Sometimes you find yourself hearing things others don’t easily pick up on with misophonia. It can be a tapping, a light buzzing from outside, someone simply breathing, all these different sounds that clash with your thoughts. They can interrupt you, make it harder for you to space out and think, make things like tests harder. It’s something I’ve been silently facing since I was young.

Misophonia can trigger various emotions. Anger, distress, frustration. Personally, I am of the anxiety and panic side of these sudden, unrelated emotions. Lately, I’ve noticed it a lot in two particular classes, orchestra and environmental science.

It’s not even the contents of the class, nor the teacher (Usually, sometimes my environmental science teacher accidentally causes a few.), but the other students around me that cause this distress and anxiety. I feel trapped in a cacophony of sounds that I cannot escape and sit in silence with this look on my face of surprise and anxiousness, but I say nor do anything to counteract it. That’s because I can’t do much of anything. I can’t escape to my music, I can’t get on my devices, I can’t really do anything.

Now, yes, I could perhaps solve this by asking a teacher for advice and assistance, but then the social anxiety creeps in to double my stress. ‘I’ll look weird,’ I think. ‘They probably have never even heard of misophonia and will think I’m being ridiculous.’

It sucks.

It really does.

At the end of the day though, I find relief at home. I’m in my room and it’s nice and I’m able to focus on the sound of my music to help me cope with the sounds around me. It’s only a temporarily relief though, as by the next day I must return to the noise and sounds.

Thankfully, however, I have my space, no matter how little of time I have with it, and that helps more than can ever be imagined sometimes.