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When that misophonia trigger hits ya

[strongfromourveryweakness]

Hi, first of all I hope you're having a lovely day! Second, thanks for making that video about how you've been dealing with misophonia. As someone who's had it for as long as I can remember, I'm really only beginning to learn about it. Your video was super helpful and informative and I wish you and yours nothing but happiness!

Dear @atlasistryingherbest,

Thank you so much! I’m so glad I could help! I wish you the best in learning more about misophonia, and honestly in life in general :) Stay Brave Out There,Steve

[strongfromourveryweakness]

Hello! I just read your post from a few years ago that outlines how to go to the movies with misophonia and it was very informative. While my girlfriend and I use the headphones that the theater gives us to deal with the people in the actual theater, I was wondering if you had any tips with how to deal with the people on screen eating or chewing gum. There is usually no warning that there is about to be an eating scene in the movie.

Dear @6championshipdrive, 

Thank you for your question! Unfortunately I don’t have a great answer as far as the theaters go - I haven’t been to a theater in…in…

But I do have some tips for watching at home! My wife and I always have subtitles on whatever we’re watching just in case of people eating. In a pinch, we can just mute it and read the subtitles and not have to deal with noises! 

I’m sorry if that doesn’t answer your question very well :/ I know at some theaters they have special glasses with subtitles for the hearing impaired, but I’ve personally never used them. Try to call around to cinemas and ask if they have anything you could read subtitles with so you could turn off your headphones whenever that happens. 

Thanks for the question!Stay Brave,Steve

[strongfromourveryweakness]

My Blog is Off to Preschool!!

Okay not really, but I just realized my blog is 4 years old today and that’s honestly wild to me. I met my beautiful wife through this blog. I’ve had speaking opportunities because of this blog. I’m the Misophonia Research Institute’s vice-chairman of Public Awareness because of this blog. 

This blog has helped shape me into a decent person and I’m just glad I can help people with my horrible drawings and terrible sense of humor. 

Thanks everyone for four years. You are the reason I do what I do. I’ve met so many of you and you’re the very best of people and I’m so thankful for all of your support even though my hands have been useless this year because of ehlers-danlos syndrome and I haven’t been able to draw much xD 

Here’s to another year of whatever this is :) You guys are worth it and you’re all such beautiful, wonderful people.

Stay Brave Out There, Steven

[strongfromourveryweakness]

❄️🎄🎅🏾🦌❄️Here’s a holiday wish that you’ll be gendered correctly this season at least once, your disability(s) will be seen as valid by others, and that you will see yourself as the incredible person you are whether or not other people do ❄️🦌🎅🏿🎄❄️

Happy Holidays, and Stay Brave Out There 💙

[strongfromourveryweakness]

I usually don’t reblog stuff, but I just wanted to add something to try to encourage the misobabies as someone who is an adult person. 

I’ve found that as I get older, it’s gotten easier to have misophonia because I have more control over what happens in my life. If I don’t like where I live because of noises, I can move. If I don’t like a job because of noises, I can leave and find another line of work. If the people in my life don’t respect my disability, I can move, find other people to hang out with, etc. You just have more control. As an adult, people tend to listen to you, your opinions, and your life experiences more and don’t discount your testimonies so much. 

Having miso in general is less all-consuming now. I don’t feel trapped, I don’t have other people running my life, I am the one in control now. I am the adult in my life. And because of that, misophonia seems less terrifying. 

Like maybe before, it was like a huge dragon I had to fight every day, but now it’s like, a really annoying Gila monster that just follows me around in public. 

Trust me kids, you want to get older and be on your own. Yeah, your triggers might get worse - but not necessarily - and even better, you’ll be in charge. And being in charge is, yeah, scary when you factor in bills and cooking and taxes, but god, in terms of misophonia, it’s absolutely life-saving. 

So yeah, your triggers will probably get worse, but at least you can do something about it and that’s pretty dope. 

Stay Brave,  Stephan Thomas Vomacka

Thanks @staying-strong-with-miso for this post, your blog is truly a gem ^-^

I know it can be disheartening knowing misophonia tends to get worse when you grow into an older teen/young adult, but I think we tend to forget something important. as you live with this, as you grow, you get stronger too.

 your self control gets stronger, your communication skills get stronger, your emotional intelligence, your knowledge of coping techniques. you get new experiences that teach you what helps you and what you need to avoid.

 your support system grows, the relationships with people who help you grow, their understanding of your condition grow. your own understanding of your condition grows. you get better at self-advocating and self-care.

 no matter what you are not alone and the older you get the clearer and clearer that becomes. your sense of self, your own will power strengthens as you do. you learn how to calm yourself down and self-soothe, what techniques works best for you, and your ability to do so gets stronger.

you are growing and becoming stronger every second. you will feel weak. you will feel helpless. you might feel alone. you might have bad days, weeks, possibly even months. that’s okay. I know it doesn’t feel okay, but it will be. 

you are stronger than you could ever know, even at your weakest. you are never alone. things will, in fact, get better. keep going. keep growing. we’re all here together. 

[strongfromourveryweakness]

[strongfromourveryweakness]

When everything in your life is great but your brain juices aren’t savvy 👂🏼👁👄👁👂🏼

[strongfromourveryweakness]

Hey guys! I just made this for some of my friends in Brazil for their “Red December” misophonia awareness month. 

Stay Brave Out There. 

[strongfromourveryweakness]

[strongfromourveryweakness]

Biological Basis for Misophonia (Explained in Layman’s Terms)

A groundbreaking study about misophonia was released this year by Dr. Sukhbinder Kumar and his team from the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University and the Wellcome Center for NeuroImaging at the University College London and has changed the game when it comes to discussing this misunderstood neurological condition. 

It’s so interesting, so fascinating to people with backgrounds in psychology and neurology, but to the commonperson? Words like “ventromedial prefrontal cortex”, “amygdala”, and “myelination” might as well be in a completely different language. 

And I know that most people with misophonia would absolutely love to be able to understand what’s wrong with them, so that’s why I’m doing this. Strap yourselves in, we’re taking a crash course in miso-psychology!

Some Words You Should Know Before We Get Started So You’re Not Totally Lost:

- Frontal Lobe:

This is the brain part in the very front. It is important because it controls emotions, problem-solving, memory-language, judgement, and the birds and the bees. The control panel, if you will. 

- Cerebral Hemispheres: 

Think of a hemisphere as half of a globe. Your brain is the globe (the word cerebral come from cerebrum, which is your brain), and the hemispheres are the two halves; left and right. 

- Myelin and Myelination: 

Myelin is an insulating substance that covers special nerves in the brain that send information. (Kind of like those chutes at drive-through banks you send your money through.) The more myelin is covering the chutes, the faster and more vroomwhoosh the information can send. More myelin is like high-speed Internet. 

- Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (vmPFC): 

Don’t panic, this is just a big word that tells us exactly where on the brain this part is. “Ventro-” on the underside of the brain, “-medial” in the middle, “Pre-” before, “-frontal” in the frontal lobe, “cortex” center. So it’s on the underside of the brain, in the middle, and on the very tip of the frontal lobe. It actually sits right above the eye-socket. VmPFC for short, this part of the brain helps keep emotions like fear and empathy in line and helps you make decisions. 

- Salient: Important, or relevant. 

- Stimuli: Sensory information coming into the brain through your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, or skin.

- Anterior Insular Cortex (AIC): 

“Anterior” in the front, not posterior, “insular cortex” the area of the brain in the middle (imagine a baseball in a mitt - the baseball is the insular cortex and the mitt is the rest of the brain). This part of the brain is on the front of the insular cortex and does a lot of things. The AIC decides what stimuli is salient. This part of the brain helps process emotions. It also arranges all the sensory information you’re taking in so that you have a good picture of what’s going on in the world around you. Believe it or not, but how you experience the world is all related to how your senses are processed!

- The Amygdala: 

The area of the brain where the fight-or-flight response is started. Fight-or-flight is what kept humans alive in the caveman days where the rustling in the bushes could be a bunny, but could also be a tiger. 

The amygdala is located in the insular cortex we talked about above and assigns salience to sensory stimuli so you can be ready to run in case it’s not a bunny, but a tiger. 

Now That That’s Settled, What Causes Misophonia?

Okay. So the first thing that Kumar’s team notes through their MRI studies is that people with misophonia have a ton of myelin in their vmPFCs. This means that people with misophonia have vmPFCs that function much faster than the average person. Also, the vmPFC is an area that has a ridiculous amount of information bank-chutes to many other areas of the brain.

 Like the areas which process memories, smells, and most importantly, the amygdala. If the vmPFC and the amygdala are talking more than usual? There can be trouble. And that trouble is spelled M-I-S-O-P-H-O-N-I-A. 

This study also found that people with miso also have greater activation in the AIC when they hear trigger sounds. 

Remember how I mentioned that the AIC is responsible for putting together a picture of your reality based on the sensory information you’re picking up? Imagine if for whatever reason, the AIC decides that grandma chewing gum is important. 

Then the amygdala, for whatever reason, thinks that because grandma’s gum-chewing is important, it must be a tiger in the bushes and you gotta be ready to run. 

Then the vmPFC gets confused and thinks it needs to be angry about it because together with the amygdala, they’re not processing emotions the way that they should be.

 Before you know it, the misophonia sufferer, through no fault of their own, is experiencing the anxiety of being chased by a tiger when they know full well grandma’s gum-chewing sounds aren’t a tiger; and in addition, they’re really freaking angry about it.  

To me, this research is fascinating because it confirms everything I have felt as a misophonia sufferer. I have felt like an idiot because I know full well that my classmate eating chips isn’t going to hurt me. But my body is responding like the noise is actually a threat to my bodily safety. This is because my brain doesn’t see reality as reality, and even though I know that, my brain doesn’t. 

And before anyone tries to say, “Well if you know it’s not going to hurt you, can’t you decide to not be bothered by it?” let me say this: the brain is an organ. It’s part of the body. You can’t just decide to not have cancer because you know you don’t need to grow a tumor right there. Your body thinks it does, but you’re not thinking for your body.

I hope that this post helps to clear up questions about what misophonia is, because it is a very complicated and unbelievable-sounding disorder. And though you may not be a scientist, my hope is that after reading this, you may be able to better understand what’s going on in your body and feel more in the loop with the current research. 

(Original artwork by Steven Thomas Vomacka not to be independently posted elsewhere without credit being given.)

References:  Brout, J. (2017, February 04). Misophonia Breakthrough Study. Retrieved September 20, 2017, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/noises/201702/misophonia-breakthrough-study-0

[strongfromourveryweakness]

“Misgendered” by Steven Thomas

[strongfromourveryweakness]

Situational Triggers; An illustrated Theory

So, I was talking to my husband today, (who also has miso) and in talking back and forth about triggers, we realized something. 

A lot of people will say that once you develop a trigger, it’ll never go away. It sticks with you for life, and there’s no way to get rid of it. Right? 

Situational triggers are triggers you develop to specific people and sounds during times of high stress, or times when you have to endure the trigger very often. After you’ve had some relief of stress or you’re no longer in that situation, those triggers might disappear. It’s something my husband and I have both experienced, and it brings a ray of hope to the never ending abyss of darkness.

The theory kind of goes like this; If you have a specific trigger to a friend or family member, or if you develop a trigger in a stressful situation that you endure often, soon that trigger will spread to everyone else as well. However, once you no longer spend a lot of time around that person, or you’re out of the situation, the trigger goes away.

Examples: *Warning: Specific triggers are mentioned*

A) Stephan used to be triggered by people brushing their teeth. 

However, since moving away from home, that sound is no longer a trigger for him. We discovered that because the trigger was related to a family member, (his birth brother) anybody brushing their teeth was a trigger. We all know that family members and close friends trigger us more than anybody. 

B) Nail-clipping is also a past trigger of Stephan’s. 

Because he has multiple triggers associated with his birth parents, their nail-clipping was a situational trigger. Now that he’s moved away from home and hasn’t seen them, nail-clipping no longer bothers him!

C) Another example, people walking in flip flops used to be a trigger of mine.

Now, keep in mind that I’ve never had any treatment for miso. It hasn’t been a trigger for me in at least a year, and I now realize it was only a trigger because my roommates at the time wore flip flops everywhere, and I had an emotional connection to them. 

D) A recent example: Loud footsteps are triggering to me at the moment, but that’s because our upstairs neighbors walk very loudly, and it’s become such a problem that we’re moving out next month, despite only having lived there for about 2 months. 

We’re currently staying with my family, and my brother’s footsteps are triggering to me, when they weren’t before. I know that after we move to a different place, footsteps won’t trigger me anymore. It’s because I have to endure it day in and day out, and because it’s stressful for me, that it’s spread. 

Disclaimer: Not all triggers are like this. Some stick, and some go. The point of this post is for people to reflect back on some triggers they used to have, and be happy that they don’t have them anymore! It gives us a little bit of hope going forward to realize this. Stay Strong!

Artwork credit; Stephan Thomas Vomacka ( @powertotheoctopus )

[strongfromourveryweakness]

hey dude can I say something bc you remind me of young-me? I see you make funny faces in lots of your pics. I used to do that a lot bc I was insecure about my appearance. I just wanna say you got a nice looking face and if thats whats goin on dont be afraid to just be relaxed or smile or whatever in pics. now i'm older, that stuff doesnt matter as much & im bummed I have literally no non-goofy pics of myself in my prime years. (If Im totally off base and your just havin fun sorry!) peace

Dear Anon, 

My wife just went, “Well f*** they got you!” haha. Funny you should mention this, because there’s a reason I used to never smile when I was a woman. When I was a kid, my birth dad told me,

And like ever since then, I’ve been really self-conscious of my smile. I even went through a period in middle school where I refused to smile for anything and every picture looks like I just heard about Trump becoming the US president. I smile more now as a man - I think it’s just confidence, but whenever I see pictures of myself I still go, “Man…I look like I’m in pain.”

Luckily, I have a wife.  

So things are better now :) 

Thanks for your concern! Hope you’re having a great day.

Steven Thomas Vomacka

[strongfromourveryweakness]

Hi, I'm Bri and I just wanted to tell you that you have helped me through some really rough times. You've helped me understand that's I'm not so alone with this illness and some ways to not have it take over me. I'm so happy about you getting married!! Best of luck!!

Dear Bri, 

Thank you so much for your message, it was really encouraging (even though I got it ages ago and I’m just getting to it)! You’re certainly not alone in this, there are literally so many of us and we’re all here for you. I’ve made so many friends in this community and I honestly don’t know what I’d do without it. I even met my wife here! And thank you so much, @living-with-miso are actually sitting on her mom’s couch together this morning answering asks and I can say with complete honesty I’ve never been happier in my life :) 

Stay Brave, Steven Thomas Vomacka (and Ashley, even though she has no idea I’m talking about her ;)))))

[strongfromourveryweakness]

*screams into the void because of misophonia* thank you for your information posts on education and misophonia. It looks like I might need to get officially diagnosed and the links look like they can help a lot

Dear SquadLeaderChase,

You’re so welcome! Hope you’re able to get that diagnosis. Also, your username reminded me of this drawing of the Paw Patrol I did at my nephew’s direction yesterday and I’m sorry.

Stay Brave, Steven Thomas

[strongfromourveryweakness]

hey stephan! this is a bit of a long story but bear with me- ive had misophonia since i was a toddler, and ive been following you since i found out miso was a thing about 6/7 years ago. i used to have it really, really bad (like i was constantly somewhere between a 7 and a 9 on the misophonia activation scale). ive been doing neurofeedback for about 5 years now and im not magically cured, but on most days, im only at a 3 at most on the miso activation scale, which is AMAZING! (1/?)

Dear MeAndMyHalla,

Thank you for your message! It’s encouraging to see that doing neurofeedback has been so helpful for you. I did something similar with Tom Dozier with progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) for several sessions that helped me for a while that I’ve been meaning to get back into. Hearing from you made me want to maybe try it again and maybe make a post about it! I’ll try and do that soon. That’s incredible to hear that you were only triggered twice during a whole vacation! Wow! If you wouldn’t mind, some more information about neurofeedback would be such a great thing to share about and I’d be interested in doing some research on it to teach the misobabies; I know they’d love that! 

I’m glad my posts have been helpful to you! It’s always so encouraging to hear back from readers and know I’m actually making a difference :) 

Best of Luck, Stay Brave,Steven Thomas