At the risk of being super vulnerable this week, I want to share with you an issue that I have been dealing with my entire life but only recently made it a goal to actively resolve.

My issue actually may seem really silly. It’s not a joke to me though. For me, it has caused disruption in my life. I spent many years trying to suppress it. I’ve tried to ignore it. But, the truth is that it’s affected my life. 

It’s important we do everything we can in different areas to support and prioritize our wellness. That means, identifying when any area of our life might not be in balance or not feel right. And it’s okay to get the help too. But so many people don’t, they just suppress an issue, especially if it feels embarrassing. Like I did for so many years. That’s why my story will perhaps feel relatable for you.

It really does take a lot of vulnerability and openness for me to even put my story out there. It’s suuuuper uncomfortable. I’m telling you my story because I think it’s important that we just step up and acknowledge our weaknesses and not be embarrassed about them. We deserve to take care of ourselves and we don’t need to be too embarrassed to face our challenges. It really is about empowering ourselves and making our wellness a priority. Since I have been talking so much about goals lately I wanted to put an emphasis on health goals. So, I decided to share a health goal I made for myself today. 

So at the risk of being super vulnerable: Here it is. I have misophonia. 

Oh, you’ve never heard of that before? I figured so. 

You know that friend you have that gets annoyed when you eat? Maybe it’s something crunchy. Or, maybe it’s the popping of your gum. But, we all have that one friend that is close enough to us to tell us to stop. Well. I’m that friend. 

I haven’t disclosed this to many people in my life. If you are close to me- then you probably know because you’ve caused me to react to your crunching of popcorn, or chewing of gum and I felt safe enough with you to tell you to please stop. 

For me, it’s every kind of chewing. So much so that I’ll be standing in line at the bank and if somebody behind me chews their gum and just snaps it, I just can’t handle it. Often I have to just leave the situation. For some reason, something happens to me when I hear these sounds and I can literally feel my blood pressure rising. I can feel this really uncomfortable shift in my body. But I could never understand it. I don’t have anxiety. I’ve never dealt with anything like that, but this was something serious going on in me. Similar to what someone that has rage feels like. This is not an exaggeration. These sounds make me feel so much anger that it’s super confusing to me. For anyone who knows me personally- you know that I’m so patient. I can tolerate a lot. But this. This is hard for me to tolerate. 

At first, it would bother and upset me so much that people were making this noise around me but as I got older, I began to understand that this was not their problem. They’re not doing anything wrong. It is totally on me, and it is about me being able to manage these chewing sounds. So it was up to me to figure out. For so long, I avoided really facing it. For. So. Long. I felt kind of weird and embarrassed that these simple noises were doing this to me. And this is the first time I’ve shared this with anyone beyond my family and closest circle. 

I was literally on a beach in Mexico this summer and kind of reflecting on my life, when I decided, I don’t deserve to have to suffer my whole life just because I worry this thing is silly or unusual. So I made a goal to fully take charge of my wellness and face this in a formal way this year. Right away, I started looking up to see if there were any doctors that have had experience treating it. 

That was the turning point for me, when I decided to prioritize myself and overcome any embarrassment in order to face this. It was a big commitment to myself and my overall health and wellness goals. I have always taken my health and wellbeing seriously, so why should I ignore this? It was time to empower myself with the tools to figure this thing out, to finally get ahead of it. In all the goals we make, we can’t ignore our wellness, even if it is connected to things that are maybe the hardest to talk about.

To give you a bit of background, I first noticed my sensitivity to chewing sounds when I was a little girl getting ready for school in the morning. I was about 7 and my dad and I were sitting next to each other and having breakfast. All of a sudden I realized I couldn’t sit next to him because he was eating cereal. To be clear- he wasn’t obnoxiously eating his cereal. His mouth was closed. He literally was doint nothing wrong. But, I couldn’t handle the sound. I had go to the other room and turn the TV on while eating my breakfast so that I couldn’t hear it. 

I also remember being in classrooms when fellow students would suck on a sucker or chew gum and it always upset me. I share with people who are close to me what I am experiencing, just so that they know why I am reacting in the way that I am, why I am looking bothered. I knew it was true love with my husband John when he came home from work one day and ran the water while eating his salad in the kitchen. We’ve been together for 22 years, so he just knows how to help me manage without even saying anything. But it really is something I have been dealing with for as long as I can remember. 

About 10 years ago, I’ll never forget the night my mom called to tell me to turn on the television. She said there was a program on television talking about this exact issue in people, and they were giving it a name. She said, I think you have this! And that was the first time in my life that I was able to identify that I had something real, not just some silly “thing.” They exposed and put a name to it for me. Misophonia. Finally- my family would understand that I wasn’t just being a brat growing up. That I couldn’t actually help how I felt. 

But even knowing that what I was struggling with was real and had a name, it still didn’t change that it embarrassed me. So I didn’t formally face it. Until this year. 

After I got back from Mexico, I found out that there is somebody in Chicago who can help me at the Neurologic Wellness Institute. I contacted them and committed. I was just really tuned into how I felt talking to the lady on the phone, and I could just feel that this is right. My intuition was telling me, “this is going to help you!” So I said, “Okay, let’s do this!”

They’re considered chiropractic neurologists. They evaluate my brain activity and can tell what’s happening. They look to find an imbalance in the brain or some circuit they fix the cause because the brain is so moldable. A lot of people don’t realize that your brain is so pliable and moldable. A lot of athletes go there to get deeper into focus or concentration. That got me thinking that even though the priority is like getting control of this condition, evaluating how my brain works can help me in so many ways. I think it is really great to achieve a deeper state of concentration and focus. Even if I didn’t have this condition, I feel like I would be really interested in this brain training. 

I call it brain training because that is really what the process was. I committed and recently went to several daily sessions over the course of two weeks where they challenged and trained my brain through the most amazing exercises. I basically put a hat on that read my brain while they had me do all sorts of things, usually having me focus on doing an activity while being also stimulated with other sights and sounds. The aim was to work on the circuits connected to my sound reactions so that we could rebuild or rework them. 

It is a cure? No. This is about an ongoing plan to remold my brain and improve how I react to sound. Why did a sound that really should not give me an emotional reaction- affect me so deeply? But other sounds didn’t. 

Dr. Nick Schmidkofer from the Neological Wellness Institute is a brilliant doctor who was able to break it down in layman’s terms for me. 

I’m a work in progress and it’s my goal to keep at this and apply the techniques I have learned. It’s difficult to fully sum up all that they did to help me work through this, so I’ve put together a video as they allowed me to chronicle the entire process. If you’re curious, you can watch it here:

I hope that when you read this, it inspires you to face whatever health and wellness challenges that might be showing up in your life. They all matter. It’s hard to be vulnerable, I know, but we all have different issues. And I wish for you to empower yourself to overcome whatever you may be facing. Say to yourself, I know I have this problem and if I don’t know how to fix it, it’s okay if I ask for help and seek the tools. Make facing it a new goal. Even if it means facing something embarrassing.

When we put ourselves first, and make our wellness a top goal and priority, it’s not selfish. Our wellness is actually going to help all areas of our lives and this will make us show up better for everyone around us too. 

I am facing this vulnerable issue in my life daily now and I hope my story helps give you the courage to put yourself and your wellness first too! 

Tell me I’m not alone? I’d love to hear from you if you can relate to my story!  

If you want help with assessing, and creating your goals you should join me Thursday December 17 at 7pm. In Pursuit of Goals is a FREE Masterclass I have put together just for you so that you can make next year your BEST YEAR EVER.