Mouth Noises Make Jack Blow A Gasket

Misophonia is a disorder where you have a decreased tolerance to specific sounds and things you can sense related to them. Jack has this and has it bad. Joe can't stand pen tapping which falls into the same category. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I don't know how many years we've been talking about this,
or when they first identified something called missophonia. Can I
can still remember clearly the first moment I ever experienced
it and realized I had something wrong with me. Gladys,
I know we are on vacation. Do you still work here?
Gladys is playing the art. I'm reminiscing Gladys when I

(00:21):
reminisced you play the harp. I was in college and
I was sitting in a booth at the Taco John's
and Hayes, Kansas, and as with my girlfriend, and her
friend was slurping her chips and nacho cheese, and I
wanted to kill her in the restaurant and I slurping nachos,

(00:42):
and I was insanely murderously angry, and I couldn't figure
out why I was so upset. It was weird. And
that is miss aphonia, a little known syndrome, as it
says in The New York Times, characterized by strong negative
emotional reactions to certain sounds or visual cues. And the
he even mentions here that people think often when it
starts happening to them, because it can occur at various

(01:03):
points in your life or whatever. People think, what's wrong
with me? Why is this happening to me? I'm a
really nice person. Now I'm not a really nice person,
but I'll usually get murderously angry at maybe just reading.
But I started to. And they're figuring out what parts
of your brain it attacks for some reason, they're not
exactly sure why. The most common thing is uh, chewing, slurping,

(01:26):
that's the one I can't handle. Gum smacking, mouth breathing,
and sniffling are the number ones for people. My son
cannot handle. Sniffing makes him insane if somebody starts sniffing, oh, sniffling, Yeah,
well yeah, I guess, yeah, you're trying to smell something,

(01:49):
you know. I'm not even allowed one just minor ones.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Oh really?

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Just that going on makes his brother just absolutely crazy.
It it kicks off your fight or flight response for
some reason. They're not exactly sure why. It's outside of
your conscious awareness. It's very difficult, difficult to control, they're
not it's why more people have it now. It might
be like autism or a whole bunch of other things anxiety.
Why do more people have these various things going on

(02:13):
in the brains now? Various brain regions involved in miss aphonia,
including the anterior insulo, which has evolved in the processing
discussed fear and anxiety. It's possible that the brains of
people with it are like hypersensitive alarm systems, interpreting specific
innocuous sounds as threats. People with misphonia miss missophonia can
be set off many kinds of sounds and sites which

(02:36):
I'd never heard before.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Wow, phony site interesting?

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Not just those made by mouths, finger and pen tapping.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Oh yeah, pen tapping makes me insane.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Right Like, that doesn't bother me. I have no idea
why somebody could tap or click a pen all day long.
That doesn't have any effect on me. You slurp your suit,
your soup. I want to murder someone, and why I
don't know. Foot shaking, that's the sight. Some people are
driven insane by someone else's shaking their foot. Yeah, jigging,
bouncing their knee or whatever. I'm glad that doesn't bother me.

(03:10):
Oh my god. The most common triggers are nose, mouth,
and throat noises, chewing, crunching, sniffling, snoring, sneezing, and throat clearing.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Wow, you go through that list?

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Very quickly, chewing, crunching, sniffling, snoring, sneezing. Ain't you Joe
filling in all the noises for us?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
For I'm like the foley guy for a movie, right,
I hear all those sounds.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
For people who just have no idea what a sneeze
could possibly sound like. There you are helpful as always.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
And throat clearing hmm, how about throats singing?

Speaker 3 (03:50):
I'm so this girl was she was taking her she'd
take her nacho chip. I can still picture it, and
this is forty years ago. She take her not too
chip and shed dip it in the cheese and then
she kind of like lick a little of it and
then stick it in her mouth and talk and then
like and just ah.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Thinking about it makes me insane, and I have no
idea why it makes me so mad. Or slip fruit
anybody eating fruit. Somebody eats a peach or a hair,
the slurp from of a piece of fruit, it kicks
off the I want to murder you thing in my
brain that nothing else does. There's nothing that makes me
that angry. Oh, somebody you know in bed with my

(04:31):
lover wouldn't make me as angry as hearing them eat soup.
Just don't eat a peach, all right, they