“What you see is based on your own expectations and biases.”

March 30, 2025 2:06 AM

I can’t precisely date this memory, but I was somewhere around the age of 13 when I became unable to tolerate the sound of other people’s mouths. In a world in which everyone eats, my day to day became an obstacle course. I learned to contract the tensor tympani muscle in my middle ear to dampen sounds. In moments of silence, I was sensitive enough that even the subtle parting of lips could trigger in me the urge to flee. There wasn’t logic to what I felt. I knew that. It changed nothing. In my worst moments I started fights, especially with my family, among whom the condition, whatever it was, felt orders of magnitude more severe. from The Unbearable Loudness of Chewing [Asterisk]
posted by chavenet (46 comments total)

While a large proportion of people (78.5%) report sensitivity to trigger sounds, only a small proportion — 4.6% in this study — report clinical levels of misophonia.

Wait...only 21.5% of us are not sensitive to trigger sounds? This can't be right. I'm big on listening, but am not triggered by any sounds...OK, the sound of Bill Maher's voice on the TV in the next room, I guess.

This was an enlightening and funny article. (For ten years, [the published study] was met by silence.) Plus, it's great to read a story with a happy ending in the meditation hall.
posted by kozad at 4:58 AM on March 30 [2 favorites]

I do not have a clinical level of misophonia but struggle with the sound of people sniffing. I once without much in the way of premeditation snapped "please blow your nose" to a woman on the train, which I kind of feel shame about, but also, I mean really, she sounded very wet.
posted by deadwax at 5:09 AM on March 30 [11 favorites]

One of my favorite pieces, “Did Kant Suffer from Misophonia?,” speculates [frontiers:]

In other words, the subject is not separated from the world, he participates ontologically in the things he’s perceiving. “Nature is within,” said Cezanne (famous French painter) [wiki]. “Quality, light, colour, depth, which are over there in front of us, are only there because they awaken an echo in our own body, because it welcomes them” (Merleau-Ponty, 2009) [g]. The drawing and the painting are not a copy of the world, they are “the inside of the outside and the outside of the inside”
posted by HearHere at 5:26 AM on March 30 [4 favorites]

I hate listening to people eat when I am not eating. I have to consciously not eat to avoid doing so as a response. Some foods are worse than others. People slowly eating crisps is a particular issue. It absolutely grinds on my psyche. Not just the chewing but also the rustle of the packet.

I can really empathise with deadwax about the sniffing too.
posted by biffa at 5:43 AM on March 30 [8 favorites]

When I was working in restaurants, often the music was at an uncomfortable volume for me. But it did mask many sounds that without that loud music would have sent me screaming out the door. People chewing. The scrape of fork and knife upon a plate. The clatter and thunk of the dishwashing (tolerable if I am doing it, but otherwise...). People sniffling and coughing.

These days, I don't go out much, so I can mostly control my sound environment. And it's unclear to me why some sounds set me off, but other intrusive, repetitive sounds are fine. But when I do have to go out into the world, I always have earbuds and something to play into my ears to keep me from hating people for sounds they often can't help making.
posted by Vigilant at 5:53 AM on March 30 [5 favorites]

I have this. Luckily not so severe it impacts my life too much. Open mouth chip eating is the worst. Cereal with milk is also very hard to deal with. Both because they are on going and viscerally disgusting for some reason. Headphones or leaving are the answers.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:59 AM on March 30 [5 favorites]

Talking while chewing, forced plosives, and cracking chewing gum like pistol shrimp. I get unreasonable about that stuff. NYC subways desensitized me to almost all of it, except for the chewing gum thing. Maybe that is because of hearing loss in general from the subway, not a psychological advance.
posted by drowsy at 6:04 AM on March 30 [4 favorites]

cursed are those who masticate with their mouth open
their lands shall lie fallow

cursed are the carrot and celery eaters
their eyes will not see god

cursed are those who chew and talk at the same time
the will stand forever outside the gates of heaven

cursed are they who slurp
they have given their souls to evil

cursed are the consumers of popcorn during the quiet moments of the movie
the flames shall consume you

cursed are the lip-smackers and those who make moist food noises
my god, can you even hear what you sound like?

cursed are those who make tiny little grunts and moans of satisfaction when eating
fuck right off with that shit
posted by logicpunk at 6:07 AM on March 30 [21 favorites]

(And while the article is skeptical about the OCD connection, I do have OCD, as one small data point)
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:29 AM on March 30 [1 favorite]

I don’t mind the slurping at the end of a drink, like through a straw. But just about every other mouth sound I have to avoid, or steel myself for, or just repeat to myself it’s my problem not theirs. Yesterday in my office a very nice coworker was standing next to me at my desk sucking on and chewing up a lifesaver while talking to me (or something similar - can’t remember the last time I saw someone with a roll of lifesavers) and I could barely hear anything she said. I almost said something -and I would have said it nicely!- but I am glad I did not.

Early life memories of dad slurping his too hot black coffee, ugh ugh. I don’t think my issue reaches clinical level, but probably more than many. Though I can also say I deal with it much better than I once did.
posted by Glinn at 6:39 AM on March 30 [2 favorites]

(I don’t have OCD as far as I know. I do still sometimes avoid cracks in the sidewalk, but I am not a neat person, generally.)
posted by Glinn at 6:42 AM on March 30 [1 favorite]

cursed are those who (etc)
But god blesses the thunderclappers and the heavens smile when nethercheeks shiver with the passing of a mighty wind
posted by ginger.beef at 7:09 AM on March 30 [2 favorites]

We have friends we get together with semi-regularly, and one of them eats pretty much everything by loudly clomping his teeth together like a horse. Everything. CLOMP!CLOMP!CLOMP! Even freaking ice cream! CLOMP!CLOMP!CLOMP! Drives me up a wall.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:15 AM on March 30 [5 favorites]

My late dad, bless 'im, used to chew everything. Even consommé. Me, I'm a recovering smacker.

In the small-noises-of-annoyance, the worst for me is someone cracking knuckles. I've had to get off a subway car early to stop myself puking because someone nearby was doing it
posted by scruss at 7:30 AM on March 30 [2 favorites]

cursed are those who (etc)
But god blesses the thunderclappers and the heavens smile when nethercheeks shiver with the passing of a mighty wind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eQo6BDM-VM

"I know I picked a lot on your core beliefs and decision making a lot today, but I am glad you insisted on getting that fart home. At least all the death and destruction wasn't for nothing, you know? ... You miss your fart friend, hunh? Well I got a little surprise for you buddy. While you were gone I found a new worm hole with millions of beings just like him on the other side and they're all coming to visit! ... Too late, the hole's opening ... "

There's a lot more where that came from too.

hahahaha
posted by weard_beard at 7:30 AM on March 30 [1 favorite]

I can hear if lights aren’t wired correctly. It’s not a skill I’m happy about! There’s lots of bad wiring out there! Anyone else with this kind of misophonia? It’s not disabling for me but I haaaaate it.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:57 AM on March 30 [5 favorites]

I think some of you all don't understand misophonia. It's not "god chewing sounds are annoying," it's "I only own paper plates and compostable plastic silverware and NEVER eat at a restaurant because I am filled with RAGE at the sound of clinking plates" and having fun playing with your dog in the backyard until someone two houses away starts mowing the lawn, in which case you have to flee inside and put on headphones so that you don't scare your dog.

My girlfriend has it and it can be... something to experience secondhand. One of her coping mechanisms is to angrily make the same noise back at me - we'll be talking about something and I didn't realize I was making mouth noises and she'll start loudly smacking her lips at me with a look of enraged disgust on her face like I just confessed a fondness for spitting in her tea when she's not looking. I can't kiss her normally - the suction of lips produces an extremely unpleasant sound - so all I can do is purse my lips tight so that they don't accidentally produce a saliva click and press them to her then pull away. Funny thing is, her dogs don't trigger the same response - they can slop away drinking out of a water bowl or licking their chops right next to her while watching her eat (an objectively worse sound than my conversational mouth noises, trust me) and she'll care not a whit.

She tried living in downtown LA in a nice apartment but had to leave because she was constantly being *enraged* by her upstairs neighbor walking around and specifically pulling a chair out from underneath a table. Sometimes she couldn't help herself and she'd just pound on the wall in the way she smacks her lips at me. In those moments she absolutely *loathed* that person with the disgust you'd feel for, like, seeing Kid Rock walking up to you on the street with a microphone in hand getting ready to sing while wearing no pants and just straight up pissing on anything 3 feet in front of him.

"I too hate the sound of people eating," is not anywhere close to the lived experience of misophonia.
posted by phibetakafka at 8:19 AM on March 30 [12 favorites]

Do you want to know what's bad? Having mouth sounds misophonia and a spouse who takes amphetamines that produce extreme dry mouth. Constant, constant, self-soothing mouth, lips and tongue movement. I make mouth soothing gel for them (recipe available on request) as well as xylitol based mints.

Citalopram, an SSRI, that I started taking a few years ago, helps remarkably with my ability to resist those sounds. I don't see many people talking about this: that SSRIs may help misophonia.

One mental trick that seems to work for me sometimes is to say "it doesn't matter" to myself when I'm bothered. Repeatedly, as needed. To defuse the mental anger by telling myself that it's not worth the attention. To hear the sound, acknowledge it, intentionally shrug it off, and try to move on.

Also not always successful, but delaying an outward reaction long enough can sometimes be good enough. Like if you think: "this bothers me now. If it's still bothering me in 10 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever, then I will say something about it out loud." and you have to count, and if you stop counting, you have to start over. Sometimes you just forget about it, and sometimes the noise stops before you are done counting.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:47 AM on March 30 [7 favorites]

When I was working in restaurants, often the music was at an uncomfortable volume for me

The restaurant scene I dread is when there's music plus a lot of people talking so all you can hear of the music is the booming bass.

Early life memories of dad slurping his too-hot black coffee

Late in (her) life memories of my mother and her tea, also.
posted by Rash at 9:17 AM on March 30 [2 favorites]

Funny thing is, her dogs don't trigger the same response - they can slop away drinking out of a water bowl or licking their chops right next to her

The hell they don't - misophonic dog-owners, how can you stand it?
posted by Rash at 9:19 AM on March 30 [2 favorites]

My ex suffering from this is and living together through lockdown is absolutely the reason we split up. The final straw was a skiing holiday where I ate my breakfast cereal in the stairwell every morning
posted by el_presidente at 9:20 AM on March 30 [2 favorites]

I think some of you all don't understand misophonia. It's not "god chewing sounds are annoying,"

Well, that’s quite dismissive! I thought in both the article and the comments, one of the conclusions we could agree on is that it affects people to different extents.
posted by Glinn at 9:27 AM on March 30 [4 favorites]

Rage is definitely a component though. Like other OCD triggers, the person affected can KNOW its a bit unusual or irrational to be affected so much but the emotional reaction is unstoppable. I do think it needs to have a distinction beyond annoyance, and I appreciate phibetakafta's comment. It is not annoyance. It is an unbearable feeling.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:39 AM on March 30 [1 favorite]

I haven't read the article and probably won't because it sounds distressing. But wasn't one of the recent discoveries around human genome mapping that this condition has a specific genetic origin? Like it's not just people being picky-- it's an actual strand of DNA that you are born with that causes people to feel these reactions.
posted by seasparrow at 10:46 AM on March 30 [2 favorites]

had to leave because she was constantly being *enraged* by her upstairs neighbor walking around and specifically pulling a chair out from underneath a table. Sometimes she couldn't help herself and she'd just pound on the wall

This is my experience of misophonia; it tips me over into irrational rage. Low-frequency sounds (footsteps on a hardwood floor...why the fuck do so many Americans wear shoes at home, anyway?, bass from a stereo, etc) are the absolute worst.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 10:47 AM on March 30 [1 favorite]

From the article: at least one study has shown that many misophonics are triggered by sounds such as breathing and swallowing that don’t bother the general population.

I had a co-worker who had this problem, at least with me, and possibly with other people whose work spaces were proximate to his. When he got a new job, I was fairly certain that the real benefit for him was that he had an office of his own.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:20 AM on March 30 [2 favorites]

My partner experiences this to some degree, especially when stressed or tired. Often in the evenings she’ll put in the “conversation-friendly” Loop earplugs, which seem to help somewhat with hanging out without her “getting angry with me for daring to breathe”.

Other times we’ll retire to separate rooms, which also allows her to better optimize lighting and temperature. (And then we spend most of the evening texting each other! But more physically comfortably.)
posted by learning from frequent failure at 12:00 PM on March 30 [4 favorites]

My mom was a loud eater, not through open mouth eating but maybe through some odd skull amplification or something? Who knows. Anyway, I also cannot stand the sound of people eating loudly, but it's generally ok if I'm also eating.

But I do hate "goop". Slurping of sauces, sloppy foods in general, ugh. But I have a stronger visual reaction to that...your picture of your kid covered in their meal as a "cute kid" thing? Barf city. People up to their elbows in BBQ? Same. People licking their fingers? I'm glad I don't have weapons. I even get antsy watching people ladling disgusting amounts of sauce onto their food. Absolute worst worst: sex and food do not mix. Spraying yourself with whipped cream or whatever is just gross. (I recognize all of this is a "me" problem!)
posted by maxwelton at 1:21 PM on March 30

My parents were also very loud eaters, and I was around that age when I would drive me nuts. I would have to sort of cover my ears or make some tapping sound to drown out their smacking noises, it was that bad. I wish I had felt comfortable just telling them about it but it probably never occurred to me.
posted by zardoz at 2:03 PM on March 30

Many and perhaps the majority of the bodily generated sounds are sounds that we make ourselves, and the ones we do make ourselves are so much louder in our ears than the ones that come in from the outside.

But we ignore those and may not even hear them — sort of like we don't usually see the flash of darkness when we blink, but if the power dips for a moment and the lights flicker it's very alarming.

I think your brain must anticipate the noises you make yourself and damp down the perception and especially the arousal level you would otherwise feel, kind of like you don't hear your own pulse unless it's beating really hard or you're upset, or your heart starts missing some beats.

So something like: when you hear a noise from outside like one of your internal noises, your brain can interpret it as if it was an internal noise that didn't get suppressed and that's very upsetting?

There are pieces missing from that argument but I still think there's a there there.
posted by jamjam at 2:31 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]

I always find it fascinating that very many misophonia sounds have a ‘you should NOT be making this sound in polite society’ component. Hence the rage: the sound is theoretically stoppable by the sound-maker if they tried hard enough (combined with sensory overload rage/irritability). It goes very socio-emotionally-cognitively deep, I think.

Sympathy to the sufferers.
posted by lokta at 2:50 PM on March 30

Adderall set of some misophonia in me, lip smacking, slurping and gulping are the worst, bad enough at times to send me straight out of a room. Didn’t go away after I stopped but isn’t as bad now a few years later. I use ear plugs or music to get through meals with other people. Ironically restaurants are easier to deal with since the general noise drowns out a lot of it.
posted by astrospective at 2:54 PM on March 30

lokta: "I always find it fascinating that very many misophonia sounds have a ‘you should NOT be making this sound in polite society’ component. Hence the rage: the sound is theoretically stoppable by the sound-maker if they tried hard enough (combined with sensory overload rage/irritability). It goes very socio-emotionally-cognitively deep, I think.

I don't think that's it, it's more that the sufferer
Is filled with rage at the sound, and is probably going for a reason, such as rudeness, that would justify their rage. Especially if one person triggers it rather than another, people are good at blaming others.
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:13 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]

But we ignore those and may not even hear them

Generally true in my experience but I have had times when I could not abide the sound of my own chewing.
posted by Well I never at 3:37 PM on March 30 [3 favorites]

I worked with a woman who was triggered by the sounds of smart phones - the dings and beeps - and every once in a while I'd forget to turn my phone to silent when I came back into the office. I still feel bad about the times I forgot. I do appreciate that she was very clear with all of us about her misophonia from her first day working there. This was almost a decade ago and her explanation of misophonia was really informative.

Which is just to say that if you're suffering with my sounds, please tell me and I'll do my best to make things better.
posted by sciencegeek at 4:22 PM on March 30 [1 favorite]

the sound is theoretically stoppable by the sound-maker if they tried hard enough

Just close your lips when eating - why is that so hard? Ahh - you're a mouth breather! Sinuses stopped up so long, you think it's normal. Well, it's not - tell your doctor.
posted by Rash at 4:28 PM on March 30

I've long thought that childhood conditioning is responsible for at least some of the rage. My father slapped me when I made mouth noises, chewed with my mouth open, or sniffed too much. (He probably had misophonia also.) Knowing about it doesn't make the rage go away though.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:13 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]

Misophonia is not just being annoyed. It's like you're being stabbed right in the brain. The instant rage reaction is hardwired and not something you can just let go, like choosing to not get frustrated over being stuck in traffic etc.

For me, my brain gets flooded with anger hormones before I even consciously notice the source of the trigger sound!

Like I'll try to watch a recorded lecture but slam my laptop shut a minute or two in because my heart is racing and I want to murder the speaker. It's the dullest accounting class lecture ever, so my reaction isn't to the content, even though my brain's initial attempt to rationalize my response is something like "ARGH I FUCKING HATE DEPRECIATION."

Once my adrenaline levels finally subside, I realize that the professor's mic was picking up their tongue licking against their teeth.

So yeah it's like having a button in your brain that other people keep accidentally pushing and you have no control over your emotional response and very little control over your physical response.

I have learned to not get annoyed, frustrated, angry, etc. at a ton of other things that tend to piss people off, but I can't do anything about my misophonia because it's a fundamentally different mechanism than other types of emotional responses.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:20 PM on March 30 [5 favorites]

Like with other types of anger, the process is:

[input] --> [various beliefs about the input] --> [anger]

You can change those intermediate beliefs to change the end result to a different emotion.

With misophonia, the process is:

[trigger sound] --> [rage]

Any beliefs about the trigger sound, e.g., "they should know better and are being deliberately rude" are actually just backwards justifications your brain comes up with to explain the rage that already occurred before you even had time to think about the sound.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:26 PM on March 30 [3 favorites]

Misophonia is not just being annoyed. It's like you're being stabbed right in the brain.

not singling you out in particular, but i think it's worth pointing out that conditions like misophonia can have degrees of severity somewhere between "totally fine" and "flippin' the ol' murder switch."

like i'm sure someone with crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder who washes their hands to bloody rags seethes when they hear someone say something like "i always have to check the stove 4 times before I leave the house omg i'm so ocd" but one could get an ocd diagnosis for behaviors that are "merely" inconvenient rather than life-derailing. there's no reward for having the most extreme version of a condition, and there's good reason to be more inclusive about what qualifies.

the type of misophonia that is so severe that the person literally cannot function is also probably vanishingly rare, meaning that if that is the only version that counts as misophonia, there is not going to be much research on it or many therapies developed to treat it because it's not going to help very many people. but if the criteria are broad enough to encompass less extreme responses, and thus a larger proportion of the population, there is a higher likelihood of generating interest in treating it.
posted by logicpunk at 7:07 PM on March 30 [3 favorites]

well yeah there's a difference between being stabbed in the brain by a sword vs stabbed in the brain by a tiny needle in terms of the impact it has on your life, but you're still getting stabbed and thus having an automatic physical response to that

my point is that misophonia trigger sounds feel more like physical attacks than they feel like other behaviors that i can choose my responses to... i have as much control over the instant rage as i do over bleeding
posted by Jacqueline at 7:32 PM on March 30

My link for this no longer works, but here's a quote I picked up some time ago from coping-with-epilepsy.com about a kid for whom the sound of chewing is a trigger for epilepsy:

Seizure Background
Son would lose consciousness under psychological stress, have apparent anxiety attack, pass out and stop breathing for 3-5 minutes. Possible Aspergers related. He cannot tolerate being near people chewing/eating food and never goes to restaurants. If he sees, hears or thinks too stronly about me chewing, he has to hit himself in the chest or ears to distract or counterbalance whatever it is he is experiencing. ...

And it turns out misophonia is associated with migraines.
posted by jamjam at 8:06 PM on March 30 [1 favorite]

Buddhainabucket - you are not alone.

As a kid, some stores had such bad wiring that i would end up screaming just to mask the sounds. When the mother learned that no amount of beating me stopped my reactions, she started to believe me.

Malls are generally excruciating for me because of this. I haven't stepped foot in one for thirty years as a result.

I'm grateful that age seems to be dimming some of this for me. I think the acuity of my hearing, especially in higher frequencies, is starting to erode, and I could not be more grateful.

And for those who think those of us who deal with this just don't hear our own noises, I disagree in my own experience.

I regularly get accused of sneaking up on people. I startle my wife with my existence in a room on a nearly daily basis. When I cut my food, I cut it most of the way through, then turn it other to complete the cut so the my knife and fork never scrape on the plate. It's a custom in my home that when one must do something noisy, to announce "Loud noise!" beforehand so that I can brace for it. Music and tv sounds go through headphones or earbuds so that mine can be very quiet and my wife can turn hers up. (Though I often can hear what's playing through her earbuds)

It's a large part of my avoidance of children - I didn't want to force them into silence, but I cannot tolerate the loud unpredictable noises. I wear earbuds outside while I'm smoking on my own porch, because my neighbors have a screamy-while-playing daughter.

My body just reacts.

I've had a lifetime of fighting to control my rage connected to other things, so I've also learned to suppress my reactions to noise in public, at least long enough to flee.

Whatever sounds set you off, to whatever degree, sympathy and solidarity.
posted by Vigilant at 6:46 AM on March 31 [2 favorites]

I have misophonia and use Loop earplugs and SSRIs to manage it. It's very much affected by my overall stress and anxiety. The same sounds when I am hormonally neutral won't affect me the same way as when I am already on edge because of other stressors. For instance, if I am tired or if I have been speaking in a second language for several hours, I am much more likely to be affected. Even two different people making the same mouth sounds won't affect me the same way. A stranger making a mouth sound is more neutral then someone emotionally connected to me making a mouth sound. Luckily this all means I can generally treat it with the same techniques and products created for treating other anxiety disorders.

Also, like seanmpuckett, I was slapped as a child if I made any mouth sounds.
posted by tofu_crouton at 11:40 AM on March 31 [2 favorites]

This is one of those things that I know makes people (including my husband) feel SO irritated and yet I absolutely do not hear it in others or myself. This doesn’t bother me AT ALL. Erk.

I’m sorry, I know not what I do!
posted by samthemander at 2:46 PM on March 31

Of course it doesn't, most people do not have misophonia.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:29 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]