Interview and Write-up by Sara Bidler
Dec. 2023
Finding Freedom from Misophonia: Brooklyn Disch’s Story

Brooklyn Disch (she/they) endured severe misophonia for approximately 20 years, starting
around the age of 7. She successfully cleared misophonia in February 2023 and is now
dedicated to helping others find their way to freedom from this condition. She rates her
misophonia at a 12 on a scale of 0 to 10 in severity before her breakthrough, with it now being
at a 0.5. In describing their relationship to sounds/triggers now, Brooklyn notes “It’s not that
there’s never a moment of annoyance with sounds, but (former) triggers no longer cause me to
feel like I’m in danger or to feel disgust, anger, fear or anxiety. If I notice them, it doesn’t take
me out of the moment. It’s just something I notice. Most of my previous triggers I don’t even
notice at all.”

Their main misophonia triggers included whistling, throat clearing, S and T sounds. Classroom,
home and work settings were challenging, and everyone triggered them with these sounds,
remarking “If the person knew I had misophonia, it triggered me more because it felt like they
should know better.”

Through a combination of various modalities including Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT),
hypnotherapy, Rapid Resolution TherapyⓇ (RRT), meditation and Neuro-linguistic
programming (NLP), she rewired her brain’s response to trigger sounds, with RRT being the
most influential modality.

Brooklyn trained in these modalities originally for her coaching business and was also applying
them to improve many aspects of their life. It was some time into practicing them that she
thought to apply them to her experience with misophonia, noting:
Then I had the realization that misophonia is a developed pattern, just like anything else.
Our unconscious mind interprets a sound as danger, creates an emotion in us such as
disgust/anger/fear to get us to take an action to eliminate “a threat” (that action can be
putting in ear plugs, leaving the room, asking someone to stop, etc.) and the more the cycle
continues the more we feed into this pattern, through no fault of our own. We’re just doing
what the unconscious mind thinks we need to do to survive. But the more we feed into the
pattern the stronger it becomes and the more intense our reactions get because these things
are becoming encoded as more and more dangerous, and of course we’re developing more
and more triggers at the same time.

Brooklyn did specific work on rewiring her brain’s response to triggers but she did not have to
do work on each trigger individually for all of them to clear. In fact, the misophonia rewiring
work helped with their fear of spiders (despite no conscious focus on this fear).
Upon deeper contemplation, Brooklyn ponders whether the self-development efforts she
undertook before discovering RRT established the groundwork for RRT’s effectiveness in
addressing her misophonia. She feels none of it was a waste of time because “it’s all a learning
experience.”

Here are some things that possibly set the stage for Brooklyn’s relief, in no particular order:

• 10+ years of psychotherapy (starting at age 15), which didn’t make a noticeable difference with misophonia but did give them a lot of life coping strategies and validation of her experience.

• Having a supportive parent: “My mom has been in my corner and is always an advocate.”

• Sertraline, which was prescribed to address Brooklyn’s generalized anxiety, as she was experiencing symptoms that mimicked multiple sclerosis.The sertraline didn’t help with misophonia, but did give Brooklyn a “better foundation” to then engage in the work to lessen misophonia severity.

• Strengthening family and other relationships; setting boundaries where needed.

• Switching from shaming herself when outcomes are less than ideal self-compassion and reflective learning.

• The use of EFT/Tapping to release emotions, including those experienced after being triggered by noises.

• Shifting their perspective about misophonia from, “Nothing will ever work; I’m stuck with this for the rest of my life” “I don’t deserve this, it isn’t my fault (or anyone’s fault) and also ”

• Anchoring into something bigger than herself and tapping into her intuition.

• Having an understanding partner and daily time free from triggers to reset and practice the skills they were learning, while also understanding that “avoiding trigger sounds all together wasn’t the answer because it reaffirmed in my mind that these things are dangerous.”

• Asking for help and being open to receiving new ideas.

• Journaling to their younger self and reflecting on whether the original function/belief of something still applied to their present-day life (this is along the lines of trauma work).

• Learning to advocate for herself.

• Clearing reservations about lessening their suffering from misophonia, which included possibly losing acceptance in the misophonia community and naysayers potentially saying, “See, I told you so, it wasn’t real.”She also faced the question, “Who am I without misophonia?”, as rage and frustration were her primary emotions most of her life. She used hypnotherapy to detach from the misophonia identity.

• Transitioning from being a “very pessimistic, depressed, and anxious” person being “an optimistic positive person”, which was kicked off by facing their fear of flying and traveling with strangers on their first ever solo abroad trip to Egypt. The trip helped her see how strong she really was: “It gave me a lot of my power back. I realized I can do it.” This experience empowered them and led to leaving an unsatisfying job to start their own company.

• Interrupting the thought spiral of, “Why is this person making this noise? Do they know how annoying this is, etc.?” which led to avoiding certain people based solely on the sounds they make. Replacing with a reminder that these thoughts aren’t serving her, and she can dismiss the thoughts and choose something different.

Because there seems to be a theme of people with misophonia being empathetic and/or highly
sensitive, here are Brooklyn’s responses to those questions:

Do you consider yourself a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)?
“Growing up I was a highly sensitive person. My mom had to cut off the edges of my
socks. I wouldn’t wear jeans until I was older. Those experiences came up in the work.”
Brooklyn finds herself to be more aware of the energies and moods of others than the
average person, noting, “I can walk into a room and tell something is off.” She considers
herself a very spiritual person and being very in touch with energy and the things
around her.

Do you consider yourself an empathic person?
When they took the Clifton Strengths Assessment (for which there are 34 themes),
empathy was their #2 strength.
Their mom has always described Brooklyn as a very empathetic person. Now they’ve
“learned how to turn it off” as needed. RRT was helpful to her in that, as they “talk
about empathy a lot and when it’s helpful and when it’s not.”

In terms of maintenance efforts, Brooklyn reminds her mind that feeling calm and at ease
around noises that used to be triggering is safe to experience. She also mentioned that while
serving her clients, her mind is soaking up this rewiring work in the process.

Brooklyn’s story emphasizes the power of introspection, reprogramming, and a multifaceted
approach to healing, not only from misophonia but also from ingrained and problematic
relational, cognitive and behavioral patterns. She now stands as inspiration, helping others
navigate their paths to freedom from misophonia’s grip.

You can learn more about Brooklyn Disch and her coaching
services at www.brooklyndisch.com.

Brooklyn also hosts the Let’s Ditch Misophonia Podcast

Video interview by Sipora 2024.

Transcript and interview by Kresta Dalrymple, LMFT

Paige can remember feeling “extreme sensitivity” to her surroundings from the age of 4. This experience that she later could identify as Misophonia was triggered by common noises found in the classroom, made by ear/nose/throat, household pets, eating, and visuals of hands and feet. Paige notes that while “every once in a while” a particular person would be a trigger, she more often dissociated from her “fierce, strong emotions” towards people and would become obsessive about the sound or motion so “it” would just happen to be triggering.

Lisa went from a level 10 in distress to a level 4 after an intensive therapy session.

Written up by Kresta, 2024.

Starting at age 12 my family’s chewing noises drove me to tears from what — at the time – seemed to be an illogical, hard to describe sensation of extreme discomfort that felt like torture until the sound stopped. It would be another 15 years before I heard someone describe my experiences on a radio interview. I can remember the relief in knowing I wasn’t alone and that what I was experiencing had a name – Misophonia – or “Select Sound Sensitivity Syndrome”. The relief was short lived however. As I found and connected with others having the same experience, we started to look for some thread of commonality that would explain what was wrong–and then fix it. Time and again, our hypothesis were proven wrong–some had trauma, others did not, co-occurring conditions such as Autism, other sensory sensitivities, eating disorders, physical abnormalities in the ear and brain…no common thread was ever found. All that was left was the cold comfort that others were suffering in the same way and that “coping strategies” were the only option.