nowhere the guest speaker tucks in to a chicken salad. My whole demeanour changes. I’m angry. Products get slammed into the basket, instead of a loving, Tetris-like arrangement.

I persevere for a bit, hanging around until she finishes. But then it gets worse. The chewing stops, but the there’s no deliverance: remnants of chicken salad are evidently stuck to the guest’s back molars, and I’m treated to the sound of her tongue flicking in reverse, groping around to dislodge the offending bits. Horrified, I switch to ‘dreamy vibes’ for aural bleach. Yin and yang, then. Hellish chicken salad overtures, and a soft-lounge cleanser.

Podcasts are a new minefield, but I’ve been dodging these sorts of triggers in traditional media for decades. Dialogue and exposition were regularly sacrificed on the altar of silence — all I could do was hit mute and curse the scriptwriter for setting key scenes around a kitchen table. Yeah Vince Gilligan made one of the greatest shows in history, but I’ll never forgive him for Walt Jr.’s breakfast obsession. At points it felt more like Breaking Bread, than Breaking Bad.

So too The Sopranos. David Chase’s layered and cerebral mob drama is peerless, but it loses marks for every time I had to endure Tony breathily manipulate ice cream, or inhale chicken parmagiani.

I might have been able to mute Walt and Tony, but I can’t mute people in real life. And I can’t mute the feelings of shame at harbouring such revulsion, simply because someone close to me is eating the ‘wrong way’.

Kindred Spirits

After the podcast incident, I petitioned the host to issue a blanket ban on future eating. He didn’t respond, but I did get a Twitter ‘like’ notification from an account named ‘Hear Our Misophonia!’ I connect with the woman behind the account and ask her if she suffers similar relationship issues.

‘Very few people in my personal life know of my shattered self in its most real and raw form,’ says Kshara. ‘For those who know this side of me, it strengthens our bonds and our relationship because of their understanding.

‘Others who know I have misophonia are aware of the more technical definition, not the extent of how it affects me. It doesn’t affect our relationship but they are respectful of it.’

How do misophonics cope, when triggers are everywhere? Unsurprisingly, Kshara is ‘packed in with the majority of sufferers whose triggers involve mouth noises.’

She also notes the common ‘visual triggers related to these sounds’ and that ‘mouth noises are at the top of my list.’ These visual triggers are an unwelcome ribbon on the unwelcome box.

I ask Kshara about her coping mechanisms, and learn she uses similar defence methods.

‘I carry my earbuds everywhere, whether I have sound playing or not,’ she says. ‘They’re my shield against triggers even if they can’t block everything out. Because I can’t always leave the situation or have earbuds in, I take extra precautions like eating healthy, drinking water, and getting at least 8 hours of sleep.

‘Anyone in school or with a job knows how hard these can be, but treating my body badly makes me even less tolerant of triggers, which makes me feel worse and contributes to a vicious cycle.’

Solidarity With Sarah.

I also reach out to Sarah, who admits she’s ‘at the severe end of misophonia impairments’. Her triggers include ‘noises from people and animals, to technology and inanimate objects.’ Over email, Sarah tells me about added complications.

‘I suffer from the common misophonia trigger sounds and I have visual triggers from movements that a lot of people make,’ she says. ‘I also have triggers in the language I read and hear. What ties these all together is the repetitive nature.’

What does life look like for somebody at the far end of the misophonic spectrum? Sarah concedes it’s ‘pretty awful.’ And because her trigger-set extends far beyond the common oral-centric complaint, there’s little respite.

‘[A trigger] that is still developing in severity of response is a bird call from a species that has taken up residence outside my home in the last few months,’ she says. ‘I already have another bird call that has been a trigger for around six years now after first exposure, which has me considering moving house to get away from it.’

How does misophonia limit her life? She offers an emphatic hypothetical.

‘I have often said that if I was trapped in a room with a trigger and I had no headphones or earplugs, I would throw my head against a wall until I knocked myself bloody and unconscious,’ she says.

‘Think of an animal who is trapped somewhere and has a threat to its life that it must get away from; it could be in a room or a physical trap on its limbs. That animal will do anything to get away; it will end up trying to run up or through walls, chew its way out or chew its foot off. For me, it feels that instinctual; a trigger feels like a threat and I must make it stop or escape. The only difference between me and an animal is I won’t attack and bite people!’

I empathise with Sarah. In particular, her comments about affected relationships resonate. I think of the guilt and anguish surrounding my own reactions over the years: wrestling with the idea of being an intolerant oik, the frustration of undiminished symptoms into adulthood, and how bizarre it must look from my dad’s perspective.

‘I used to wonder if it was just part of my personality,’ says Sarah. ‘When you grow up not knowing people can have reactions to sensory stimulation — other than pain or pleasure — you can misattribute your reactions to something else.

‘Maybe I’m just an easily irritated person? Do I have too high expectations for other people’s behaviour? Why am I over reacting? What is wrong with me that I can’t bloody stand some consonant sounds?

‘You question yourself and other people can get the wrong idea about you, a bit like when people think children are having a tantrum but really it’s a sensory meltdown. The thoughts and feelings I have when I’m triggered are completely opposed to what I think and feel when I’m trigger free, well except for my beliefs around ideal etiquette!’

Kshara and Sarah’s stories mirror those featured in the 2016 documentary ‘Quiet Please’. This critically-acclaimed, talking-heads documentary showcases a cross-section of sufferers and the hardship of living with misophonia. Like Kshara and Sarah, those featured talk of childhood onset, difficulty in expressing themselves and their symptoms, and the effect it has on everyday living.

In one illuminating section, an interviewee takes pains to clarify the difference between the mild discomfort everyone experiences at annoying sounds, and the misophonic’s panic-inducing, fight-or-flight response to triggers. The subtext throughout was: we’re not crazy, this is real.

Scientific Breakthrough? Sounds Good to Me.

Is it real, though? Is it auditory? Intolerance? What even is misophonia?

A 2017 study conducted by Dr Kumar of the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University sheds some light on those questions, and the underlying mechanisms.

Dr Kumar gathered 20 misophonics, and 22 control subjects. Both groups were exposed to trigger sounds, unpleasant sounds, and neutral sounds. MRI scans showed brain aberrations in the misophonic group, and a higher presence of myelination — a fatty sheath protecting nerve fibres — in an area of the brain responsible for processing and regulating emotions. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is part of a complicated brain-networking; it corresponds with the amygdala, the posteromedial cortex (PMC), and the anterior insular cortex (AIC).

An over-activation of the AIC gives undue importance to everyday sounds. Faulty connectivity between each of these brain regions — including the fight-or-flight regulating amygdala — means misophonics interpret trigger sounds as threats, which causes the jarring reactions. Crossed wires, in essence.

‘[O]ur data suggest that abnormal salience attributed to otherwise innocuous sounds, coupled with atypical perception of internal body states, underlies misophonia,’ says Dr Kumar in his concluding comments.

‘Misophonia does not feature in any neurological or psychiatric classification of disorders; sufferers do not report it for fear of the stigma that this might cause, and clinicians are commonly unaware of the disorder.

‘This study defines a clear phenotype based on changes in behavior, autonomic responses, and brain activity and structure that will guide ongoing efforts to classify and treat this pernicious disorder.’

Pernicious indeed. A lack of treatment notwithstanding, we can thank Dr. Kumar and his team for shining their torch on a benighted subject. The fact we now know it’s a neurological disorder does little to help us in the short-term, but his results mark a leap forward in knowledge. His study forms the starting point for further investigations, and a springboard to evidence-based treatments.

And who knows, maybe one day I’ll be able to join my family around that wooden structure of yore, where chatter is king and the chewing invisible. Maybe one day soon, I’ll finally be able to vanquish The Weetabix Complex.

Do eating sounds make you flush with fury? Do breathing partners deserve prison sentences? Let me know if you have misophonia, and we can definitely not have a chat over some ice cream.