My neighbour's taste in music drove me to hypnotherapy

It turns out you can hear 'Dancing Queen' too many times

I always knew I was special. I insisted upon it at my one and only horrible camp experience when, hysterically crying for some reason or other that wasn’t my fault, I didn’t overreact in the slightest when I screamed at the other Cubs (losers, all of them) that they didn’t understand my struggles as a child a.) with asthma, and b.) who was left handed. So brave. Little did I know then that my real X-Men quality was my hearing, even if I could hear the other boys calling me a prick at 1000 paces.

You’d think that acute hearing would have its benefits, but mine has been patchy throughout my life. I can’t always hear people slagging me off from a decent distance (thank God), and when I’m in a room with a TV on too quietly, even if someone insists “it’s on 16!”, whatever the fuck that means, I can’t tune into it. What my ears never fail to pick up: people chewing, snoring, sniffing, tapping, humming; ticking clocks; distant car alarms; barking dogs; the bass of any rhythmic music, however good or bad, however far away. Two years ago I realised that “acute hearing” isn’t quite the right term for what I’ve also spent my life describing as “a hatred of certain sounds I’m not responsible for and have no control over” – it’s misophonia.

NHS organisation Oxford Health Specialist Psychological Intervention Centre describes misophonia thus: Misophonia is an extreme emotional reaction to certain everyday sounds that most people would find relatively easy to ignore. The three main types of sounds that disturb people with misophonia are eating, nose and throat sounds, and repetitive environmental sounds like keyboard tapping and rustling paper.

I’m ‘rustling paper’ short, but y’know, suck it, Cubs!

OHSPIC goes on: Whilst many people find these noises annoying, individuals with misophonia describe an intense feeling of disgust, anger, distress, or panic that escalates while the sound is still present. This can happen even when the sound is at a very low volume.

‘Repetitive’ is the key for me. It’s as if my ears are constantly scanning for a rhythmical sound even in standby mode. Rhythm detected, ear locked in, a furious sense of injustice that the guy on the train 8 seats away is making that noise whilst asleep and completely unaware he’s doing so. I hope a monster like that can live with himself. My reaction is always the same, whether its Rip Van Winkle on the Northern Line or a barbecue in one of the gardens over the back: I MUST instantly locate the source of the sound (in an attempt to calculate how long it might last – does this guy look like he might get off at Camden or is he ride or die all the way to Golders Green? Is he in good enough shape to last the entire journey? etc.), tut about it (public setting) or repeatedly complain to my wife or anyone unlucky enough to be with me and my neurotic spiral (private), try to ignore it, fail, leave the area as quickly as possible. For a three-year period, between 2021 and 2024, my downstairs neighbour nuked the final, crucial stage of my system with a weapons-grade Spotify playlist of utter lunacy.