Boy... Time flies during this time of the year. I can't believe we're beyond the November halfway point and Thanksgiving is just around the corner next week. This will certainly be an interesting holiday for me because it will be the first time ever that I'm staying put and just taking a relaxing holiday instead of dealing with the craziness of holiday travel and intense festivities around holiday meals.
One thing I've noticed about myself is that ever since I learned about misophonia last year, I am less hesitant to express my discomfort with, what I now know are, misophonia triggers. For decades I've bitten my tongue in public situations where I'm bothered by triggers, mainly because I had no idea that they were triggers and what I was experiencing was due to a medical condition. I really find it relieving to know that during the times when I do express my discomfort, more often than not people are not only sympathetic to my situation, but they are many times intrigued about it and once in a while, they think of someone they know who might even have it too. Just in the past couple of weeks, I had two such experiences...
I mentioned one experience that happened in my 11/12/13 post; but I also had a situation recently when shopping for winter clothes at a department store where one of the salespeople not helping anyone was walking around the area whistling. I politely asked him to stop because I, "have a medical condition where whistling hurts my ears." He stopped but then a half hour later, while I was paying for my items, he started walking around the register area whistling again. I politely asked him to stop again, which he did and he was nice to say that he forgot. As he apologized, another salesperson standing by the register overheard my conversation with him and asked me more about my condition. I explained to her not only the trouble I have with sound triggers but also with visual and tactile triggers too. (The tactile triggers are especially an issue when I'm trying on new clothes.) The more I told the woman about my misophonia, the wider her eyes became. She said that it sounded like something with which her niece struggles. The more she told me about some of the things her niece can't stand, as well as some of the niece's reactions to certain sounds and visuals, the more it sounded to me that her niece could be suffering from misophonia too. By the time I was done, there were four or five people listening to our conversation, and they all appeared intrigued.
Luckily, I always keep business-like cards with the SenseHaven.com address on it just for such situations. Since it seemed like information about misowould be very useful, not only to the salesperson but also to the niece and possibly her parents or other people in her life, I gave the woman several cards and showed a few of the pages on my cell phone (so that she'd know where to find the articles and other resources on the site).
As much as it's difficult to verbalize to a triggerer when something they're doing bothers me, I feel that as long as I can talk to them politely when expressing my discomfort, they are much more receptive to my request. Ultimately, regardless of whether they know someone in a similar situation to me or not, at least that's one more person in the general public who knows about misophonia.
One thing I've noticed about myself is that ever since I learned about misophonia last year, I am less hesitant to express my discomfort with, what I now know are, misophonia triggers. For decades I've bitten my tongue in public situations where I'm bothered by triggers, mainly because I had no idea that they were triggers and what I was experiencing was due to a medical condition. I really find it relieving to know that during the times when I do express my discomfort, more often than not people are not only sympathetic to my situation, but they are many times intrigued about it and once in a while, they think of someone they know who might even have it too. Just in the past couple of weeks, I had two such experiences...
I mentioned one experience that happened in my 11/12/13 post; but I also had a situation recently when shopping for winter clothes at a department store where one of the salespeople not helping anyone was walking around the area whistling. I politely asked him to stop because I, "have a medical condition where whistling hurts my ears." He stopped but then a half hour later, while I was paying for my items, he started walking around the register area whistling again. I politely asked him to stop again, which he did and he was nice to say that he forgot. As he apologized, another salesperson standing by the register overheard my conversation with him and asked me more about my condition. I explained to her not only the trouble I have with sound triggers but also with visual and tactile triggers too. (The tactile triggers are especially an issue when I'm trying on new clothes.) The more I told the woman about my misophonia, the wider her eyes became. She said that it sounded like something with which her niece struggles. The more she told me about some of the things her niece can't stand, as well as some of the niece's reactions to certain sounds and visuals, the more it sounded to me that her niece could be suffering from misophonia too. By the time I was done, there were four or five people listening to our conversation, and they all appeared intrigued.
Luckily, I always keep business-like cards with the SenseHaven.com address on it just for such situations. Since it seemed like information about misowould be very useful, not only to the salesperson but also to the niece and possibly her parents or other people in her life, I gave the woman several cards and showed a few of the pages on my cell phone (so that she'd know where to find the articles and other resources on the site).
As much as it's difficult to verbalize to a triggerer when something they're doing bothers me, I feel that as long as I can talk to them politely when expressing my discomfort, they are much more receptive to my request. Ultimately, regardless of whether they know someone in a similar situation to me or not, at least that's one more person in the general public who knows about misophonia.
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