About Me

Hi There, a lot has changed since I wrote this initial about me page (for the better, thankfully!). Here are two more recent updates as of September 2023:

The Original About Me Page

Hi! I'm Chris, thank you for checking out my Misophonia blog. If you have Misophonia, I want you to know that you are an amazing, powerful, and resilient human being capable of great things. It's only a matter of time before we find a cure for Misophonia. After all, we're about to start a colony on Mars, aren't we?

Misophonia is a very real and extremely debilitating disorder and you should never feel guilty about your condition. You did not deserve this fate and, while Misophonia may be holding you back right now, it won't be forever and we're going to get there together.

While reading, please keep in mind that I am not a medical doctor, and what has or hasn't worked for me may or may not work for you.

The purpose of this blog is to document my journey to cure my Misophonia through gifs and different treatment modalities (natural remedies, western medicine, or perhaps some form alien technology if it comes down to it).

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Over the past 15 years, I've spent a lot of time and money trying to eradicate my sensitivities and, unfortunately, have at best only experienced some slight relief for short periods of time. After I discovered the power of journaling, I figured it would make sense to share my treatment trial and error process with the internet. This way, people like yourself can chime in about what you've tried, what has or hasn't worked for you, and we can all effectively bond together to work towards finding a cure.

If you'd like to share your story on this site please send me a message. I've always found it so validating to read others' experiences with Misophonia as doing so helps me realize I'm not alone.

My Story

Trigger Warning - I discuss my triggers throughout, however, I made sure not to include any outside of the common ones you've probably already heard of.

At the ripe age of 23, I had everything a seemingly happy young adult could want on paper. I had a college degree, a job I liked, and I was living with friends in Los Angeles.

However, after years of silently suffering, I suddenly found myself moving back in with my parents. Finally, and I'm surprised it took this long, my body shut down and I called my parents crying. I told them that I needed to come home. I was on the verge of suicide because of constant daily triggers, as well as severe anxiety, depression, and a few other symptoms that had compounded over the years. I told my parents I needed to come home and find a cure because it was either I was going to cure my Misophonia, end my life, or move to the middle of nowhere and live alone for the rest of my life. Now, let me back up and explain the story leading up to this point.

My journey with Misophonia started when I was eight years old. In 2nd grade, I remember coming to school and feeling like something was off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I suddenly developed this aversion to dry materials and couldn't stand the sound of paper rustling. Fortunately, at the time, the severity fluctuated back and forth and diminished for a period of time. I remember in 3rd or 4th grade thinking "Thank God that went away." At the time, I had no idea what "that" was. I was promptly reminded what "that" was when 6th grade hit me like a train.

A normal day at school, we had our reading block and I remember everyone was flipping through their books. Suddenly, I was struck by this severe anger, and disgust, and turned around to see one of my classmates trying to separate two pages in a book and making this sound. I yelled out at him asking him to stop, and my classmates looked at me as if I was crazy.

It was at that moment I realized something was wrong with me, and that this wasn't normal. I went home and told my parents about what had happened, and they didn't understand. "That's weird," they told me, and also that I needed to "get over it" because there's a lot of paper in the world. It was such a bad feeling, feeling like I was alone and crazy at the same time.


My mom would always read the newspaper on the kitchen counter and I would beg her to be careful turning the pages so she wouldn't make the sound. However, she's human and sometimes she would forget, and I would yell at her. My dad would get angry at me for yelling at my mom and again tell me I needed to "get over it" and that my sensitivity was "weird." My pediatrician thought it was something I would simply grow out of, meanwhile going to school was becoming incredibly difficult.

Side note - my parents are fully on board and supportive now, especially with the new research coming out and the classification of Misophonia as a real disorder. It took a long time to get them to fully accept and understand Misophonia which I'll post about later. Now they know people with Misophonia can't control their reactions, and it's as if we're being attacked or violated.

Unfortunately, I didn't grow out of my Misophonia and the condition worsened slightly every year. Some of my friends and classmates knew of my trigger and would torment me with the sound until I would get up from my seat, rush over to them, or yell, any kind of reaction. Of course, my teacher did not understand and thought I was being a trouble maker. It probably also didn't help that, at the time, I didn't know how to properly voice what I was experiencing.

Fast forward a few years and I'm a sophomore in high school. While Misophonia affected my school performance, it didn't really matter as much until high school because in high school, you have to get good grades and a good SAT score so you can get into a good school and get a good job. Fortunately, after years of me complaining about the paper sound to my parents, we went back to my doctor and he diagnosed me with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I had also started self-harming at this point to cope with the constant bombardment of triggers throughout my school days.

After I received a diagnosis, my doctor put me on antidepressants. I started off taking a mild dose and when nothing changed after a month or so, my doctor doubled my dose. Unfortunately, the only change I noticed after starting the doubled dose was this terrible feeling that's difficult for me to put into words. I think ironically what began happening was I started feeling very depressed. I spoke with my doctor and stopped the medication.

At the time, I was naive and thought when you had health problems, you went to your doctor, took a pill for a little while, and went on your merry way. Since the pills didn't work for my Misophonia, I accepted that Misophonia was my struggle in life. Some people don't have arms, some people don't have parents, some people don't have food or parents, and Misophonia was my bout of misfortune from the universe. Misophonia aside, I was extremely fortunate for all other aspects of my life.

Leading up to college, I tried a few different kinds of treatment with no success, and left the nest. College was a whole new beast because sometimes I'd have exams in lecture halls with over a hundred other students. Freshman year was very tough, and fortunately, after I bombed an accounting mid-term Sophomore year due to my professor instructing the entire class to flip through the twenty-page exam before beginning, my therapist worked with my school to allow me to test in a private room. This was a game-changer.

At this point in time, things were going pretty well. I was able to test in a private room so my grades weren't suffering, I was able to study abroad my Junior year of college, and I figured that once I was through school, I would find a job that was paperless and try to make a lot of money so I could donate to Misophonia research.

Well, as I'm sure you're aware, life didn't go according to plan. After my Junior year of college, I started having severe panic attacks out of the blue. I ended up in the emergency room twice because I thought I was dying. I thought, "my parents were right, I'm doomed, too much beer and not enough sleep. I've permanently damaged my brain".

Where I am now looking back, I have a number of theories around why I started experiencing panic attacks which I'll explain in my blog posts. In addition to the panic attacks, I developed such a high sense of anxiety about having a panic attack and felt scared all the time. I went to a doctor, but didn't want to take antidepressants again given my experience in high school, so I opted to take an anti-anxiety medication, a good old benzodiazepine.

After taking my anti-anxiety medication for the first time I instantly understood why people became addicted to them. Not only did my anxiety vanish, but I felt incredible. Move over Hasslehoff, I am the captain now, that kind of feeling.

Fortunately, my doctor warned me of the addictive nature of these kinds of medications so I only took it when absolutely necessary. Just having the medication on me helped me tons. Knowing that if I had a panic attack, I had the solution in my pocket, decreased my anxiety and I rarely had to take the pills. So through the use of some medication, I finished college, landed a job in technology sales (I toured the office before accepting the job to see how paperless it would really be), and moved in with friends. Life was great until I started training for work.

While at training, I developed three more Misophonia triggers. I couldn't believe it. I really didn't think that could possibly happen, Misophonia itself with one trigger was bad enough, and now I had four and was still worrying about having panic attacks. However, I did what I had always done and I coped. I had my headphones on pretty much all day at work either making calls or listening to music and prospecting.

At this point in time, a girl on my team and I began discussing our mental health issues. She introduced me to some books such as The Mind-Gut Connection and these books radically changed my outlook on Misophonia and mental health. I started eating very clean, and reading a new book every week on gut health, holistic healing, mindfulness, etc. I became determined to cure my Misophonia and panic attacks through nutrition and lifestyle changes.

After a little over a year of this process, and trying nearly every diet and supplement out there, giving up gluten and dairy, alcohol for periods of time, I was still getting worse. My skin was really dry and itchy as well. I had developed more triggers and had a total of 6 triggers at this point. Even though I was eating a lot healthier, and trying all of these different health remedies, I felt as though I'd gotten much worse. My energy began to fade away, while at the same time I couldn't fall asleep. I would be so anxious about getting a good night's sleep so that I would feel good the next day that I was constantly worrying.

I began to feel sad, and this quickly developed into full-blown depression. I didn't want to do anything anymore. Everywhere I went, I was triggered by sounds. If I went out with friends to eat, it was nearly impossible to stick to my strict dietary guidelines. If I wanted to be social, it was difficult to avoid alcohol. At this point, I was feeling miserable and hopeless.

Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, something amazing happened to me. The anti-anxiety medication I had been using as a crutch for the last few years gradually became less and less effective. I was forced to face all of the emotions and physical symptoms that I had been suppressing, and my body shut down. I was sitting at work one day and I started crying at my desk for no reason. I had the worst panic attack of my life on a seemingly routine workday. Fortunately, one of my roommates also happened to be on my team at work and we went on a walk. He listened to me vent about what I was experiencing which made me feel better and helped me through the rest of the week.

The following Sunday was one of my other roommate's birthdays. We were having a barbecue at my house and everyone seemed so happy. People were hanging out, socializing, drinking beer, eating gluten (crazy!), meanwhile, I was miserable. I felt so anxious about having a panic attack and about how I would feel the next day if I even looked at a White Claw. I felt like I was living in another dimension.

I was exhausted, afraid, worried, sad and went to my room, shut the door, and started bawling. I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time and begged the universe to help me. "What did I do to deserve this? Please show me I'll do anything to make things right." I thought about how easy it would be to end my life and to stop all of the pain. For some reason, I think it must have been the universe intervening, my phone started ringing and it was my mom.

I told her what was going on and received the usual "I'm so sorry, I wish I could make it all go away." I proceeded to get angry with her, expressing that I felt like she didn't understand how bad things truly were. She asked what I meant and I told her I'd been thinking about suicide every day for the past two months and was at the edge of the cliff looking down. She didn't know how to react and said "that's not good," told me to hold on, and hung up the phone. A few minutes later she called me back with my dad on the line and they told me everything would be okay. They never knew how bad things really were, and after telling them everything, they fully supported me in moving home.

This leads us up to today, where I'm currently living at home with my parents, working every day to figure out the cure for my Misophonia as well as my Anxiety and Depression, which I now feel are closely related. Posts from here on out will include what I've tried since being home, more details about what I tried in the past, and what I'm planning on trying in the future.

If you read down this far, thank you! I know this isn't the most exciting or upbeat story, but it's my story. If you have any questions or you or a loved one are going through a similar situation, feel free to contact me at any time.