Misophonia during family events can be a catalyst for emotional turmoil. This is something that can be hard to understand if you do not have the disorder and have never experienced the fight-flight-freeze reaction that comes with sensory stimuli. For family members that don’t understand the condition, this can seem like the person with misophonia is not enjoying family time, or like they are not valuing the connections with their family. This is an unfortunate misconception, as persons with misophonia are just as likely to value family time and get lonely as people without misophonia.
So… what does misophonia actually feel like? Imagine you are locked in a room with a snake. Then, imagine there are bright lights and sirens going off at different times. For people with misophonia, legs shaking, jewelry clanking, chewing dinner, Christmas lights, and numerous other stimuli can cause a reaction that other people might never think about. As we stay in that room with the snake, our bodies become tense, our palms sweat, and our heart rate rises. Eventually, we may feel a physical sensation and pain, while the tension becomes both mentally and physically unbearable.
This feeling does not go away until we are away from the stimuli. This is why people with misophonia often leave early, flee, or try to spend time in another room alone—seemingly avoiding their family. People with misophonia might hide or take frequent naps if the gathering is in a place that allows this. This is not a way to stay away from family, but the nervous system becoming so taxed and so unbearably overloaded, that the only option to avoid feeling sicker and in more pain is to flee. For some, this can translate to migraines or flu-like symptoms for days after the event. The cost of staying in the room with a trigger and “sucking it up” can be high for individuals with misophonia and is something that is even harder to explain because without living it, it almost seems dramatic.
If a person with misophonia tells you something is triggering them, they do not mean it is “annoying” and they do not mean that they are simply “bothered”. Instead, what this means is that this stimuli is overloading their nervous system and causing more pain each time it happens, eventually becoming so intense that the consequences of not leaving become more lasting as time goes on. Essentially, misophonia is a full-body experience that leaves us so tired, so exhausted, and so physically and mentally sore, that we may try to avoid this experience altogether and become withdrawn.
Please don’t think that your family member who doesn’t enjoy gatherings doesn’t love you. This condition is very hard to manage, and holidays often bring more stress, and more sensory stimuli than any other time of year. For persons with misophonia, we are stepping outside of our safety and comfort in many ways, and for many of us we will not be able to calm down until we are able to get back to our routines. These routines have been developed out of necessity, as they are our general ways of adaptive coping with misophonia.