The Children of Misophonia….Waiting Out The Tough Times

So many families come to our clinic for Misophonia. Adults and teens are in a different category than the children. The children remind me of Hansel and Gretel, lost, alone, in a dark deep forest, with a witch nearby who intends to eat them. They children are bewildered, frightened, angry, lost, and rightly so. Misophonia yanks them out of their former lives, it drags them in a kind of hell where the persons they love the most, often parents, are now intolerable to be around due to trigger sounds. This should be a kind of medical crime, like suddenly to becoming allergic to your family!
The children want nothing more to return to their former state of wellness, to not have Misophonia, and they cry and strike out, and freeze in a paralytic state of being, unable to be away comfortably, and unable to be near, tolerably. This is the demon of Misophonia, the part that is cruel and unrelenting, and one that we address everyday in this clinic.
The only positive factor in these scenarios is the gift of time. Time passes and the 8 year old will become the 15 or 17 year old, and over time, with maturation of the central nervous system, with judgment and simple growing up, helps so very very much. Growing up is part of the current therapy for Misophonia. Simply adding years to a life can make a huge difference in most cases.
As the child matures, so does their ability to think abstractly and remotely, to be able to analyze life and realize, really, someone is not breathing or sniffing just to bother you. This takes time and there is often much fluctuation in the stages of growth and rising and falling aspects to the path. But it is nice to know that in nearly every case, over time, things do improve in the vast majority of cases of Misophonia, with time, distance, and independence. Let’s keep it mind when we work with these beautiful children.