Walk Me Through a Family Dinner and I'll Tell You Why One Crunch Keeps Wrecking Your Nervous System

Let's start at the table. Dinner's ready. Everyone sits down. Plates clink. You feel yourself bracing already. Someone asks how your day was. For a minute, you're okay enough.

Then that person takes the first bite. (It's always that person.)

You know exactly how the crunch or slurp sounds, and you squirm. It’s almost like you can’t look away but you need to get away, all at once. It feels like your body is trying to protect you from something.

The question isn't whether your nervous system is trying to protect you- it definitely is. It's why does it think it needs to protect you right now? Why would your nervous system be trying to protect you from a slurp?

Here’s what I’ve learned: If we slow down enough, your body actually knows. If you know how to listen the right way, your body is telling a story about what’s underneath.

So let's go back to the table together, one moment at a time. And this time, instead of bracing, let’s just notice what your body says.

One more thing before we sit down. Misophonia is rarely just one feeling- it comes in strong, feeling so many things all at once. That's part of what makes it so hard to work with. So, we're going to start by finding a starting place. One feeling, the one that's loudest right now. That's how something this tangled starts to shift: one piece at a time.