One of the things I've learned about myself, especially after learning about misophonia, is that I realize how proactive I am with trying to mitigate exposure to triggers. Usually that means when I first walk into a restaurant, I stop and scope the room to figure out where would be the least stressful place to sit (taking into consideration locations of stressors such as tables with noisy conversations or restless children, people fidgeting, tables in crowded areas or circulation paths, etc.) Same goes with scoping out a room where I'm attending a meeting or class. Usually I sit as close to the speaker/screen as possible and away from people who may be eating. Yesterday I took my proactive thinking to a new level...
I went to a sales rep's office to attend a regular professional development class being held during lunchtime. I don't like lunch meetings because more often than not, the box lunches serve mini bags of potato chips or wrap their sandwiches/cookies in crinkly cellophane/plastic. What I did happened even before I entered the classroom... When I walked in the door, there wasn't anyone in the reception area but I happened to notice a bowl of mints on the reception desk. In the middle of the sea of individually wrapped mint rings, there was a little box of gum. I grabbed the gum - not because I was interested in freshening my breath or wanted to chew the gum myself, but because my immediate thought was to prevent anyone coming in after me from taking the gum and chewing it during the class.
It's funny... I've never been presented with a situation like that before. I could've just as easily left the gum where it was and take my chances but that was a risk I didn't want to take. As it was, despite sitting in the front row of the classroom set-up, I still had to put my earplugs in so not to be distracted by the crinkling bags of people eating their box lunches surrounding me, but at least I didn't have to worry about people chewing/popping gum on top of that.
I went to a sales rep's office to attend a regular professional development class being held during lunchtime. I don't like lunch meetings because more often than not, the box lunches serve mini bags of potato chips or wrap their sandwiches/cookies in crinkly cellophane/plastic. What I did happened even before I entered the classroom... When I walked in the door, there wasn't anyone in the reception area but I happened to notice a bowl of mints on the reception desk. In the middle of the sea of individually wrapped mint rings, there was a little box of gum. I grabbed the gum - not because I was interested in freshening my breath or wanted to chew the gum myself, but because my immediate thought was to prevent anyone coming in after me from taking the gum and chewing it during the class.
It's funny... I've never been presented with a situation like that before. I could've just as easily left the gum where it was and take my chances but that was a risk I didn't want to take. As it was, despite sitting in the front row of the classroom set-up, I still had to put my earplugs in so not to be distracted by the crinkling bags of people eating their box lunches surrounding me, but at least I didn't have to worry about people chewing/popping gum on top of that.
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