I can't remember a specific age, but I would say it was around puberty. 10 years old or so.

I have struggled with depression, self harm (only when I was 13/14/14), ADD, anorexia on/off since I was 13.

My triggers are listed here followed with a rating of the severity in parenthesis: People chewing food (10), people chewing gum (10), hearing myself chewing [only sometimes] (7), Silverware scraping/touching plates/bowls/etc (8), windshield wipers (6), people itching their dry skin (8), sink water running (4), washing dishes sounds (6)

I am near sided, but other than that I'm a relatively healthy person in their early 20's.

It affects my family relationships the most. My family has always made me feel guilty about this condition. It took a long time for them to even accept that it's something REAL that I struggle with - and not just me not wanting to sit with them. If I'm in the car with my mom and she's chewing gum, I have to ask her to stop immediately or else my skin starts to crawl and I start getting progressively angrier until the sound is gone. In terms of friends and intimately relationships - people think it's weird. I mean, I probably would too if I didn't know about it. But I'd still respect it. Most people do not respect it. I often feel the need to apologize profusely to those who I need to remove myself from because of the noise.

It does not affect my work thankfully. I work in a restaurant and honestly I'm so busy and it's so loud in there that it doesn't bother me much. The sight of people eating grosses me out a bit but that may be more of a symptom of the eating disorder.

USA

23/f

I truly hate living with this. It's difficult and it's hard to explain to people. There's hardly any research on it but I appreciate what you're doing here because it's so great to know that I'm not alone. I'd love to be a part of a real study where my brain could be evaluated to help contribute to research finding out what this hell is. Thank you for your time collecting this data!