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Adeel [0:00]: Welcome to the Mistyphonia podcast. This is the sixth episode of season three. My name is Adeel Ahmad and I have Mistyphonia. This week I'm talking to Ashton, a television journalist based in Kentucky. You may have seen her requests for interviews since she's also a grad student working on a documentary about misophonia for her thesis. We talk about all that, her experiences in her family with miso, she's definitely not the only one, and a lot more. Hey, so if you check out the website, misophoniapodcast.com, you'll see a new version rolling out this week. Still some wet paint, but I'm really excited about it. There'll be separate pages for each interview, including transcripts, which are rolling out gradually, for those who don't want to listen to voices speaking. There's also a place for text interviews, some of which are taking place right now. So stay tuned, and as always, let me know what you think by emailing hello at misophoniapodcast.com. or on Instagram at Missiphonia Podcast, Twitter at Missiphonia Show. Anyways, here is this week's conversation with Ashton. Ashton, welcome to the podcast. Good to have you here.
Ashton [1:14]: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Adeel [1:17]: So I know we talked, I don't even remember when it was, sometime earlier this year.
Ashton [1:21]: Yeah.
Adeel [1:21]: Do you want to maybe talk about what you do, where you are?
Ashton [1:25]: Yeah, of course. So this was maybe... two weeks ago that we talked. I'm not exactly sure. But I'm a student at Western Kentucky University. I'm a senior. And I'm working on my honors thesis. And I chose misophonia because it's something that I've dealt with since, I don't know, maybe 10 years old. As long as I can really remember that i started noticing you know my surroundings basically um and so i wanted to talk more about that and explore the subject more and let people know that it was real because I really struggled with convincing people that I was facing something that was real. And so what I'm trying to do now is go talk to experts and talk to people who have misophonia and gather some more research and visuals for my documentary. So my thesis is going to be a documentary because I'm in broadcasting and the what I know. So I'd like to be able to explain to people visually and with all these different experiences that I have and show them what it feels like to have misophonia.
Adeel [2:40]: I'll have your information in the show notes if researchers want to reach out. And you actually just reached out to me on Twitter. So if anybody else is out there and looking to do some research, I'm always happy to chat. But the other piece is, yeah, this documentary, since you are in news and in broadcasting, I know... Everyone's trying to get the word out. So it's always nice to hear about another documentary project potentially in the works. I'm sure you'll get a lot of people interested in wanting to contribute to that if you wanted that.
Ashton [3:14]: Yeah. And I went and I watched the documentary that you recommended to me. And there are some really great stories in there, but I think what I want to do that's different than that and what I think it kind of missed out on is to really give people that don't have misophonia the chance to understand what it would be like. I want to bring people to the realization of what these things sound like to us. And like why it's annoying, why it's, you know, a problem. Just get like really up close and personal in the kind of noises that really bother us. Because if you were overwhelmed with enough sound, you would understand what it felt like. And I'd really like to have the audience in our heads feeling what that is like.
Adeel [4:09]: Yeah, that's an interesting angle. Yeah, because it's always hard to explain to people. Initially, as I'm sure you've experienced, they often think that it's just an annoyance and they have it too. And why can't we just get over it? But it's a whole other level, right?
Ashton [4:28]: Right. Yeah, it's a completely different feeling than being annoyed by something. It's being like infuriated by it.
Adeel [4:37]: Right, right, right. Yeah. So, and yeah, I guess let's go back. You mentioned that, you know, something that you've dealt with since you're roughly 10 years of age. Do you want to talk about those kind of early years and what it was like for you?
Ashton [4:52]: Yeah. I can't really pinpoint like an exact age or like I realized it, but one that really gets me is snoring. Like that's something that really, really bothers me and when I was younger we would go stay with my family in Texas and we have a big family very small house out there in Texas and so it'd be like 15 of us in this one house so we'd all stay together in the living room so it'd be like me my mom and my two brothers I actually don't know that the youngest one was born yet but it would be at least me and my brother and he snores so loud and when i was younger it like i would go over to him and i would plug his nose and his mouth until he woke up and then he'd like get up like gasping i'd be like stop smiling but like i just couldn't handle it and i didn't i didn't want to do that to him but it was annoying me so much or maybe i'd go over to him and i'd nudge him or slap him or roll him over or something like that um because it was just so bad and it was so bad because he has a deviated septum so you can imagine how much worse the snoring was to me because of that um and then from there on it just kind of developed more and more popcorn is one of my really big triggers and it's really upsetting because i love going to the movies and i can't sit there for two hours with somebody eating popcorn behind me. It's brutal. But I could go all the time.
Adeel [6:34]: Do you have your kind of favorite seat? Yeah. How do you negotiate that? Do you go to different seats? Do you plug in headphones?
Ashton [6:44]: It got to be a little more difficult. And in theaters, I mean, this was pre-COVID, of course, but they would start doing assigned seats. So you would pick your seats before. You had to stay in that spot, but moving around was not an option. So what I would do is I would bring a pair of headphones. And if it was really bad, I would put my headphones in and play music for probably the first 20 minutes of the movie. Because after 20 minutes, you'll get a lot of people that are done with their food. And after that, it's okay.
Adeel [7:16]: Yeah. Yeah.
Ashton [7:18]: But I mean, there there was one time I went to see Wonder Woman. I think it was I was already my second or third time going. So at least there was just somebody being so loud the whole movie. I couldn't even handle it. I had to walk out and I left my friends there and I just waited until the movie was over. And then I met them afterwards because I couldn't handle it.
Adeel [7:41]: And what did they say? I mean, were they, I'm assuming they're friends. They're familiar with your condition or maybe, okay.
Ashton [7:47]: They were, but that was.
Adeel [7:48]: They're just nodding and yeah.
Ashton [7:50]: That was like the first time that they really had a grasp of how much it affected me because I just, I was like on the verge of a breakdown. I just told them I couldn't handle it and I waited outside.
Adeel [8:05]: gotcha okay um yeah that's i mean yeah it can be you never know what you're walking into basically right it's always different a den of horrors yeah exactly or a hall of horrors um okay yeah so yeah it's interesting that you mentioned uh snoring was one of your earliest because obviously like Snoring annoys so many people, but I haven't actually heard of it as that much as a one of those early triggers. It's kind of ironic. Did it start to very quickly expand to other family members and eating or was it or? Yeah, we've kind of focused on that. I'm trying to see how it just kind of during childhood in high school, maybe.
Ashton [8:43]: So that was the first one that I noticed, in addition to like the sound of breathing. That was also one of his things like while he was snoring because, of course, he had a septum. Those were two big factors. And then it kind of went into food also. But that was never really a problem at home because my dad was very serious about the way that people ate. I don't know if it was because of the same thing or just I don't know what it was, but like we always had to eat very cleanly. So it actually helped because that was never something I had to deal with at home. When I went to school, that started to become a problem. I was actually homeschooled for the first, let's see, until I was in sixth grade. And then from sixth grade to eighth grade, I went to a private school. So from there to there, it wasn't really a problem either because I only had five classmates. So you spend your whole time around these five people. If you have an issue, you just tell them. um and it's not really that big of a deal and then then it was only before people and then yeah right exactly that is exactly what happened knock them off one by one um and uh high school was actually the first the time that i went to public school from 9th to 12th grade and then i definitely had issues with, you know, the way that people would eat like at lunch and during tests, the way that I could hear other people like doing, I don't know, doing whatever, tapping, breathing really loud, kind of being annoying.
Adeel [10:28]: that kind of became an issue um wow so yeah you transitioned from like one one you know home school to small school to to just like a free-for-all um yeah that's i've never seen anybody uh talk to anybody who's kind of gone through a transition like that for yeah for a misophone that's got to be uh quite quick the uh dramatic transitions it was pretty during a pretty formative yeah period wow is there any is there any chance that maybe your dad also had it
Ashton [10:57]: I think it would be a couple people. My dad probably, it's a little bit different for him. He actually has tinnitus. So that's probably something that he would think of first before that. My aunt definitely does. That would be my dad's brother. And my youngest brother. He's only 10, and he has a very severe case.
Adeel [11:23]: Oh, he does? Okay.
Ashton [11:24]: Yeah.
Adeel [11:24]: Do you talk to him about it?
Ashton [11:25]: No. little bit it's kind of a little bit different so like I didn't think that it was what it was misophonia until I talked to Tom Dozer about it because he was you know saying it can be a it's it can be more like a physiological response and it could be triggered by visuals and he will absolutely like freak out if you talk about Cheez-Its or like, like the smell of certain things. So like it's a little bit different, but like what he, what Tom Dozer said about Misophonia, like led me to think that maybe it's a little bit connected. Um, and he definitely has a problem with, uh, this one sound, like, like, uh, like that sound drives him crazy and he'll just like scream and, and like run around and cry and freak out yeah do you know if he's potentially on the spectrum uh too maybe being overloaded by stimuli or no i i think that he has had different social circumstances he doesn't have like a lot of like friends his age but he's very good at communicating with adults because he's always been around us so he hasn't really been in school for very long and um he can't be really is he is he going to the is he going to the same uh types of type of school transition as you did like not exactly private too he did go to public school um but uh obviously right now they're not like going to school exactly um and then before this uh i don't know it I couldn't say for sure exactly what his relationship is with his classmates. He's like me. He doesn't talk about it a whole lot. And my parents always thought I didn't have friends, but that wasn't true. I actually was very good with people. I just wasn't. I didn't like adults to see me being good with people. So I would say something like that.
Adeel [13:33]: Well, can I just poke it? What do you mean by you don't want adults to see you?
Ashton [13:39]: I would get, like, embarrassed if adults saw me interacting with other kids. There was just something about it. And it was specific adults, like people that I knew, like my parents or, you know. It didn't bother me if a teacher saw me being friends with another kid. But if it were my parents, I'd feel embarrassed. And I couldn't really tell you why.
Adeel [14:03]: Yeah, no, it has nothing to do with miso and I'm not going to, yeah, dwell on it. It's kind of interesting. Yeah. And, okay, yeah, so what was I going to say? So, yeah, well, and regardless, you did say you didn't have, your parents didn't think you had a lot of friends when you were growing up. Was that actually, I know you said you were good with people. Was that actually the case? Was it like, was potentially miso affecting your social circles?
Ashton [14:29]: I would say to a degree it definitely did affect it. It, made me dislike certain people so there were instances throughout i can't exactly pinpoint like who they might have been or when it was but i know that they're have been people that I would maybe hang around with and they would just maybe eat really weird or gross or do things that really upset my misophonia. So I just wouldn't be friends with them because I knew it wasn't something I could handle long term. And I wasn't, I'm willing to give up a certain amount of comfort to be able to be friends with someone, but I have to really want to be friends with them.
Adeel [15:21]: Yeah, we all have to kind of, we all have that, set that threshold or balance somewhere on that dial. Was, and what were your kind of, so I'm assuming, yeah, at that age, you know, well, basically earlier on in your life, you didn't know what it was. What were some of your coping mechanisms? Obviously, leaving situations. Were you grabbing headphones at that point? Or mimicking?
Ashton [15:54]: At that point, I would probably, a lot of times I would sit like where my elbows like down and my my finger is just like kind of pressing on my ear like just in a way that's not super obvious to people that i'm like covering my ears and stuff which i thought was really interesting because i talked to another girl who had misophonia and she told me she did the exact same thing without any prompting um so i think that might be something that a couple people do just kind of like to conceal that you're trying not to listen to them So I did that a lot. And I got to headphones at some point. I don't remember exactly when that was. And then obviously getting away from people, just kind of going out of the room, which I try not to do all the time because I would get in trouble for it. Because they'd be like, why are you running over there? What's your deal? What's your problem?
Adeel [17:00]: yeah exactly well you can do different things like you just eat a lot faster yeah and then off reduce chores or something like that you know just to kind of run out of the room be done yeah yeah were your um and you know while you were going through all this stuff uh were your other family members also showing symptoms um you know around the same time or were you just kind of finding some of this out later, like your brother. I guess your brother's quite a bit younger than you, right?
Ashton [17:29]: He's 10, almost 11 years younger than me. And so he wouldn't have been born around this time that it really started to become an issue. I would say that my dad had it during that time, but he didn't know what it was either. And for him, he'll just say, that's annoying, stop doing it. And then we have to stop doing it because we're the kids. So it's Stuff like that was not an issue for him. But since I was the kid, they weren't going to listen to me if I asked them to stop doing something like that. So it really took a lot of convincing for them to realize why it was bothering me and for me to actually pull out the resources and say, I found this information. It's real. This is, this happens to other people. And then some of my family members would be like, oh, I think I have that. Like these things really bother me. So like my dad. Yeah.
Adeel [18:23]: Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha.
Ashton [18:25]: And they started to.
Adeel [18:26]: Around when was that?
Ashton [18:27]: Around when was that? Not too long ago. Maybe when I was graduating high school sometime around then could have even been the first couple of years of college.
Adeel [18:38]: yeah so obviously that led you to a path that you're uh now like a uh uh on your way to becoming a misophonia media mogul with uh documentaries and publications and research uh yeah i'm just curious how that uh did you you know a lot of us when we first find out about it we're just like researching all night long and sharing links and stuff. So was that kind of same situation with you where you just kind of got sucked into learning about it? Yeah. Or has it just been kind of something that, you know, maybe an opportunity came up recently or obviously at school and you're just kind of taking those opportunities?
Ashton [19:15]: Well, I kind of just, I think about it a lot. Like I'm always... thinking about how it affects me and when something comes up that really bothers me and thinking about new ways to adapt for a while there I was going to invest in some very expensive headphones to get rid of noise and stuff and so it's just something that I'm constantly thinking about 24 7. And I obviously got to senior year, made a senior thesis, and I'd actually been planning on something else for a really long time. But then just with the pandemic, it didn't seem like I'd be able to work on this other project because I really needed to be with people and engage with people. Right. And so I was like, well, it's very last minute. This was maybe a week or two before the thesis proposal was due. and so i was like what else could i do it on and i just i had been thinking about this subject a lot i just hadn't decided on it i was like well why not you know that's going to be easy to gather research over zoom and i can gather visuals from every day these things are out the world all the time And, you know, the research is out there. It's not very much, but that makes it that much more interesting because how many people have really talked about this and it needs to be talked about. So I struggled to get it out there really quick, but I think it was a sign that it was meant to be because I needed a secondary professor. I had no one. So I contacted everyone in the psychology and behavioral department and one person said she would do it. And so it worked out from there.
Adeel [21:05]: So was there a chance that if nobody, none of the professors accepted it, you couldn't do it?
Ashton [21:13]: Yeah, I wouldn't have been able to do it because I needed two professors and I needed at least one who was in the subject. So my primary professor, he would have done whatever I wanted to do, but he's a broadcasting professor. So his applies generally. And then I needed to have someone who would then be the secondary professor with an interest in it, at least.
Adeel [21:36]: Were you getting actively turned down, like people were saying?
Ashton [21:40]: Yes. Like they were saying. Not that the subject, but they're like, I don't know what this is. I have no idea how to research this.
Adeel [21:49]: Well, you're about to find out, lady.
Ashton [21:51]: Right. Well, and that's what I was trying to convince them of. It was that, you know, I know what I'm doing. I don't need you to know. I just need you to sign this piece of paper and pretend that you're interested. But yeah, I was getting turned down by a lot of people or that it was too close to the time because you are supposed to find this professor probably months in advance. But I had my other one set up. I just had a quick turnaround to do something else sometimes.
Adeel [22:23]: Okay, you got your professor and to accept it. And okay, great. And so yeah, I'm curious, like how, do you have like a particular thesis? Or is it more you're kind of like, like an idea that you're trying to prove or investigate? Or yeah, is it?
Ashton [22:38]: Yeah, it's more like a subject that I'm investigating, kind of.
Adeel [22:44]: And from a broadcasting perspective, this is more from a journal, not so much a psychological analysis.
Ashton [22:51]: Exactly. More from a journalist perspective, which I think is a lot better because you don't have to go in there and try to prove things. I'm not a scientist. I just have to find the scientists who do know. This is great.
Adeel [23:03]: This is unique. Yeah. I mean, we need a lot of regular research, but this is, yeah, we need as many disciplines looking at this as possible.
Ashton [23:12]: Right.
Adeel [23:14]: Interesting.
Ashton [23:14]: More than anything, sometimes what you need is exposure. And you can do as much research as you want, but if nobody knows about it, then there's the issue. And it's not going to reach a broader audience without someone to broadcast it out there. So that's what I'm trying to do.
Adeel [23:34]: Yeah, and so, you know, I know you're just in the middle of it, and I'm sure we'll, actually, will we be able to see it when it's done? Oh, yeah, of course. Okay, yeah.
Ashton [23:44]: I'll figure out.
Adeel [23:45]: Anything interesting that you've learned so far already? Yes.
Ashton [23:52]: You know, I was talking to Tom Dozer about it, and we went across the idea of, that I mentioned earlier, that it's a physiological issue. And so when we really started to talk about that, it got me thinking because he said, if you can take away the physical response, then you'll take away a lot of that emotional response. And he said, figure out what your trigger point is and it'll help. So I kept thinking about that a lot. And I'd noticed that recently mine hadn't been as bad as it's been in the past. And a lot of that is to do with pandemic because there are less people around and, you know, less commotion. But my big physiological response or like physical response was to tighten up my jaw really tight and just, a year ago i got tmj in my jaw from a surgery and since that point i have to be very conscious of how tight my jaw is like i'm always just fully aware of what it feels like and making sure that it's nice and like loose and relaxed and i've noticed since then that I felt like things didn't bother me as much as they had. Like I wasn't as stressed out. And I wouldn't say they go away because I definitely can still get mad by them. But it seemed like it was a little bit less bad. And, you know, that was always something that I was just constantly doing was just like being stressed in my jaw. And now I have to be completely conscious of that and making sure that... I'm not doing that because it's very painful.
Adeel [25:50]: Yeah. Yeah.
Ashton [25:51]: And then I'm sure you've heard of TMJ, but it's just basically like a muscle issue and like arthritis kind of in your jaw. So it's. pretty annoying but yeah no i hadn't heard of that actually but uh okay yeah um and so tom was talking about it uh like a physiological link yeah potentially so like okay you have a physical link to it maybe your shoulders tense up or um you just yeah just certain things that you do in your body tense up your wrists or your hands or something like that and one of mine was definitely my jaw now that looking back.
Adeel [26:35]: Gotcha. And now that you're conscious, so it's been affecting, it's kind of affecting your relation to misophonia?
Ashton [26:47]: Yeah, I would say that it's, when I'm consciously relaxed of it, it's a little bit less terrible. And I think because that's just one of the things that like, That'll just instantly stress you out if you're punching your jaw.
Adeel [27:06]: Yeah, I mean, stress is huge. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I mean, obviously stretch is a huge catalyst and, you know, people talk about just kind of pre-preparing their mind before they walk into a situation that they could, that where they could be, where they could be triggered to kind of relax and that can kind of help or take deep breaths or whatever. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, any other, yeah, anything you've talked, have you talked to like sufferers as well or for this thesis?
Ashton [27:43]: I haven't talked to as many yet as I would like to. i did talk to one girl it was interesting because her experiences were a lot like mine um which was kind of cool it was almost mirrored and it just it got me thinking about how many similarities there are in this room person to person that i've heard um but she just oh yeah there's sometimes i can just like listen and right and it's like i'm hearing my
Adeel [28:14]: My autobiography read back to me. It's quite eerie sometimes.
Ashton [28:19]: Right. It's really crazy how many similarities there are. So her case wasn't too bad, but still enough to bother her in everyday life. So she had a lot of the same triggers with breathing and snoring and... a couple like tapping type noises and it she was actually very cognizant of what was going on it was really interesting to me because she talked about how the intervals of sound would bother her so she was like anything in an interval of i think she said like 45 seconds or something like that she was like that is a trigger for me like something within that time frame could be a trigger for me and that was the exact same thing that tom dozer was telling me is that anything in these certain intervals of time can then become a trigger noise and it was just so crazy uh to hear how aware she was of it and not even having done any research really of just how the sounds would then bother her
Adeel [29:26]: So by intervals, do you mean like 45 seconds? So like something repeat, something you hear something and then within 45 seconds you hear it again?
Ashton [29:35]: Yeah, more like anything. Yeah, I'm trying to put this the best way as possible. But yeah, maybe you hear something with it. Might have even been a smaller amount of time, maybe like 15 seconds. So like you hear a noise, like a constant noise. for like 15 seconds or something like that, and then it comes back again. I'm not exactly sure if it was that way or the opposite way, but it was like anything that repeats. So you hear something in repetition. You hear like a tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and then tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. So like the same amount of time in between.
Adeel [30:14]: Oh, yeah.
Ashton [30:15]: So anything like that. No, absolutely.
Adeel [30:18]: Yeah, absolutely. Repetitive sounds. I've heard that a lot as being a trigger. And then it just kind of snowballs because that anticipation starts to, you know, not your whatever rotten part of your brain is interesting. Yeah, cool. And, you know, now that you're, how about kind of like in your day to day, like you're in broadcasting, you're in a newsroom, I'm assuming. What's your day to day like? I guess you get to go outside when there's no COVID going on.
Ashton [31:00]: It's actually a pretty perfect career for me because I don't have to be stuck inside all the time. Before this job, I was working a job on campus. and i just kind of worked in an office area and it became a really big issue around lunch time when one of my co-workers would pull out chips and start eating a bag of chips really loud so i would get up and and take like a i wouldn't even take a lunch break i would just go walk around for as long as possible and then come back um but now in the newsroom it hasn't been too much of an issue a lot of times i'm the only person in the newsroom because of covid most of the reporters work from home and i'm kind of hoping that's a ongoing thing because um yeah just stay stay remote you do your own uh stories wherever you are yeah it's pretty straight like i'm i'm one of the only ones not working from home just because um i'm new i'm part-time and We don't have enough equipment for everyone to go do their stuff at home. So I basically get the whole newsroom to myself a lot of times. On Sundays, I am literally the only person there for probably like 10 hours. And so it hasn't really been an issue because I get in, I set my stuff up, I go run, I go shoot that stuff. And, you know, the commotion of everyday life doesn't bother me. I love when there's a lot going on and I can't focus on anything. I can't pinpoint one thing that's bothering me because there's just so much happening. So it's like, you know, you run to an interview, you talk to that person for 15, 20 minutes, you run to the next one, go get your footage. And then you come back and you put your headphones on and you edit for the rest of the time. You don't have to interact with anyone if you don't want to. I've only had one thing.
Adeel [32:56]: Uh,
Ashton [32:57]: yeah i was just gonna say i've only had one issue with uh one of the managers there who will eat stuff really annoying but a lot of the times i'm not there for lunch time so it's not really a problem right yeah that's good yeah the only i was gonna say it's uh if you're running around and i think your brain just realizes all right you know if any if anything's triggering me i'm we're out of here in a few minutes anyways right
Adeel [33:21]: I can chill. Yeah, that seems like a relatively, you know, for people looking for career paths, this seems like a pretty relatively good one.
Ashton [33:31]: Right. Well, it always keeps your brain moving. So, like, you just don't have time to focus on things. And you can leave literally whenever you want. You can go wherever you want. As long as you get your stuff in on time, you're good to go.
Adeel [33:44]: yeah have you um have you have you kind of like uh as you've been doing this have you looked at the um what the landscape is for other news stories that have been any news stories that have been created about misophonia maybe at a even at a local level around the country um i don't know if you have yeah i mean you've kind of looked around i haven't found any um Like in some small town, you know, ABC channel or whatever, if somebody's like done a story. I'm sure there have been, we just don't know about them.
Ashton [34:16]: Yeah, I'll have to look around and maybe check some of our file and video and stuff. I'll have to look around. I'm not exactly sure. I certainly haven't heard of one, but it doesn't mean that there's not one. There definitely could be. I think that sometimes there are a lot of things that are connected to Misophonia, but that's not your go-to of what it is. as far as the general public. I definitely think there are a lot of violent cases that are related to misophonia. I would not be surprised because you'll hear a thing sometimes that people will say, oh, that's a crazy story. He said he stabbed her because she wouldn't stop chewing gum or something like that. That's definitely happened, but nobody would...
Adeel [35:02]: pinpoint it to misophonia they're just going to take him to jail no yeah i'm sure i mean i don't know of any direct with that direct but um but yeah i'm sure there's stuff we don't know about but maybe i'm sure even um more likely is just somebody is happens to be worked up all day from misophonia and then snaps for another reason um because this can you know this can get you to a really bad mental state and then something else could really make you snap i would think um potentially god forbid but you know since we're talking about like potential you know news stories about um incidents i i just we were you know we're always talking well you're right we're always thinking about like looking for that direct incident but uh i just it just got me thinking that there could be a lot of indirect because of how um how this can really take over your brain uh right really on the edge so i think there definitely could be and you know what that would be another interesting uh research project yeah yeah no i was gonna say that uh yeah an interesting um the climax for your documentary is to find that uh find that story uh actually i want to do some googling i know well now i'm thinking maybe i can find an inmate who's in there because yeah it's just oh yeah it's kind of interesting that would maybe there'll be a shawshank redemption kind of movie right i don't know i don't know if we're going to a dark place here or just uh really brainstorming it but well it would just be very interesting and i feel like it must have happened at some point yeah yeah i wonder if there is some kind of a record of like um uh you know parole transcripts or something and somebody reveals later in their life that uh actually she was just chewing her gum right you know and gets denied parole um you know probably start wrapping up soon but i'm curious on uh now that you know your family knows about it and you're kind of more um you you know kind of more vocal about it how are things for you now like are you um you know pretty comfortable talking to you seem like you're pretty comfortable talking to your friends and um holidays are probably relatively okay if people are aware about it yeah um and with my direct family it's not really a big issue and since i would say they're
Ashton [37:29]: they all have a little bit of it um it just wasn't something that was brought to their attention until i started telling them about it but it's definitely all good now it's not something that i'm afraid to bring up and they kind of know like when they hear something that's going to annoy me or when they're doing something that's going to be really annoying they'll apologize for it and then stop doing it so it really hasn't been an issue Since then, with my direct family and with my friends, most of them know. I wouldn't say that all of them know. There are some of them that I don't really want to bring it up to. But, you know, with the college life. But if they need to know, they'll know. Right. If they need to know, they'll know. But I don't see them enough for it to become an issue right now.
Adeel [38:17]: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we'll have, obviously, I'm going to have a bunch of your, whatever you're interested in sharing in the chat. show notes and whatnot especially if you're looking for um any anyone to talk to um is there anything you want to kind of yeah anything you want to you want to want to tell people uh or plug or whatever uh about uh uh what you learned or just about about me so yeah um well i i just first like people to reach out to me if they've had an experience with misophonia i'd
Ashton [38:50]: like to get my hands on any interviews that i can because you know everybody's experience is relatively similar but different in some way and i really would like to build that up because it's hard to build this story for other people to see if i don't have the right elements and enough people talking to me about it um but i would definitely say for other people who have been struggling um I think this is actually kind of a great time for us because we can work from home and we don't have to interact with all these people. Everything has been cut in half. And, you know, if it's been rough before this point, I think it's going to be a lot better after this. The current circumstances are not great just as far as COVID and, you know, sickness and always being on your guard. But for me, Siphonia is... It's not a bad time. It's going to be a lot better from here on out in that regard.
Adeel [39:48]: I agree. And I hope a lot of these practices, like staying the F away from people, kind of continues.
Ashton [39:53]: And I think that they will. My dad works in IT for Dollar General, and they've already decided everyone will work from home in IT.
Adeel [40:04]: forever yeah like that's just their vm wow that's so interesting yeah because you hear about in the news for like the big tech companies but uh but it's it's good to see that it's um coming down to a lot of the smaller companies as well who i mean they have you know their big companies actually have the money to keep those offices but right small companies um don't so i think it makes more sense for them to look at creative ways to keep uh quality um you know quality employees like your dad right and just kind of you know let them be flexible right and he loves it so he just works from home now sweet um and uh yeah the other thing yeah yeah we'll definitely have contact information to to to reach out to you and um yeah and you know related to kind of what we were talking about a few minutes ago you know if anyone wants to share Whatever stories you want. I'd also be curious about, you know, some of these potentially risque subjects. Yes. But I mean, controversial maybe.
Ashton [41:06]: Right.
Adeel [41:07]: Would be kind of interesting if anyone, maybe we'll find a way to share those stories anonymously or something.
Ashton [41:12]: Right. Yeah, and I'm definitely familiar with doing anonymous stuff. Oh, yeah.
Adeel [41:17]: You're the perfect person to talk to. Yeah, exactly.
Ashton [41:20]: Right. I'm a safe person to talk to. I've dealt with a lot of anonymous interviews, so I know what I'm doing.
Adeel [41:27]: Yeah, absolutely. This is great. Well, yeah, Ashna, I want to thank you. It was great talking to you. Whenever we talked a while back, this whole year has been a blur. But thank you for reaching out to me. And thanks for, again, just kind of coming on here for the podcast. This is going to help a lot of people. A very unique perspective, too.
Ashton [41:46]: Yeah, thank you. I'm just really excited to do it.
Adeel [41:49]: Thank you, Ashton. It was great to talk again, and I can't wait to see the thesis project once it's complete. Maybe have her on again. Please reach out to Ashton. If you'd like to help, I'll have info on the website and in the show notes here. If you're enjoying the show, please consider hitting the five stars on Apple Podcasts. It helps people discover the podcast by appearing a little bit higher. Otherwise, hit me up on Instagram or Facebook. That's a funny podcast. Or Twitter. That's a funny show. Music, as always, is by Moby. And until next week, wishing you peace and quiet.