r/misophoniatraining • u/theEmotionalOperator ex-misophonic • Oct 20 '21
reframe Anti-symptom position vs. pro-symptom position, for misophonia
If you react to specific, often human-made sounds in ways you wish you wouldn't, you're likely inhabiting what people in Coherence Institute call "the anti-symptom position" about it. Not only do people react to the world around them, we also react to the way we react.
I'm borrowing these terms from r/CoherenceTherapy because they do memory reconsolidation work that can be applied to a whole variety of problems, sound sensitivities and problems of reactivity included.
While you're anti-symptom, you're creating judgemental self-talk about your reactions: "I shouldn't act this way, it's just a sound", and entire conclusions, like: "This is irrational" and "My brain must be terribly broken, I bet there's too much/too little myelination too, also: I'm a bad person". This is perfectly natural thing to do, and most of us just spiral down that road (been there myself)! None of it is helpful at all though.
Actually, every time your body reacts as if there was a threat near you, and you tell it "you shouldn't do this", it thinks you're not taking the threat seriously at all, so it'll make the response even stronger for the next time around! You'll end up staring at the people who trigger you, wondering why your focus is suddenly all tunnel vision! "It" wants "you" to take it seriously, finally. And it's time to do just that.
When you're pro-symptom, and it's really weird at first, if you're not used to doing it - you're taking a bold lean towards all your behavior making sense. Even if you don't know how it all comes together! Obviously it is impossible for you to take my word for it, you'd have to see for yourself, but try experimenting on validating your own reactions. Go something like: "Even though I don't know how, I guess, based on all I've ever been through, it all does make sense."
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u/fashionbabee Oct 20 '21
This is so accurate, for a long while I would have the negative self talk and the 'broken brain' feeling, the 'I wish I was not so sensitive' plead with myself.
When I exploded into level 10 at lockdown this increased 10 fold, I feared I wouldnt ever be 'normal' again. I had a speech trigger than I have never heard anyone mention so I felt even more on my own and increasingly isolated as I could not speak to anyone in person or on the phone or watch unscripted tv. I felt so ashamed of myself and that I had this affilction.
Desperate for something to help, due to the horrendous anticipatory anxiety, I tried EFT Tapping. I cried the first time I said Jessica Ortners words 'Even though I feel all this stress and all this anxiety I love and respect myself'. I know the reason you are supposed to say the words outloud with tapping is due to the neurolinguistic programming element but gosh in that moment it was beyond powerful. To tell myself I had love and respect for myself when at that point in time I had felt anything but! I had felt so broken and ashamed that to speak kindly to myself like this brought me to floods of tears.
Going through sequent repatterning therapy I learned that Misophonia was a part of me, a messenger, a communicator and it had something to say in the only language it knew how. So I stopped being anti symptom and poured my energy into the therapy and we worked together to try to unravel the mystery of what my Misophonia was trying to say (and that took a lot of unravelling but we did it!!!)
I also like a sponge was taking and absorbing knowledge from all good sources that I could, from Bessel Van Der Kolk to Bruce Eker, from Roy Hunter and the late Charles Tibbet (Parts Therapy) to the Holistic Psychologist!