For the past couple of hours, I've been updating this SenseHaven.com website and trying to gather my thoughts before writing more in my memoir. Over the past couple of months, I've contemplated starting a local support group for people with misophonia, but I wanted to connect up with other established groups to see how they organized their meetings. I checked out MeetUp.com to see if anyone has formed a misophonia support MeetUp group and was surprised to find only one in the entire world. (It didn't surprise me that it's located in the UK, especially since the one misophonia foundation I've found is also in the UK.)
I explored the UK Misophonia (Sound Sensitivity) Support Group MeetUp site and found many interesting articles about misophonia/hyperacusis/tinnitus. The more I explored the articles, the more my curiosity was piqued and it led me to the Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation website. Could it be that what I have is actually sensory processing disorder (aka "Sensory integration dysfunction") and not misophonia?
According to the website, "While most of us have occasional difficulties processing sensory information, for children and adults with SPD, these difficulties are chronic, and they disrupt everyday life... [A] person with SPD may over-respond to sensation and find clothing, physical contact, light, sound, food, or other sensory input to be unbearable..." (Excerpt from the SPD Foundation's "About SPD" webpage)
Part of the problem with the term "misophonia" is that the name specifically translates to a hearing issue (miso = "hatred of," phonia = "sound"), and yet so many of sufferers have visual and tactile (as well as even smell and taste) triggers too. One doctor I contacted told me he's encouraged people in his profession not to use the term "misophonia," but to use the term "Annoyance Hyperacusis" instead since their studies determined that condition includes hyper-responses to smell, pain, and vision in addition to sound.
Although I'm going to continue my investigation into misophonia, the information I found today has inspired me to open my search to other possibilities too...