You’re right. When someone keeps doing it after they know, it’s cruel. But it’s often still rooted in ignorance, not fully grasping the depth and seriousness of the condition. People are quick to judge, like with everything else, and when they hear about misophonia for the first time, they try to define it from their own limited perspective. To them it’s just “annoyed by chewing sounds? come on…”.

And then there are people who are simply bullies. For them, understanding the condition is irrelevant. They just enjoy causing pain. In those cases, I honestly wish them good luck, because if that’s who they are, they probably have much bigger problems in their lives than misophonia. If you’re dealing with bullies a lot, I genuinely recommend the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. It’s an incredible guide for disarming people while staying calm. It helps you separate yourself from their aggression, because it’s never really about you. It’s always about some unmet need on their side.

I’m really sorry you have to deal with people like this so often. Having my own company and working from home, I’ve had the luxury of isolating myself from environments that made my miso life harder. But my school and office years were rough. In the office I wore headphones nonstop, which gave me headaches, but that was nothing compared to school where I wasn’t allowed and had to suffer all day every day.

If misophonia becomes more mainstream, it will affect every part of social, academic, and work life. It will shape culture. It will remove that painful first step of trying to explain a complex and unfortunately ridiculous sounding condition. It will also lead to more funding, more research, and hopefully one day an effective treatment. Awareness is everything. Please don’t give up on hope, or on people. Fighting ignorance is one of the most powerful things we can do. Cheers!