Behaviorist & Misophonia Expert with the President of the Misophonia Institute Tom Dozier

And this means so much to me because I am always like analyzing and researching neuroscientists and understanding our thought patterns and our brain patterns. And everyone who's tuned into the show knows they're like, are you a psychologist? I'm always talking about psychology and understanding human behavior. You know who we are, how we develop who we are, all that jazz and Tom and I have spent some sessions together.
He is so brilliant. And I actually found out about Tom through my sister amateur Rawkus who's awesome. And she told me about Misophonia. She sent me The Misophonia Institute, and so I contacted Tom immediately and we've had some chats back and forth, and it really was able for me to deep dive, we'll talk about scuba diving later, but I was able to deep dive into what it means. And now I'm learning the language through Tom and I'm able to understand myself more. And I thought it was really important that, oh my gosh, like I've been on the hunt for two decades now. And I'm just hearing about this as of six months ago, I definitely wanted to bring it to you and share it with my audience.
And we now have over 4,000 subscribers downloads listens per month. So thank you so much for tuning in and being here. We honor you, we value you. I know you're going to be able to identify with some of the things we're talking about today. And I am going to be, I don't wanna say a Guinea pig, but I'm going to be the muse. And so we can directly talk about my experiences so far, so you can learn through us and then, you know, we're a ripple effect for you. So definitely check out The Misophonia Institute. The show notes will be below, so you can read up on it and get in touch with Tom yourself. If you identify and, or, you know, a family member or someone who definitely will identify with what we're going to be talking about today. So with no further Jew, Tom, take it away.
Thanks for being here.
It's great to be here. Why do we want to say about Misophonia? I guess we're talking to people who may have never heard of the word Misophonia. This is me. So means anger, dislike and phobia is sounds. And so the kind of the original definition was it was people would get up upset when they heard certain sounds. Now we've since learned that it's not just sounds, it can be things you see, it could be things you touch vibrations, but it's some little thing sniffing two wing tapping birds chirping. For those of you who have steam hate the pipes knock when, when they heat up and cool down, that was the trigger for one person. But people here is just a normal little sound and go, oh, I can't stand that sound.
It's almost like thinking of a fingernails on a chalkboard, but much worse. And for just normal sounds. So it's this kind of unknown reflex reaction. I got into this in 2012, my primary career as a parenting coach. So that's, that's my love and my passion, but had a mom of a 12 year old tell me that her daughter had this untreatable hearing disorder that was going to ruin her life. She wasn't going to be able to have stable relationships. It was just gonna cripple her, her throughout her life. Yet the girl had auditory, visual and olfactory triggers and she reacted the same to all three.
Well, that can not be a defect in the hearing system. If you're getting it in through your eyes, your nose and your, and your ears, it's a general Reflex condition. And so I just thought, Hey, I'm a fix-it guy. My first career was a manufacturing engineer and energy engineering manager. I love to fix things and solve problems. So I thought, Hey, I'm going to apply the science of behavior to this problem and see what we can find. Because at that time I went out and did a, a Google scholar search, which is a great thing. If you ever want to look for research, scholar dot, google.com. And I think there were three articles, none of which were researched, they've mentioned Misophonia.
So it was just unknown. And so I just started investigating it, talking to people, working on things, look for treatments that could change reflexes and just been investigating it and working on it ever since
Here, did you start doing that research
2012
And 12th. Okay. And then thank you for sharing that. And how long has Misophonia been known? Who coined it? When did it start? If you could share that?
Sure. So it was first identified in 1997 by audiologists Marshall Johnson. And she called it select a sound sensitivity syndrome. She had a tinnitus tinnitus clinic and had these parents bring in their mostly teenage girls who just couldn't stand the sound of mom breathing or mom stiffing. And so she said, this is unique enough. This is not tinnitus. This is not the, not the volume of the sound, it's something else. And so she coined it called it select selective sound sensitivity syndrome. And she brought this to the awareness of Pavo and yet, and Margaret Yesterbox who had been heard tonight, us trainers, who had developed the tinnitus process.
And then about 2001, the Astro boss called it me so phony and this sofa dislike and phony for sound. And it's really a bad, a bad name because it's, you know, it's sounds sights, vibrations, touch smells could be anything. And then it's just kind of grown from that point. It really hit the kind of take off in about 2012 when there was an article published in the New York times about something like, does the sound a chomp? I don't know what it was, but Chomper, slurp, a trigger for rage or something like that.
And it brought the awareness up and that was the first kind of public awareness of misophonia.
thank you for sharing that. Okay, cool. And then when did you create the Misophonia institute.org?
2016, I was putting out videos, creating, doing publishing, you know, trying to make awareness of this condition. And I decided that I needed something beyond just me. And so I, the directors are myself as president. The secretary is Chris Pearson, who is a hypnotherapist who works with Misophonia in the UK and Nate Mitchell. Who's a psychologist, he's the treasurer. So this is like a, a virtual Institute where we try to get the word out, try to publish research, try to help people
About Chris. And I did hypnosis with Marisa peer who's this world renowned amazing hypnotherapist. I found through my valley and she's in Europe and I've done her program. She's amazing RTC. And you were mentioning Chris and I definitely want to tune in with him and try his hypnosis for Misophonia and in, in the near future, have him on the podcast if he is out for it. Oh, cool. So we'll, we'll make that happen for season five. That would be awesome. Kinda jumping ahead and around, circling back in, you have a couple of different apps. I downloaded the gold one and it's free and they're about 17 minutes long. And so do you want to share about the apps that you developed and, and how people can tap into that immediately?
Yes. One of the things that we find with Misophonia is that people are very tense and Misophonia is fundamentally is I physical Reflex disorder, even though what's really recognized as the emotional explosion, but people will hear us found and they'll tense up and it just creates this overall horrible. I've never been triggered. I don't know Katie. I don't know what it's like to be triggered. You do better than I do cause you've been triggered, but it creates this overall horrible experience and the way that you can learn to relax your muscles on demand. Like I can relax my hand, but I can't relax my neck or the muscles between my back. So the way you learn to relax muscles is through a technique called progressive muscle relaxation.
I call it muscle relaxation training. And so I'm a, The Misophonia Muscle Relaxation Training app because of part of the treatment I provide is one teaching people how to relax, developing the skill it's like playing the piano or a sport, develop the skill of Relaxing and then Relaxing in the presence of triggers that are smaller, smaller triggers. And then that causes the Reflex of Misophonia to go down. So the, The Misophonia Muscle Relaxation app helps you do therapy sessions are Relaxation sessions, training sessions to learn, develop the skill of relaxing on demand.
And then when you're more relaxed, everything's better.
And it just sounds so simple, but actually it's a fundamental part of practicing to do it. So it becomes like your masters of behavioral science that are it's muscle memory. So our muscles have their own brain. So our muscles remember to develop for healing and to minimize the Misophonia, right,
Right. Relaxing before triggers, the more stressed you are, and you probably found this out, Katie, that the more stressed you are stressed, you are, or you're getting sick or you're feeling bad. The worst are misophonia triggers. Are it zaps you worse? So the relaxation training helps you develop the skill of relaxing your muscles. When you're going into a situation where that might be triggers, it actually is a great treatment for anxiety. So for anybody who has anxiety learn, developing the skill of relaxing on demand is a huge skill. And that's what it was developed for. It was anxiety. And so you, you relax when you're going into a situation where there may be triggers.
You relax immediately after a trigger to reduce the anger, suppressed emotions, or what's going on in our brain. And our brain looks down into the body and says, Hey body, what do you say? So if I am, if I can go, Ooh, that's horrible. I'm so angry. And look at all those tight muscles. Yeah, you're ready to punch somebody. You're super angry. But, but if it's like, Hey, your brain says, you're so angry. This is horrible. And it looks down at the body goes, but your muscles are relaxed once in a while, wait a minute. You can't be really that angry because your muscles are relaxed. So it really shortens the recovery cycle, but being relaxed before triggers and through the triggers and a little bit afterwards starts to change that fundamental Reflex that comes out of what I call your lizard brain.
Ah,
And that's exactly what I was going to prompt you to next. So there's three different parts of our brain, correct? And then this one, right by our neck, it's called our lizard brain.
That's what I call it. Let me grab my luck, a little visual here, right? That I use with, with cut with patients that you have your thinking brain, your cerebrum up top, you have your emotional brain, your limbic system in the middle and your autonomic nervous system, your reptilian or your, I call it your Lizard Bryant, by the way, this is your motor cortex. So there was actually a forest spot there, but three that Misophonia and this lizard brain. And that's what zaps you, people who develop Misophonia develops a physical Reflex somewhere in their body. When they hear that sniff or that crunch, or hear the bird sharp, a muscle that lizard brain goes, oh, boom. And it hits you with a muscle.
It hits that muscle. That is, it's like being tasered just a little bit. And that triggers the extreme emotions, which coming, which is coming out of a little spot behind your there's a communication hub called the anterior insula. And that relays out to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is an emotional Reflex learning structure. And then it really relates back, okay, anger, rage discuss. And then this command center fires down into the amygdala and hippocampus and all hell breaks loose.
And we're not even thinking about it. It's just, it happens through our body. So we don't have time to be like, oh, this is about to happen into my insula, blah, blah, blah. Like surreal. Like it just, it happens. It's a part of behavioral science.
I know. It's like, can I stop sweating? No. You know, so you're going to,
Yeah. So, and also anyone who wants to tune into the video, we're just on the YouTube. So you can just typing and I, Katie, Chonacas YouTube and you she's all over the place. You can check out the Misophonia Institute video, if you want to see the visual that Tom is talking about. So let's just like deep dive into kind of pre me, contacting you, then us going back and forth. And the awareness that you had me do on my physical body to see where I felt the actual jab. And, and so for some, they may be very in tuned. And for me, I had, I told you initially like where it was for me and I can share that.
But then I had to do some more searching because it was difficult to pin it. Like we're so not in tune that it was difficult for me to actual pin certain places on myself. So it might take some work and awareness, but every single time I it's happened, I'm more and more aware to see where it happens in the new places. It could happen. I'm still on that journey. Cause I always want to be open to something that I don't know. So what are the reasons when I initially, you know, connected with you, I was telling you, and then you explained to me it's things with the motor. So the vacuum, when I hear a vacuum or when I hear a lawn mower, a weed whacker, a saw anything with a motor this morning, it was a blow dryer.
And I was like, I don't, I didn't didn't think her to tell you about that one. But this morning I woke up to a blow dryer and then I just went to my breathing. It was slight and it was done. I'm the blow dryer. But if it would, I continued, I would have had to do what you taught me, which is called scuba breathing. So maybe let's talk about some of those things right now.
Okay. So let, let me, let me get right back to that. But see Katie's what happens is you hear a trigger and then somewhere in your body muscles tighten, typically some people will feel pain, but that's a small percentage. And then you have extreme emotions. Not for Katie. Katie's initial Reflex is that she stops breathing. So when Katie hears the blow dryer, she may, or the lawnmower, she may think, oh, I just stopped breathing because I can't stand it. But actually you're stopping breathing because your lizard brain is locking up those muscles in your chest.
And it's a Reflex and stopping you from breathing. So for you breathe, continuing to breathe in and out does two things. One is you feel it less severely. And second, secondly, when you are continuing to breathe over what your lizard brain is trying to do to you, you're telling your lizard brain don't make me hold my breath. So you're actually Counterconditioning are causing that physical Reflex to go down. Now in another person, these reflexes can be anywhere in your body. Another person makes Lynch, their jaw are clench their fist.
And as I showed you my granddaughter, her toes flare, when she, when she hears a sniff. So you want to see if you can find your initial physical Reflex. And there's an app for that. The app is called a Misophonia Reflex Finder App. And what it allows you to do is take something like snoring, which is a big, long ugly sound and bring it or a big long sniff and bring it down into something that isn't just a little bit a sound that's not enough to trigger you. And then you barely start increasing the severity of that Trigger by making it a few percent louder or a 10th of a second longer.
And at some point it starts to actually trigger that physical Reflex from your lizard brain. And you kind of go, oh, I felt something in my forearms or my shoulders are in your case, in your chest.
Yes. I nerves in my teeth and my fingers and the tips of my fingernails.
Yes. And so that may, that may be a, that's not a muscle if it was just in your teeth. Yeah. I can't teach you to change that. Right? So I can't teach you how to relax the nerves in your teeth. If that's where, if that was your only Reflex, but because you're getting the breath related Reflex, then for you, the slow, steady breathing, which I call scuba breathing in scuba, you have to always breathe. You never hold your breath. If you held your breath and you went up, your lungs could explode. So you never hold your breath in, in scuba. And so I call it scuba breathing. You breathe in very slowly, 10 or 15 seconds out, very slowly, 10 or 15 seconds.
And just do that continually. Now. That's actually very good calming. It can be. That can be good for calming people, even if it's not your Reflex, but most I'd say probably 90% of the people don't have a hold your breath Reflex. And so for them it's more overall muscle relaxation and keep breathing. Did I answer your question?
Yes. Yes, totally. And then in this specific, the specificity of the scuba breathing, you could do like five long in five long out, and then you have me go to 10. Then you have me to go to 15. And actually Tom said, he was really impressed. He said, most people can't get to 15, but because of my cross-country background with my lungs and yoga meditation, I was able to do to the 15 in slowly and out. So the people who are doing yoga and maybe, you know, are sports athletes and you can get to the 15. Cool. But that was the cap. You put me up with the people who maybe have the anxiety or the, maybe the lungs aren't as you know, well endowed, maybe do the five to star and then work your way up to more.
And then, so it's just five. Do you wanna just kind of do a practice, scuba breathing together or something?
Let's just, just see if you can breathe in here. Okay. Ready to fit 15. Let's just go all the way to 15. Breathe. Everybody. Try this. Okay. Take a deep breath, breathe all the way out. Let all the air go out of your lungs. And we're going to start breathing in. Ready? Breathe in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 out 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
And Katie did it. Katie did a great, she, Katie Teddy did it really well. And as you can breathe slowly, then, then do that. That's, that's beneficial to keep you from your anxiety from ramping up. And if you breathe out just a little bit longer than you breathe in, then it kind of, it can trigger a rest and digest reflects out of your lizard brain. So maybe you breathe in on 12, out on 15 or something like that.
Yeah. I felt like when I got to 14 and 15, I don't know if, because of the way I prepared it was, I don't know, a not have an exhale, but when I did to 14, 15, I was kind of like, you know, struggling to keep going. But I felt like when I was exhaling, I definitely, I could've kept exhaling for more. So that's good to know that it's good that when you can breathe out more, that's the good thing for the rest and repair, you said
Yes. Yeah. Rest and digest, Reflex, rest and digest. Okay.
And just to confirm, it's in the nose out, the nose
Doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter, but this, this is, this is really just a way of breathing slowly and steadily. And if you can only do it for 10 seconds, do it for 10 seconds in and out. But if you breathe in and out at five seconds, you're going to hyperventilate. So you can't continually keep breathing in and out at, at five seconds in and out. Cause you'll probably you'll get, you'll get too much oxygen and you'll get lightheaded. So you just want to breathe in and out constantly to, to help you recover from these triggers. And if you're like Katie and you have a, a breath related reflux, then it makes a drastic improvement in your misophonia.
Okay. And we'll, we'll circle back around on some of these personal triggers and, you know, go more deep into it. But something that came up was, I think, during our conversation, there are doctors who don't even know about Misophonia. Yeah. There are people who don't know. So P some people get misdiagnosed as something else and not knowing the difference if it's obsessive compulsive with something or Misophonia. So let's talk specifically about the difference please, and how people,
Okay. Well first let me say the reason doc, it's not the doctor's fault, not the psychiatrist and the therapist and the psychologist fault. Misophonia is not in any college textbooks and it's not in any official doctor. Notice psychologists notice publications that says, Hey, you need to be aware of this. So most doctors and psychologists don't know it's coming up much quicker among the psychologists. Doctors have never heard of ISA 20. It doesn't exist to them. The difference with Misophonia is, is kind of like the easiest Conditioned I think, to diagnose. And I am not an official diagnosed or have conditions.
So let me make that as a Behaviorist, that is not my Certification, but with the Misophonia, you're going to have a sound or a sight. Occasionally it'll be a smell or a vibration. And you just are really annoyed and agitated, or you feel anger or rage, and it can be a very mild noise. It can be a sniff or somebody breathing, or it could be like a baby crying, but not, but, but if you, if you can't stand the sound of a baby crying, which that's supposed to be an annoying genetically, that should be a very distressing sound to get you to come and take care of the baby.
But if, if a baby crying really just greatly upsets you and even angers you, I, when it's loud, that may just be the baby crying on the next two on the airplane. But if that same sound in a distance when it's soft and it's not your baby causes you to have that same kind of emotional reaction, then it's Misophonia. So virtually Misophonia is when there is some stimulus that just really causes distress, anger discussed, strong reaction. Most people with Misophonia, about 95% of people with misophonia have triggers related to eating a and mouth sounds.
Now, Katie, you don't have that as the Trigger, right?
No, not me particularly. I know my mother does. And since my mother pointed it out with someone that I know I was then aware of it. And so then I called the person out about it, but otherwise, no, that wouldn't be like on my first thing that would attack on NOI me now a couple of things, one going into like I, in over a year, I haven't been to a allowed public restaurant, but I tend to choose to go to places that are more intimate, romantic with like, not like hospital lighting. So for sightseeing, for my eyes to protect my eyes, but also like, so I'm not, you know, my nerves, my central nervous system.
So it's not shaking. So I'm not feeling anxiety. I'm also going into a place where it could be loud. I like to be put in the very back where there's a booth. I like to, I don't, if I'm going to a restaurant, I don't want to be sit in the center of the restaurant. I want to be in the back or onto the side away. And I do not like being by the kitchen. You know, I don't want to be sitting where there's going to be people in going and like, all that disturbance is going on. So what part of that is Misophonia and what part of that could be other things.
So that sounds more like sensory over responsiveness that went allow bright lights, loud sounds often clothes, tags, or tight shoes or things would be distressing to you. That's Sensory, that's a sensory over responsiveness, typically called sensory processing disorder. And that's genetic. That's, that's a condition where just because of the genes that you have sounds are a little louder. Lights are a little brighter. You're more noticing the things like I, it, since we've been talking, I haven't noticed anything in my body until I just mentioned that. And I felt that the shirt on the back of my shoulders, but generally I don't notice any of that stuff.
Sensory processing disorder.
So it's wild. I'm so happy. You said tags, tags like tags on pillowcases tags on clothes, that
Sensory processing disorder.
That's what that is. Oh my gosh. I even did a short film called hashtag selfie. And in the scene, I'm like, oh my God, this girl is wearing a bikini. And we did it on purpose. And I was punning on because I'm, so I was on the Skype with someone the other day and they were sitting back talking to me and I was, I saw it and it was only like three minutes or less, but it seemed like two hours. And I actually was getting so irritated. I was stuck. I was noticing I was stopping breathing. I had to say to this person, do you mind ripping? It was a big tag like this day, I go, do you mind ripping that tag off? Or like, or like moving the, the blanket. So like the tags that sticking out at the side of your head, I had to communicate that because before I would be silently suffering and I had to just communicate that it was so annoying and the person like laughed and like took the didn't rip it off.
I preferred ripping it off, but it didn't, it didn't rip it off. Just kind of were like, this was a blanket and put it, you know, behind. And so I couldn't see it and the person left and, but it was funny that we were able to like, laugh about it. And I was able to communicate cause before I wasn't able to communicate. So now I'm trying to find some like, you know, laughing this within it to communicate like the things that make us, us uniquely odd. But, and I, but then I explained, like I was getting so irritated that I wasn't able to concentrate to what the person was saying to me. And I was getting so frustrated and tight. The, I started to not be able to breathe and I communicated and that person's like, oh wow, like, whoa, Over.
So, so that may be Misophonia Katie, because you weren't feeling the tag. Now, if it was your clothes and your tag, and it was touching you, which has happened many times, you would be, you would rip that tag off of your shirt or rip it off of the pillow or whatever, because touching, it was irritating that sensory processing disorder. Now you see that tag and you remember that the problem of touching it and you kind of clench your fist or you hold your breath, see that tag, you hold your breath. The Lizard brain then picks up that Reflex. And then that's Misophonia. So seeing that tag was probably Misophonia because it wasn't hitting you directly.
It wasn't hitting any of your senses, senses strongly. It was just,
Let's go a little deeper then. So with the thoughts of rage and being upset and stuff. So for me with the tax specifically, I have some association from when I was younger. I don't know how, but I have some association where I think that what happens is I think that I'm judging. I'm like, that is disgusting. That is cheap. That's what I think. I'm like, Ooh, rip that tag off. Anyone who has a tax showing same thing when like you give someone a gift and like the price tags on it, like you didn't think to like, take the price off. Like it's, I don't care if it was $3,000. Like, I don't care if it was $3, like take the price tag off. It's like, it's kind of like
Normal as good policy. Good. Polite. Yeah. You would
Think, you would think. But like, I feel like it's the same thing with tags. It's the same thing or the same thing with price tags. It's the same thing with a tag, from a pillow or a tag from the blanket. So I did the short film, hashtag selfie, and she's wearing a bikini and to pawn on the stuff. I didn't know that we're talking about now. Cause I did this like in 2017 or something I'm like that girl's wearing her tag, sticking out. That's a fashion now. Now like you're supposed to know to like, you know, not have tags, so, right. So are we clear on if that is Misophonia or let's make
Misophonia is I learned reflex reaction. When I say learn, there is a, there is a stimulus, a negative thought typically and a muscle tightness. And let's say your case, you hold your breath. Samuel is thought, hold your breath. Stimulus, thought, hold your breath. It loser. Brian sees that pattern goes, Katie, I can do that for you. Let me help you. And now you see that stimulus and you lose your brain goes and your chest and you hold your breath and like, and then you get the, then you start to get the emotional Reflex. So if it's a learn Reflex, it is Misophonia. If it is a genetic Reflex, it's sensory processing disorder. So you can have both, you can have both, you can start with a closed tag, just annoys me and I'm going to rip it off.
And then you can develop that as a misophonia triggers. And it sounds to me like seeing that close tag and being upset by it as a misophonia triggers. Yeah.
And full disclosure, 1000%, if there's anything where I can rip a tag off, I always do. And I, my niece, she just got a bunch of stuff and I just went in there and just ripped it out. I'm like, yo, do you want these tags on here? Or no? You know what I mean? Like people are like, oh, you could just leave the tags. But no, I'm like, it is that if it's, I mean, if it's bill or like lawn Vaughn or something, Prada, of course I'm going to leave the beautiful tag, but it's usually silk and gorgeous and put in the right place. Right. Not to stick out. Okay. So I'm going to flip the script real quick and get a short story that I shared with you on what happened to me before I knew Misophonia, just because I've been on the journey of observing behavior. And I started that in 2014, where I was going to be acutely aware to jealousy and anger, right.
And allow, and have a trusted space for allow to have that come out, which was a journey anyways. So the thing is, I remember when I got my first house in valley village and two car parking garage, like no one behind me. Cause I do voiceovers. The side of me is my driveway. And the front of me is my other rooms, a living room. So like I am good. And the other side, I have a beautiful backyard patio area gorgeous. So there is like, when I'm looking for my house, there is, it's a bungalow like 1950s, like a cute bungalow, but like my first, my first home, right. And all this concrete behind me, all this dead space, then space behind me.
It's a two car parking garage. And so I've all this space behind me. So I'm thinking, oh, because of my sound reflexes and having things peaceful and quiet and you know, for my sanity and privacy and to enjoy my lifestyle of being in my home and for, you know, for my profession needing to be mindful of that, I got this place and I was in my place the very first week in my place, the very first week, all of a sudden behind the, the dense area of the concrete is a huge fence. And then there's a whole yard. But within that whole entire space, there's a dog. And so what happened was this dog started barking. And initially I thought by, I started like cringing and being like, oh, I can't believe this is going to happen.
And then I stopped myself and I'm like, if I can actually, from the root of it, decide, this is God's grace. This is nature. This is beautiful. I I'm protected. If anyone comes around, there's a dog actually to protect me. I created a neurological connection with a good experience instead of a negative one. And I mean, I had that beautiful house for four years and I didn't hear the dog, but when I did hear the dog, I thought it was beautiful. So is that what you were talking about when you have that first rooted thought about
And had you cap it had you kept that, ah, this is horrible. This is horrible. Oh, this is a horrible. So there was a sound, the dog barking, you have that, oh, this is horrible. And when you think of this is horrible, somewhere in your body, you're going to tense up. You may hold your breath. You may clench your fists. You might pull your shoulders up. But somewhere in your body, there is a physical reaction with a negative emotion. And as soon as your lizard brain goes, bark, shoulders, go up, Bart, shoulders, go up. It says, oh, Katie, I can do that for you. And then every time you hear that bark, the shoulders go up. So you did, you basically dodged the bullet of a, of a misophonia triggers there.
Now I tell people that I will never develop it. Some people develop triggers to snoring and I will never develop a trigger to my wife's store storing because I know she has trouble going to sleep. So when I hear her snoring, I say, oh, good, she's asleep. And then if I need to, I put my earplugs in. But, but, but if, if I let that bother me, my lizard brain would see the pattern and it would start zapping me
For the listener and the viewer tuning in right now. I hope you just understood this on a psychological level, that when you're presented with something new, the choice to have it be a positive or a detrimental experience, maybe make the choice for it to be a pleasant one. Because like Tom just said, I would have totally been unhappy and miserable for, you know, however long I lived there always finding a reason to be irritated and upset when I'm supposed to be in my peaceful home. And the other thing I want to say in which my comical mind went to anyone meeting their mother-in-law, if anything comes up, make sure you connect in a positive way from the beginning for the
Absolutely, because that is
Life long.
We hope it's a whole lifelong. Absolutely. Right.
Well, if we make the wrong choice or the latter choice or the unpleasant choice, it won't be lifelong. Maybe that's why maybe that's why the divorce rate is so high.
Well, you know, you're talking about the divorce rate high I'm thinking Misophonia is common. Most people think it, a lot of people think it's a rare condition, but it's really a rarely known condition. Misophonia affects probably 10 to 12% of people in of adults in the United States at a significant level. How many? 10 to 12%, one out of every 10, one out of every eight people, adults in the United States has significant Misophonia. There's been two studies using college, undergraduate students. One was a dorm survey and the women's dorm. And the other was just take, take a survey and get a free point for psychology.
One of them found 19.9% Misophonia. The other one, I think found 20.6% of the people had Misophonia. And there was a study out of a psychological center in Spain where they screened everybody coming in. And 35% of the people going to this psychological center for all kinds of things had Misophonia. One out of every three had Misophonia and only 2% knew had come because of those sound problem. The others just thought they were cranky or, or easily annoyed.
Well, what you're saying is so important, I feel like everyone listening will definitely identify because the thing is, I mean, I am an empath. I'm very empathetic and I know this isn't an HSP episode, Highly Sensitive persons, but it kind of taps into the sense of, you know, being sensitive. So I know that 15 it's on Google, 15 to 20% of the population of HSP where they're highly sensitive persons. And I've known that since like 20 12, 20 14. And before I understood, and I'm still understanding it's very new to me. Yeah. Just six months ago, the Misophonia is like me being who I am and the studies that I do and holding space for me. Like I hold space for others and me being difficult and tough on myself and me thinking something's wrong with me.
And I'm taking it internally thinking something's wrong, but it's people don't know. And if people don't know, and I don't know, and I don't know it, but other people don't know. But then I'm like thinking what you said, I'm cranky. This must be wrong with me being able to have the N you know, like Dalai Lama and people are like, oh, have more compassion for yourself. Like have more compassion for others, but have more space and compassion and kindness for self. But we don't understand what we don't know that we don't know that we don't know. And we don't understand. We just have, you know, haven't heard of Misophonia and we don't know these are natural, you know, triggers how they're developed, how what's going on here. So it's like, now that I know the language of it, I'm able to be like, put like a flag on it or pull a gold and a warrant on it.
Like, oh, well this is what it is. It's who I am. I'm going to own it. I'm going to hold space for myself. And I wanted to talk to you about, cause I asked you from being insecure and not knowing I was leaving Republican pie and Malibu, if anyone wants amazing pie, go to Republican pie and Magnolia, it's amazing valley village. The owner is so cool. I had an art show in there, everything, but we were leaving. It was like my meetup place. And we were leaving with Sean and Harry. Polly's amazing. And all of a sudden it's a very like cool area. So there's a stoplight like right. Meters away. And there's a stoplight and it's, there's a lot of cars and a lot of cool, like gorgeous people walking around. Everyone's like looking around, people are sitting outside and we're leaving and there's an ambulance. And it was so loud.
And it's like, oh my God. And I literally like needed to, like, I like wanted to freak out. I'm like attack. I'm under attack. I want to hide. I wanna run. I wanna run to my car. I have my, I got my keys out. I'm like already at the car. People were like, yo, slow down. What are you doing? But I'm like going like this and people who don't know me, they're just looking at me like, yo, like, I mean, they're kind and compassionate. It's a shaman. So who better to have this situation happened with when you're a showman. But even me, I'm trying to be like calm down. But I'm so sensitive that I'm like covering my eyes. I don't want to see, you know, there's an ambulance, there's an accident. People are yelling at each other. I'm wanting to go like this because we're attention goes energy flows. And I want to get myself out of the situation because I'm over Sensory here.
But I, I didn't have earplugs on me at that time. I wasn't carrying earplugs. I do. Now. I have a big box of earplugs, neon pink. They're amazing. And I do. I secretly carry in all my bags and coats earplugs. And when I go, I'm getting off track for a second. But when I go to music, concerts events, or even a restaurant, I'll always have my left ear. For some reason, it's more sensitive. I think one year you hear more with, but I'll always just in one ear. I always choose. I'll put the earplug in one ear and I won't on the right. And that really protects and put a buffer like you mentioned earlier, but what can someone do when they're in a situation and they're feeling like their head's gonna explode. And it goes from zero to hear a really quick scoop of breeze, but how
Relax your muscles, relax your muscles plug. You did the right thing by plugging your ears, close your eyes. If you need to walk away, go to the bathroom. If you're in a situation where it's a problem, because if it's Misophonia, the more you sit there and endure the trigger, the stronger your physical refence becomes the stronger your emotional Reflex becomes the worst for me, it gets, if you get tough with your Misophonia, try to face it, head on. I'm going to sit here until it goes away. After trigger, after trigger, after trigger, it typically will just get more and more and more severe. So there's not a lot. I mean, in that situation, Katie plug your ears. There's not a lot you can do.
So I think my prefrontal cortex, my rational cortex just shut down. Cause I went to fight and flight mode. But I guess what I could have done that I didn't think about. Cause I was just thinking, get to my car. I actually could have opened the door and be like, oh, I got to go to the bathroom. And I could've ran back in and like went to the bathroom maybe for five or 10 minutes for it to subside for, to go past. But I guess more intently though. How, if, if I'm going somewhere, like you're going with your wife or your partner somewhere to something and they know you and they know about Misophonia or how social anxiety or you're a sensitive person. But what if you're in a group of things with people and something happens, how do you communicate? And let them know without letting them know? Or like, how do you communicate? So they don't, they're like what's going on?
Like what? What's the language you can share with them to not explain yourself to calm down?
Okay. Well, if you need help, if somebody is chewing gum, besides you, and that's a trigger and you need them to stop, you can say something like I have this Reflex condition called Misophonia where a certain soft sounds hurt me. Could you help me by stopping to in gum? Most people like to help. If you are trying to explain Misophonia to somebody, you can say, I have this Reflex condition called Misophonia. It's not a choice. It's a Reflex where certain soft, little funny thoughts sounds chewing sniffing or whatever, Trigger a very distressing reaction. Now that's a, that's a gross understatement of the Misophonia experience, but people can believe that there's a reflex that triggers and makes you feel bad.
And so you don't need to tell them that you're full of rage and anger and disgust, and you want to choke them until their ma their food comes flying out of their mouth. And you don't have to tell them the truth, but just, just kind of say, it's a Reflex condition called Misophonia and it's pretty common. And so there are certain sounds. I really can't tolerate, but in the moment, Katie, in the moment, there's not a good solution. Plug your ears, take a break, close your eyes, scuba, Bri, relax your muscles. Now, if you, if you had done the muscle training at that time and would have just relaxed your muscles and scuba breathe, then that would have probably brought you way down.
It would change the whole experience.
He knew that in the language and understanding, and I feel because day to day, I'm aware that I'm able to do the scuba breathing and also have more compassion because I understand what it is. Like there's only, there's an anxiety about not knowing, but now that you know, there's just a soothing just to knowing that as well. The other thing is like, not a lot, but I remember like sometimes people would be like, oh, like you're being paranoid. You're being, you're being paranoid. So the best thing was it wasn't being paranoid. I was protecting myself to get out of the situation. So at 1000%, it's good to not explain yourself to just get out of the situation.
Not because you're paranoid, but like you just need to not feel that way. So it's
Your, body's going crazy. Your autonomic nervous system, your, your distress level, your cortisol and the stress hormones everything's firing. And you're, you're out of control. You're physiologically out of control. You need to take a break.
Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. That was really, really important for solutions. Since you're a solution person, I feel for the people tuning in to have that reassurance. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Also, I actually want to circle back around because I was wanting to know the difference about where we've been talking about Misophonia. We're going to continue to talk about it, but the difference of knowing and oh, see obsessive compulsive. So we can use me as the muse. If so, but how do I know if it's Misophonia or if it's an obsessive compulsive thing that I might be doing?
Okay. So if in the presence of a stimulus, a sound, let's just take a sound sniffing. You're having as extreme reaction. That's Misophonia. If you're getting ready to go into a room and you don't want to go into the room because you saved the person in there has a cold and they're going to be sniffing, then that is just avoidance of a known hazard. It's like, I don't want to walk into the room of rattlesnakes. Okay. I'm anxious about that. And that is typical anxiety, anticipatory anxiety of something very unpleasant. If however, there's a thought that's maybe giving you the jitters, like maybe I didn't say the right thing, or I need to go say something or maybe I didn't lock the door or maybe I got germs on me.
And the thought is making you feel anxiety. And then you do something in the anxiety goes down. That's more obsessive compulsive. So there, there are similarities, but it's, it's very different. Cause obsessive compulsive behavior, you'd have to give me an example. Maybe if there's something that you hear or see that causes an obsessive compulsive behavior, but generally it's a thought that's triggering your anxiety saying you need to go wash your hands or do something. And then once you do that, the anxiety goes away. That's obsessive compulsive.
What, what if someone doesn't leave the toilet seat down or they're leaving drawers open. That's
Just an annoying person to live
With. Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah. It's good to explore these things. I think I asked you, but just in case maybe someone tuning in wants to know and you know, mental health as been on the forefront. Thank goodness gracious. You know, you can't really, there's not a test for bipolar. There's not a test for ADHD. So is Misophonia associated at all? Do you think with bipolar or ADHD or do we not know yet?
The, it, it doesn't seem to be distinctly associated with any condition that there's people who have anxiety who developed Misophonia there's people who have sensory processing disorders, sensory sensitivity, like you do are more likely to develop Misophonia. And then there are people who have no kind of other condition and they still develop Misophonia. So if you have your psychological stability compromised in any way, sensory processing disorder, obsessive, compulsive, bipolar, whatever, you're more likely to be in a situation where you're annoyed by some common sound and then develop Misophonia. But it's not really, it's not a sign of any condition because people with different psychological conditions may be more likely to develop Misophonia, but it's not associated with it.
Thank you. Thank you for that. And then we talked about one being the motors, right? Everything. We talked about a motor and the other one, they're both M's motor metal, motor metal. And we got into discussions of like scissors and knives and forks, scraping of the teeth. And for me with the motor, I feel like I'm able to be like, oh, I'm not breathing and then breathe. But I feel with the metal objects, I feel like so tight and cringe. I feel like my instrument can't open and I can't breathe. I feel like I can't open it and I can't breathe. So any thoughts on that?
It sounds like on a scale of zero to 10, when you hear a motor, you're having a reaction of an eight, that's stopping you from breathing and, and, and you can read through it. And when you hear that scissors or that metal on teeth, you're having a reaction of a 12 and it's just totally overwhelming you. It sounds similar because they're both hitting you in the chest area and stopping you breathing. So you're just getting a much stronger reaction to those metal metal on metal. Sounds like
The jaw clenches
To now the jaw clinch could be a secondary reaction. It may be. I hear the metal Lizard. Brian's zaps you on the chest, stops you from breathing. You have this, and that takes about 200 milliseconds for that to happen. Then you instantly get this rage response. And what goes with anger, clenched jaw goes with anger. So it could be that the experience is really the kind of downstream after the Trigger, all of the distress responses you're having. And I, the only way to really kind of get into that, to try to find out is to use something like the Misophonia Reflex Finder App, where we're making very, very, very small sounds.
And you notice where in your body, you first feel it. So we made a tiny one and you felt it in your jaw and your chest would say, okay, both of those are your initial Reflex. Okay. But I do want to point out Katie that took people to the listeners. Most people will believe that they don't have an initial physical Reflex. They just feel rage. The emotions dwarf the Reflex completely.
Yeah. But there's the in between, there's the in between you talked about in the beginning and we've been talking about it the whole time again, just to communicate it's the initial re physical Reflex. So before I dive deep into a few more questions, just to kind of take a deep breath and reset, is there anything you would like to share that we haven't brought up yet or a direction you want to go in?
I would like to say there really is treatment for me. Sonia, if you go out on the internet, you look about Misophonia. You watch the, the documentary quiet, please. It's like, this is hopeless. There is no treatment. There's nothing we can do. We don't understand this. And the answer from Misophonia Institute is we do understand it. There is treatment that is generally very beneficial for people and we provide it by video chat. So I just want to say there really is treatment from Misophonia. So this is not a lifelong debilitating does not have to be a lifelong debilitating condition.
And you don't even have to take a prescription pill to ruin your Oregon's. Right. You don't
Have to,
There's no side effects. It's just, you know, and okay, so people can actually have private sessions with you, Misophonia institute.org, and then private sessions with you. There's the app people can download. This is great. This is so good. And I need to watch the documentary because I have not seen that. And you may have just inspired me to watch it. And then I can write an article on thrive global on Arianna Huffington's platform. Cause I write for her and I can talk about that and then say how I met you and, and let people know that actually what you've just said. So I, I love this and I'm going to, I've already put it into my heart and into the ethers.
We've created it. And I'm going to hold myself accountable to watch this documentary and, and then to take action on what you just said. Thank you for
Sure. And let me throw out one thing, Katie Misophonia institute.org is a information. It's our nonprofit information. If you're looking for treatment, go to Misophonia treatment.com. That's my side. And I have a number of people listed there who in the treatment provider directory.
And so I'll have, and should they do that or should I put your link so they can maybe just set up an appointment directly as well? W what's the best for you?
Anybody can email me or call me. That's not a problem. You re, if you go Google, Tom Dozier, you'll find the baseball picture picture. But if you Google Tom Dozier, Misophonia, you'll find me. I'll just
Put the email in the show.
Absolutely love to have people contact,
Take out the, another set for the people, right? Just click and, oh, I do have dimension because of you and the Institute, actually, these headphones I'm wearing right now are so Boston and amazing. And actually, so they're noise, canceling headphones. And I got them. I went through your whole entire website of all the ones. And so I have these and they are just the Bentley and like Ferrari of headphones. And they're so smooth and bossing. I love him so much and there's such great quality. So I just want to say thank you so much because these headphones have just really enhanced my overall wellbeing.
So thank you for that
To help people.
Yeah. So if you need to know, cause like going online and like, if it can be so overwhelming and there's definitely so many different price points from like zero to hero, so you can find what is good and affordable for you and knowing like, you know, the investments in, for your, your own self sanity and health care. So self care. So cool. So I have read that brain imaging studies, I'm Misophonia. What is happening in our brains when we are triggered that causes the misses a phony, a reaction. Any, any more thoughts on that?
Yeah, I, so, so I briefly kind of was on that a little bit earlier, but here's the, here's a picture for those who are watching the video. So you have your, your autonomic nervous system down at the bottom. That's your brain, it's at the top of your spine, your spine swells up a little bit. And that's your autonomic nervous system goes into the base of your brain. That system does your reflexes. It keeps you breathing and blinking and sweating. And it also has the ability to learn new reflexes. So Misophonia starts when that little lizard brain of yours learns to zap a particular muscle. When it hears a certain sound, I hear a sniff, my fists, Clint, okay, that's the start.
Then that signal comes up into the anterior insula, which is in deep, deep, deep in your cerebrum, your thinking brain, it gets the internal signal and the external sound, relays that out to a little learning spot behind your eyebrows, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and it relays back the message, oh, I recognize this. This is discussed. And then those little, the anterior insula then fires down into the amygdala and hippocampus. And you're in your limbic system, in your emotional brain. And then you have the boom ex extreme emotions. And the physical Reflex starts about two tenths of a second after the Trigger store.
So you can start hearing a sniff, 200 millisecond Slater, the muscle fires, probably another 50 to a hundred milliseconds later. It's relayed out to the spots and back, and your emotions are just going crazy. So it's, and it's such an extreme, emotional reaction that you never even realized that there was a physical part to it. And then, and then you feel distress, right? Katie you have this overall horrible muscles, tight hearts racing, going crazy. And that's, that's a distress response that just clouds everything else. But that is that at least we see that it's, it's an emotional Reflex. So if you have Misophonia be kind to yourself about how guilty you feel about hating somebody, you really love because you don't really hate them.
If these are fake emotions, but they are what we call pain and Doost anger.
Yeah. And as much as you think you Lowe's that person, you feel like you said so guilty and bad about it. There's this such, this deep guilt there that you would even feel that way about someone it's just, it's so tiring and it's so saddening. And it's painful to think that personally, I go to that place and I don't want to go to that place. You know?
So, so Katie, if you dress up nice to go out to some fancy thing and it's hot on you're walking outside and you start sweating, should you feel guilty for sweating? No. No, because it's a Reflex, right? The emotions are Reflex. They're not real
Like the viewer and the listener right now, seriously on your Tinder account or whatever dating app you might be on, you need to like, let people know like Misophonia so they can go home before you actually meet up, you know? Cause y'all are going to be like into the relationship. Like that needs to be like within the first like couple of conversations. Right? I think, cause then, then I think it will have better partnerships with people to,
And it's great to have somebody who will help you. I was helping a lady once who was in our, oh, she was about 30. And she was getting into a serious relationship associated with coming to me for help. And we were doing some management things. And one of the things she found is it wearing the Bose earbuds at a restaurant, made a huge difference. And her boyfriend was very respectful of it. And they would be in the restaurant and he would say, put on your headphones. He said, and she was like, but the food's not here yet. He goes, I know, put on your headphones because once you're triggered, you're it's all over your face. It's like, ah, and so he was like, come on. It's okay. It's not a problem.
Manage this well with your, you know, a little bit of noise going into your ears will make so much of a difference and you will keep smiling and we will have a great dinner together. And so having somebody who's supportive is so critical in our relationship.
Yeah. So it's preventative, right? It's a lot of that preventative measures love that. Love that. Okay. So some of this might be a recap, but I feel like it's a lot to comprehend and understand. Sometimes as humans, we need to hear things multiple times. Why does a sound made by a person Trigger one horribly, but the same sound made by an animal or a young child does not.
So a, your lizard brain is stupid and smart. It's stupid. And the fact that it has no initiative and no creativity, but it can, it can watch and learn. It's a very good washer and any kind of learn Lizard Brian Reflex, which we have, tons of them can includes both the stimulus, the sound in this case, let's say. And the context. So the, I was working with a woman doing some relaxation training online and she said just a second. I think there's kids playing behind my house. And I said, well, is that triggering you to go?
Oh yeah, she goes away. She comes back a minute later and says, oh, they're doing some repair work. It's not a problem. So when she thought it was children playing, it was a trigger. Once you found out it was adult working, it was not. Now we've all seen the, the MGM lion roar at the start-up a movie, no big deal. Right? Imagine you're in a tent up in the mountains at two o'clock in the morning and you hear, you would freak out. You would have a totally different reaction, even though the stimulus was the same, the context was different. And so context is a critical part of a misophonia triggers.
Got it. Okay. Okay. Thank you for sharing. And then I just, what came to my funny brain while you were sharing was I wanted to tell you what I've been doing is when something triggers, I'll take my finger and rub it right here and I'll be like, it's okay. Lizard. It's okay. I'll like, I'll be like, that's what I'll do. I'll go like that. It's just like tame my little Lizard over here. You know? So it's like something, it feels good actually, you know? Cause I know I can be connected to my physical body because that's what it is. The physical
Yeah, it is. That's right. And, and, and that's really part of overcoming your Misophonia is to try to bring down your reaction and not give way to the anger and the fury and the, the terminal.
Yeah. Because it can go from zero to hero because of what we've talked about. So it can go from zero to hero. When I thought, you know, oh, I would be like, oh, that must be what people call extreme or bipolar, you know, or people just try to put labels on things. But it's like, no, I mean, it's just, it's literally, it's like, cool. And then boom, it's like, you know, something else. So I love having that compassion for oneself and you know, giving it a different, different name and label to it. So how and why do we develop triggers? Is there a way to prevent this?
So the basic Pavlovian conditioning that's what we're dealing with here is that any time your lizard brain notices a stimulus and notices of physical reactions, stimulus Muscle tightens stimulus, let's say I raise my shoulders stimulus, raise my shoulders that the Lizard brain sees a pattern. And it's because it's watching for seconds after a stimulus. And it sees that pattern of the shoulders going up and it says, oh, I can do that for you. I can automate that process. So you don't have to do that on your own. And then it's stimulus soldiers go up and then you you're irritated and you kind of go and you pull them up a little more. And those were, Brian goes, oh my goodness. I did exactly what Tom wanted me to do.
That's just wonderful the way. And that's the way triggers develop. There's a stimulus. There's a negative thought and an action stimulus, negative thought action. So chill out. When you hear something that's annoying or irritating, put a positive spin on it, relax, move away. If you need to, because you can develop triggers and maybe a trigger in maybe 20 minutes. One man shared a room with his brother. He had, his brother had allergies. He had anxiety. He tried to go to sleep. He was hearing his brother breathe after 20 or 30 minutes, he went to the couch. But after that one night, every time he heard his brother breathe for the next 30 years, it triggered him.
So these lit there's, this lizard brain sees a pattern and you don't want to, you don't want to let it see the pattern you want to hit say, sound relaxed body. That's where you want to go to, to stop triggers from developing.
Thank you. And then is the Lizard brain connected to the, the base of the spine?
It actually is the top of the, as, as the spinal cord comes up at the top of the spine, it starts to get larger and larger. And, and that's where the Lizard brain starts down in down actually starts in the spine and comes up just above this fine.
That was told years ago. That's where all the information stored is that correct?
I don't know what that means.
Okay. And I guess, oh, if that connects all of the information stored in your spine.
Well now no information is stored everywhere. Nowadays we find the brain is as we use all of our brain, we don't use 2% of our Bryant. We use all of our brain is always running. Whether or not we're awake or asleep and information is stored in all different kinds of places. So I don't want to know about any specifics.
Well, I'm glad I asked about that to hack it out. Okay. So some say we are born with Misophonia, which you definitely said, it's a learned behavior. What makes Misophonia a star? What causes that first trigger to develop? So we definitely chatted about it, but we'd love to hear a recap on it.
It's at that first trigger starts when there's an annoying, irritating, maybe somebody something's violating the rules. They're not following etiquette rules. Maybe I feel like I'm being treated unfairly when I'm hearing that. But there's a sound, a negative thought. And an action one man was in his late twenties. He had a pair of build a nest outside of his bedroom window. And that sounds so cute to have baby birds outside your, your bedroom window, except the male Mockingbird sharps 24 hours a day, times a year. So he's getting that chirp, chirp, chirp. I can't go to sleep. And he hears the Mockingbird sharp and he gets goosebumps on his upper arms.
And that was, that's just accidental learning. So there's a sound negative thought. And an action Lizard. Brian sees it starts zapping You the emotional Reflex bills and bills and bills. And it just spreads and spreads and spreads.
Okay. This is a false scenario. It's make-believe, I'm an actor here. It didn't happen to me, but I'm just wondering from a child, doesn't have to be a child, but let's just go for a child. Let's say a child's in her room, working out, doing whatever she's doing and a parent or a sibling, someone they're always entering the room before knocking before respectfully. Like you said, if someone crosses a boundary or something like that. So let's say a child is in their room there. People are just barging in and that person develops some kind of thing. Like I'm feeling disrespected or someone keeps coming in my room and like not knocking. And they don't like that. What are some prime examples of what, of what they could develop?
Would that be something like Misophonia something they could do?
I think I have exactly Misophonia Katie that a person would be, would be in their room and they would hear the door knob turn. And then they would have a parent bar Jan and they would feel, and when they felt emotionally, like they were, their privacy was violated. That was going to be a physical reaction. So the Lizard brain doesn't notice that you feel emotionally violated or, or it, it, it just seized the muscles, but the door knob turning and all of a sudden it, it sees a muscle tighten doorknob Muscle, and it goes, I can do that for you.
And then doorknob turns and you get that jolt to your body and then you get the anger developing from it.
And that's when you're a child. And like, parents are just unconscious to that. They just don't know. But you know, it's that subtlety, right? It's the unspoken, it's that subtlety. So to be more mindful, people say, oh, you know, you don't know what someone else is going through. Like, we really don't know what is happening on the inside of people have something happened, maybe when, if an adult's listening to this, if it happened when they were a child, like, oh my God, I read, oh, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. I remember like someone used to do this to me. Maybe that's where it stems from. And then when you know where it stems from, and then you do the app and you do Misophonia treatments, and then that could be the process to discovery and recovery.
Well, actually, Katie, it's a little bit like a phobia knowing where the phobia started, doesn't help you get rid of it. So knowing where your Misophonia is started, doesn't get rid of the physical Reflex. So you have the treatment that I provide gets helps you eliminate the physical Reflex is, and it really doesn't matter whether where it started. Now, there are cases where you hate the person and there's there's trauma and there's other things. And as for the psychologist to work on, I can work on The Misophonia piece. But, but generally you don't have to know where it started. You just have to decide you're going to do something about it and get the right help because there are caring people out there that don't understand Misophonia and do not know how to treat it.
Got it. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. This is great. This is so beautiful. Okay, cool. Cool. Okay. So once a person develops a misophonia triggers, is it easier to develop more triggers?
Actually, the research shows that it is the brain research that showed which part of the brains were activated and the anger and all in that process. They had people without Misophonia where they would play the chewing sounds for example, and they would get a strong response from their little BMP FC behind the eyebrows that says, do not react, stay calm, move along. This is unimportant where the person with me is that fine. You would get up reaction. Then they also did unpleasant sounds, you know, whatever that was used in the study. And what they found with the unpleasant sounds is that a person with Misa, without Misophonia had a small inhibition of emotion and the person with Misophonia had a moderate or moderate boost to the emotion.
So you're more with Misophonia. You're more likely to let the annoyance factor kick in and hear that sound. Notice it be more irritated in a study we conducted back in 2017, Kate Morrison and I, which is published in the American journal of psychology. We had people here, we triggers and identify where in their body they felt it. And about half of the people had a different part of the body for it, let's say for chewing, their shoulders would raise up and for sniffing, their toes would curl. So it was con that means they had developed Misophonia independently twice.
So yes, it's easier once you develop Misophonia and you're annoyed by these sounds, it's easier to let yourself be annoyed and aware and pay attention to other sounds to develop new Trigger.
Thank you. That's okay. Good. I just want to say thank you so much for your interests and everything that you're doing because you're an angel. You are an angel and it's just, it's magnificent. Thank you. Thank you so much. What is this again? The S P what is this? An above the eyebrow
Eyebrows. It's the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, the PFC. Got it. And it's, and it's an emotional learning structure. So for example, if you see a piece of paper, that's, you know, rectangular and it's laying on the ground, you go, oh, whatever. But if you look down and you see it's a hundred dollar bill, you immediately have a, Hey and I have a positive emotional reaction. And that's the, the MPFC that's that little, you smell grandma's house and go, Hey, I'm at grandma's house. That's the BM PFC, this learning that it's sparking these positive emotions, but it also sparks the negative ones. It's a, it's an emotional Reflex learning structure.
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
Okay. Got it. Cool. Cool. So something that comes up for me immediately, I don't know why, but I guess because of airplanes and turbulence, so I prefer direct flights, but one, you know, a lot of times when I was shooting a lot of movies in Shreveport, Louisiana, because of the tax incentive, we would always have to fly into Texas. I think it was Dallas or Houston. It was Dallas or Houston. One of the airports, you have to fly from LA to Dallas or Houston. I think it was Dallas. And then it goes to Shreveport. There's no direct flight. And literally nine times out of 10, every single time, the flight was delayed because of thunder storms. And it's like, so I have a, a negative fearful thing because I don't like going up, going down.
Like, I don't want to go four times. I already have to go, you know, one time up at one time down. I don't want to go two times up to two times down. So, you know, elimination. Right.
Okay. Would
That be the, that five letters of the PFC from wanting the emotional Sensory, that connection of like, not wanting to go to the airport because I know what's going to be delayed and
Yeah, I think so. I think it's, it's an automatic emotion, right? It's Automatic. It's not a, it's not a thoughtful, it's just like, Ugh.
Yeah. But if we think of Bali and baldies, I'm like, ah, cool, cool. All right. We're honing it in here. I have heard you say Misophonia is contagious. What do you mean by that?
So if you hear a sound and you have a negative reaction, that negative reaction includes a muscle tightening and sound muscle tightening lizard brain sees it. That's Misophonia. So if you have someone you love and you hear a sound of that, oh no, that's going to upset them. Oh no, that's going to make him mad. Then, then you hear the sound and you have a negative reaction and you develop a trigger to it. So for example, one mother,
All females, by the way, all the examples have been female. I've noticed it's are women more apt to having Nisa phobia?
No, but they're more apt to have more serious Misophonia. So men are as, just as likely to have Misophonia. So let's just suppose a dad here's so you take a daughter 12 year old daughter, maybe explosive 12 year old daughter when she's triggered and she's triggered by mom's throat clearing. So dad hears mom clear her throat and he's thanks. Oh, no. As soon as he's going to go ballistic. And so here's mom clear the throat says, oh, Susie's going to hear that. And then all of a sudden, the Lizard brain sees that throat clearing goes with dad, clenching his shoulders. And now dad has Misophonia.
So just any time you're connected with a person with Misophonia and especially the more aware and concerned you are for that person. When you hear their Trigger youth, you have a negative thought with a muscle tightening and you can, you can develop Misophonia to their, to their triggers.
Wow. This conversation really, really enlightens the reasonings, why we really need to be so compassionate and sentimental and sensitive, subtle with one another, because it's that slight, you know, we're really affecting one another,
Right? But sometimes that compassion, like again, when you know it's for another person and you feel that compassion, then you need to be able to relax and not have an anger, a little, a mini anxiety attack, which, which people who are very highly sensitive people and are very strongly, emotionally connected often do. Right? You have that. You feel their pain. And again, that just sets you up to pick up their triggers.
Wow. That's like a whole nother podcast. Seriously. Okay. So last question. Cause I know we have been going, rocking and rolling and we appreciate you being here. And Tom, I'm so grateful, you know, for you. You're amazing. I know we already covered the initial physical Reflex, you know, before we worked together, I thought I did not have what you call an initial, a physical Reflex. I thought I just instantly felt rage. Is that common? And why don't we recognize the initial physical Reflex?
We've talked about it around us. That first little Reflex that hits you from your lizard brain happens 200 milliseconds. After you start hearing the sound. Maybe that's two tenths of a second, but maybe about three tenths of a second. You're in full blown rage and the rage just dwarfs everything else. And then you're having this rage and this distress response and your heart's beating really fast and you're sweating and, and you're clinching all the muscles in your body. So you just don't notice that initial physical Reflex it's a little bit like an avalanche. If you've ever seen a movie, a video of an avalanche, you got all the snow crashing down the hill, tumbling down all the two malls or the snow.
Nobody talks about where that first little slip of the snow occurred. But it's that first slip that then triggered all of the big tumult of the, of the avalanche. And that that's Misophonia. That initial Reflex is just a first little click to your body. And then the emotions go crazy. So you don't, people don't recognize it. And I've had most of the people I worked with think that they don't have an initial physical Reflex, or if they think that they do, it's really part of their distress response. It's not, it's not what starts it all.
Wonderful. Wonderful, cool. So, I mean, you are welcome back to she's all over the place. Anytime it would be a complete honor to have you, when you have new discoveries in anything new or anything more you want to share, you know, with the audience. And I just have to let everyone know who's listening on the audio. Who's not on the video, Tom and I both showed up today wearing this beautiful light purple. So we are in sync for you. We are totally in sync Sao. This is very, very exciting. Yeah. Any last words that you want to share with people, everyone knows how to get in touch with you. So it'll be in the show notes, but any last words,
Well, as the, the motto from galaxy quest never give up, never surrender. I say, have hope. Hang in there that we're learning so much about Misophonia. It's a horrible condition, but there is treatments currently, they're going to be better next year. There'll be better than your afterwards athlete. As we learned more, how to kind of change these reflexes, it's not a lifelong tragic condition. So have hope and take action and learn to relax.
Well, those words are, were very insightful and very helpful. So that's so great to hear. Thank you so much. That's really beautiful. Thank you. I appreciate
You, Katie.
Thank you so much, everyone for tuning into she's all over the place and we'll see, and talk with you next week. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you next time. Kyriaki, over and out.