Someone who slurps the tea, someone who breathes heavily next to you, someone who won't stop pressing the pen...Does your blood boil when you hear these? Well, it's not you. It is the disorder of your brain called misophonia .
It was first designated as a definite condition in 2001. Misophonia is a word derived from ancient Greek and means "hatred of sound." Also known as selective sensitivity syndrome, it is a genuine abnormality of the brain with psychological and physiological symptoms.
The sounds that trigger misophonia can vary from person to person. Commonly include:
- cheering
- swallowing/chewing sounds
- slurping liquids -
throat clearing
- lip smacking
- clattering letters
- clock sounds
- bird sounds etc.
Is misophonia a sign of intelligence and creativity?
Psychologists believe that the way people with misophonia process sensory information can be strongly linked to creative thinking. This means that a hypersensitivity to sound may actually be a key to better understanding the genius of people like Charles Darwin, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov and Marcel Proust – all of whom are believed to have had misophonia.
Scientists believe that this particular attention to sounds promotes creativity because it reduces the ability to ignore irrelevant sensory information. So people with misophonia tend to have a reduced filtering of sensory information, meaning they pay attention to a greater range of stimuli and are more likely to make connections between concepts or ideas. This kind of attention is associated with increased creativity.
So the next time someone's chewing annoys you, try to remember that being hypersensitive to background noise can be a sign of creativity and intelligence.
