However, others tend to believe that psychiatric disorders and misophonia might coexist. Some researchers argue that misophonia and psychiatric disorders are unrelated. Overall, patients may suffer physical and emotional discomfort, contributing to a reduced quality of life ( Edelstein et al., 2013).Īccording to Jastreboff and Jastreboff (2015), only 7 cases (2.2%) out of 318 misophonic patients exhibited a psychiatric disorder. Patients are hyper-focused on listening for that trigger they will avoid certain situations, people, and foods that they think will cause the sound ( Edelstein et al., 2013). However, because the patient is never sure when the trigger sound might be heard, the patient often lives in a perpetual state of anxiety.

Rarely do physical reactions, such as assaulting the person making the sound, occur. Sometimes patients will mimic the sound to cancel it out. In addition to the emotional aversion, patients sometimes report physical pressure building in the chest, the desire to stop the person from making the sound, and other autonomic reactions ( Moller, 2011). An intense negative emotional reaction is usually triggered by bodily sounds (e.g., chewing, breathing, swallowing, and foot tapping, etc.) and may be connected to a particular person creating that sound ( Edelstein et al., 2013 Schroder et al., 2013). Misophonia usually begins during childhood or adolescence, sometimes affecting academic performance ( Edelstein et al., 2013 Schroder et al., 2013). However, more recent research suggest that other than anger there is at least four other dominant emotions present in misophonia (i.e., irritation, stress and anxiety, aggravation, feeling trapped, and impatience) ( Rouw and Erfanian, 2018). From a phenomenological viewpoint, while fear is the dominant emotion in phonophobia, anger is the dominant emotion in misophonia. It is important to recognize that “subtype” implies that the class of sounds that elicit phonophobia are drawn from misophonic sounds or that they share a similar mechanism, neither of which is necessarily true. A subtype of misophonia is phonophobia, when fear to a specific sound is the dominant factor ( Jastreboff and Hazell, 1999 Henry et al., 2002 Jastreboff and Jastreboff, 2015). Misophonia can be distinguished from hyperacusis by its sensitivity to the subjective response provoked ( Pienkowski et al., 2014). Although hyperacusis and misophonia can coexist, hyperacusis refers specifically to an increased sensitivity to certain frequencies and volume ranges of sound ( Song et al., 2014). A patient’s negative reaction and dislike may occur in response to sound at any level. Prior to Jastreboff introducing the term misophonia, there have been different terms to describe the condition, such as soft sound sensitivity symptom, select sound sensitivity syndrome, decreased sound tolerance, and sound-rage ( Schwartz et al., 2011 Neal and Cavanna, 2013). Each patient’s reaction is unique as it depends on the specific conditions under which the sound was experienced and any previous evaluations of that sound. Misophonia is a derivate from the Greek words misos (hate) and phónè (voice), and means hate of sound. Misophonia is a condition where patients experience a negative emotional reaction and dislike (e.g., anxiety, agitation, and annoyance) to specific sounds (e.g., ballpoint pen clicking (repeatedly), tapping, typing, chewing, breathing, swallowing, tapping foot, etc.) ( Jastreboff and Jastreboff, 2002).

Auditory sensitivity and anxiety