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The "Butterfly's Whisper" Blog

Welcome to my blog. I hope by sharing my own misophonia experiences, others who are frustrated with misophonia sensitivities will discover that they're not alone. I also hope that people who may not have misophonia will gain some insight about what it's like to have this condition.

Please feel free to post any comments or use the "Contact Us" page if you have any questions/comments you don't want to post online.

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Bullying in the Workplace

3/31/2015

6 Comments

 
In a day and age when stopping bullies is a HUGE topic in the news, it surprises me when I experience bullying by ADULTS.

I've been bullied much of my life - mainly because I was the only one with red hair in my class. (Kids who don't know better can be cruel to someone who is different ). It's really pathetic though when an adult who knows someone has a medical condition targets that affliction to be mean. That's what sufferers struggle with when debating about whether or not to tell someone that we have misophonia. If we're lucky, then the person we tell is compassionate and understanding of our discomfort. If we're not, then we risk having the person use that knowledge to deliberately torture us by triggering us more... 

I mentioned in my last post that, after discretely asking one of my coworkers to stop clicking his pen because it was triggering my misophonia, he callously gave me a hard time saying that this is an open office environment and I shouldn't expect everyone to cater to my needs. (In my opinion, kind of an overreaction to my having made a simple request to him one-on-one.) Today, as I was starting to wrap up things for the day, that same coworker deliberately clicked his pen ONCE right by my ear as he walked past me. I felt like standing up and saying, "What are you, ten years old? Grow up!" I mean, over half of the firm knows of my condition - it's the reason why I was allowed to move to the newly renovated space - yet he's the ONLY one who seems to have a problem with my having asked him to stop making a distracting noise. Everyone else of whom I've made a similar request has been very understanding and compassionate.

I haven't quite decided how I'm going to handle it if he does it again.  I could ignore him, but having been bullied in the past, ignoring usually let's the bullies know that they are getting to me and they keep on bullying. I know one effective way to stop a bully is to stand up to him - so I'm very tempted to politely, but firmly, confront him at the time of the act - even if the rest of the people in the room hear what I'm saying. (May even show him I am not embarrassed to stand up for myself.)  I'm also contemplating going to HR and without mentioning any names, explain what's going on (hopefully the firm will be against bullying too). That way, if I do stand up to him, I could also say something like, "HR is aware of what's going on, so I *highly* caution against bullying me again!" Maybe then he'd think twice about what he's doing (since I doubt he associates his actions with bullying.)

(Sigh!)... For now, I'm just going to sleep on it... Maybe I'll be able to think more clearly after some mindfulness meditation and releasing stress at my physical therapy workout in the morning.
6 Comments

Surgery distraction...

3/30/2015

1 Comment

 
Okay, I know it's been a while since I posted an update. Just FYI... I had shoulder surgery last week, so it's taken me a little bit to get back in the swing of being on the computer.

I will say that before I had the surgery... I spoke with the anesthesiologist just to give him a "heads-up" that if my body seems to stress out while I'm under, it might be because I could be reacting to some of the sounds I'm subconsciously hearing. I told him about my misophonia - which he found interesting - but he said he didn't think I'd respond to anything while under the anesthesia. (I figured it couldn't hurt to let him know about it, just in case...)

The surgery went really quickly (I went under at 6 a.m., woke up at 6:30 a.m. and was home resting by 8:30 a.m.) I took it easy for a couple of days - and was relieved that my cockatiel  was quiet the whole time I was home. (Don't think I could've handled him whining at me while I was trying to recoup.)

I went back to work five days later and discovered that they moved my belongings to a cubicle in a newly renovated area of the building. I'll admit... It's been a nice change so far. Much quieter than where I had been sitting (especially since I don't have to listen to my neighbor playing his speakers out loud - like a mosquito in my ear), but it also has similar drawbacks to studying in a public library. When the rare trigger occurs now, it's even more noticeable. Most of my neighboring cubicles are very quiet but the day I got back... One of the people who sits in the other half of the building came into our space loudly clicking his pen... Over and over... I went over to him and discretely asked him to please stop clicking his pen. He gave me this weird look and when I got back to my cubicle - just 10 feet away, he deliberately clicked it a couple of times more while looking right in my eyes.

This was very surprising because from the moment I started at this firm, he was one of the most welcoming people there. But when I went to speak with him one-to-one at his desk... Not only did I notice his cubicle mate staring at me while clicking his pen (I'm sure he told his buddy what happened), but then he snapped back at me, "This is an open office environment! Do you expect EVERYONE to comply with your needs?" I was SHOCKED to say the least! Everyone else to whom I spoke of my condition was very compassionate, but here was someone who had been so nice to me and as soon as I try to explain to him about my condition, he became like a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Very disappointing.

Afterwards, I went back to my desk and thought to myself - what if one of the other people in the office who gets seizures - or anyone else in the office who may have a medical condition for that matter - had asked him to stop doing something because it was triggering them? Would he have reacted so callously?

I put those thoughts aside and just said to myself that he's just being a bully - maybe because he was embarrassed that I asked him to stop (although I tried to be discrete by whispering my request in his ear instead of out loud for everyone to hear). I haven't had to work with him on a project yet and as long as that stays the case... I'm just going to avoid him from now on...
1 Comment

More travels and articles

3/15/2015

2 Comments

 
This past week, I traveled to California for a business trip. Although I tried to post an update during my travels, for some reason the web host updated their App and I wasn't able to post anything new from my iPad. (Hence the delay with the update since I had to wait until I got back to Vegas an onto my regular computer.)

Of course, traveling has its usual misophonia woes with airports full of triggers, so I won't write about those. (Just look up any of my prior traveling posts. Same stuff, different day.) I was very excited to connect up with my BFF at a place halfway between the conference and where she lives. She's one of the few people who truly understands my suffering, despite her not being a sufferer. Even before we met up, she expressed concern that the diner where we said we'd meet up might bombard me with triggers because of how busy/loud it is. I said let's just meet there anyway and play it by ear. In the end, yes I did put in my earplugs to lessen some of the sharper triggers but the overall din of the background noise actually didn't bother me. It helped mask some of the triggers.

The conference itself was a different issue. I found myself wearing my earplugs a lot - particularly during meals - and was very thankful that the presenters that spoke during the meals used microphones. I was able to hear their speeches without having to hear the clinking of people eating. 

On another note... Back in January, one of the professional lighting magazines to which I subscribed had an article about designing for environments to accommodate people with sensitivity special needs. The article focused on children with ADHD, autism, and sensory processing disorder, so  I wrote a letter to the editor praising the author of the article for a timely article where I also brought up my misophonia condition (published in this month's issue). The magazine has over 8,000 people around the world  in its readership base and although I don't know how many people read letters to the editor, even if just one person reads what I wrote, at least I know I educated one more person about misophonia.
2 Comments

New misophonia articles...

3/2/2015

2 Comments

 
Last week I learned of a new NY Times article on misophonia that was written by a doctor who has misophonia. (he following is a link to the article, but BE FOREWARNEDBE FOR... They included a video with the online article that starts off with the noise of a person chewing popcorn. When I hunted down the article online to forward to my boss and a few coworkers who knew of my condition, I heard the crunching of popcorn and popped my head over the cubicle wall thinking it was my adjacent coworker. How embarrassed did I feel when I realized the sound was coming through my earbud that was laying next to my keyboard. (Thank goodness I hadn't said anything to my coworker.) The article is here:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/please-stop-making-that-noise/?_r=0

A friend of mine back in Maryland who also suffers from misophonia told me about an article in the Washington Post back in December. She was very upset at the article because one of the audiologists interviewed stated that in his opinion, misophonia is a conditioned response. Unfortunately, when my friend wrote a letter to the Washington Post, it was ignored. Although I am sharing a link to the article below, I also disagree with the premise of the article - especially since the doctor goes on to talk about how "... This impulse has to do with how the brain processes sound."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/misophonia-is-a-newly-identified-condition-for-people-hypersensitive-to-sound/2014/12/01/7c392782-69ba-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html

So many articles like that one focus on the sound aspect of misophonia yet ignore the fact that many misophonia sufferers, like myself,  are also triggered by certain visual and tactile sensations as well.  I think this is due to the fact that audiologists were the first medical practitioners to acknowledge misophonia as a real condition.

Despite the name "misophonia," I believe the condition extends well beyond the auditory system. Hopefully when the fMRI misophonia study in which I participated last year at a neurology hospital in London is published, medical practitioners beyond audiologists will be willing to invest more research and attention to the misophonia condition as a whole, not just the aural component of it.
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    About the Author

    Emlyn Altman has been suffering with misophonia for over 40 years, even though she only found out about the actual medical condition much more recently. As frustrating as the condition has been over the years, her heightened sensitivities across all the senses considerably influenced her talents within the visual fine arts (particularly sculpture), music (singing, piano, and many other instruments), writing, and culinary backgrounds, as well as professional achievements as an architectural lighting designer. Her goal in developing this website is to promote more awareness about misophonia and help other sufferers as well.


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