[00:00:00] Adeel: Michael, welcome to the podcast. Good to have you here.

[00:00:03] Michael: Thank you. It's nice to be here,

[00:00:04] Adeel: Yeah.

Yeah. Do you want to tell us just roughly where you're located and I guess what you do?

[00:00:09] Michael: Okay. I'm retired. I've been retired about 15 years. I live in Arizona. I live in Phoenix area during the cooler months, and I live up in the mountains a couple hours away in Prescott during the summertime, so I don't have to endure that unbelievable heat down there.

Yeah, I get the best of both worlds here. ,

[00:00:31] Adeel: yeah, for sure. Great. Okay. And. And yeah. You were asking me earlier if I had Ms. Poya. I believe you have Ms. Poney as well, right? You're a somewhat of a well known figure in the community. I have a, I kinda wanted to,

[00:00:43] Michael: I have a, I've had groups for a number of years, Facebook groups so I, depending on what treatment I have I started group up for that treatment, like neurofeedback or whatever I was into at the time. Right now, I guess about four years ago, I started a group called the Misophonia Treatment Tracker. And that was just general, and I wanted to see what other people were doing and if it was working or not working, and track whatever treatments were going on.

But it ended up more of my own treatment being,

[00:01:18] Adeel: yeah let's, yeah, let's continue. I guess hopefully everything's okay on your end internet wise and yeah. Yeah. So you're, let's say you were, you're talking about , you were talking about how you have, you've had a Yeah. A bunch of communities over the years and the latest one, the treatment tractor group, which I've, that's just where I, I've heard about you from a number of people that was meant to track people, different people's treatments, but you've been documenting your own search.

Yeah, I'd love to hear more about

[00:01:43] Michael: that. Yeah. I enjoy learning cuz this is just taken over my life. It's I've had it for over 60 years, so it has dominated my life and it's affected my career choices. It affected all of my relationships with my, wife, wives, and children and friends and social activities and my extended family.

It affects everything. It affects how you deal with the world. It makes you more of a, I'm an introvert, but I enjoy being around people and I do, enjoy conversation and company, but I have had to limit that at times, and I tend to be, isolate myself more than I would have otherwise.

, because just to avoid the stress, it has affected my life tremendously. So it's about 10 years ago I found out that it was, it had a name and there were people, investigating it and looking into treatments and trying to see what they could do about it. I started, actually, let me see if I'm 70.

I was probably 50. About 40 years ago I started my first treatments. I moved to 1984. I moved to. Los Angeles, so I could go to Primal Therapy. You might be familiar with Arthur, Jan Avin, primal Scream Therapy.

[00:03:04] Adeel: I've heard of Primal Scream, but could you talk about that a bit more? It seems like a, a cool early eighties trend.

yeah,

[00:03:12] Michael: it was actually seventies and eighties. He wrote the book in 1969 and I eventually over, eventually moved out there so I could go to Primal Therapy and it was really good. It was very helpful. You go back to your childhood and you try to relive the painful experiences and incorporate them, resolve them, and it was very helpful.

It's still, a part of my life and I I still think it's a helpful therapy, but it didn't help me, particularly with the misophonia. This thing has been so difficult to deal with. and then I went, I lived in Los Angeles and then I went, and then I heard about somebody about 10 years ago. I heard about neurofeedback helping somebody.

Marcia Johnson, who's, over the, , the, misson group. She had a Yahoo group and she had someone on there that talked about going to a neurofeedback practitioner in Iowa. So I tried for about two years, I lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I went to four or five different practitioners there of neurofeedback.

And then I ended up going to one in Wyoming, one in California. And I finally went and moved for a year and a half to Iowa to go to this particular, feedback doctor who apparently helped this guy completely get rid of his symptoms. And I spent a year and a half there on a whole bunch of money, and it did nothing.

Wow. So I came back home with my tail between my legs and started some new ideas, holistic. I had a holistic treatment. I did vitamin therapy. They test you and find out what you're mess missing and what vitamins you're missing. That didn't work. I went to Utah. I saw another doctor. They did all kinds of testing and they gave me all kinds of supplements, and I did that.

I still do a lot of those supplements, but it did not help. And then what else did I do? I did Gaps Diet, which is, gut health. And it's this horrible diet where you eat almost nothing and , starving all the time. And it was supposed to help get toxins out of the brain. And that didn't work.

And then I was about to give up and then but I kept reading and I kept finding new things. So I continued with different treatments. And then about 10 years ago what's the LA latest one? And then I thought it had to do with brain inflammation. So I continued with diet and all of those things, and none of those worked.

And then this doctor, you may have heard of Dr. Hatch in Utah. Yep. He's a functional neurologist. Really nice guy. So I made three trips up to see him, and came home with the exercises and did them over and over again. Nothing , . So I think I gave up for a little while and then I started to investigate.

I don't know how one thing led to another. Anyway I think it was Chris Pearson and he had the s r t sequin. Repa patterning. You may have heard of that. Yeah. Se

[00:06:14] Adeel: Pattern three sequencing or something like that. Yeah. I'll find it and put a link

[00:06:17] Michael: in. Yeah. That, that brought a bunch of things in.

Anyway, I ended up working with one of the practitioners more of in se sermon in Scotland, and I still work with her. , do this over the computer and she's wonderful and it's really helped. And we are mostly doing I f s internal family sisters are you familiar? Yeah,

[00:06:36] Adeel: I've heard about that.

Yeah. So that's, sorry to cut in, but is it, that's the idea of it's not your family it's the parts of you or person I don't wanna say personality in the question group. Yeah. Your mind. There's like a firefighter, there's the wounded child and then there's the executive, something like that.

Yeah. If you could explain that. I find that fascinating. That's

[00:06:54] Michael: absolutely fascinating. He was developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz and he has a number of books and he found. that we all have subpersonalities, we have our true self, which is the part that's unchanging it. It never, it's always there.

It's the calm, creative, part that we tend to lose when we grow up in any kind of situation that causes us stress or a traumatic situation that we have to change ourselves in some way to get our needs met. If we're not, I'm not saying everybody that has misophonia has had serious trauma, and that's not the case.

But apparently we have all had stresses and we've all had things in our life that have caused us to develop different personality. Create different sub-personalities, like a protector part. You dig down into the past and find the parts of you that have been hurt. We'll just talk about what's going on in the present.

And you find that there are many parts within you that are helping you to function. And when you were growing up, when you were young, say for instance, you weren't being held or paid attention to, or you felt that your brother or sister was getting, being favored over you, and you start to create different little personalities to pro protect you in some way, to pro to get your needs met.

, when you feel trapped or helpless and that you don't have someone there to support you. , you create a personality of some type to protect that, that wounded part. And it does. We all do it anyway. This, it's a fascinating science and it takes time and we slowly peel back the layers and find the deeper wounded parts.

That's what we've been doing here lately. And and befriend them. They re they were not protected at the time. They needed someone there to support them. And these parts we would find who they are, talk to them, , listen to what they have to say, and then give them the support they need and the love, and hear them out and help to resolve that past hurt.

And as they get when they're heard and they feel like they can trust you and that you're supporting them. , they slowly heal and the healing process goes on and continues on. It's a very popular treatment method, and it's the one that I'm mostly doing And yeah. Oh,

[00:09:47] Adeel: go ahead. Has it so obviously you're doing it for the, obviously the purpose of trying to heal misophonia and something that comes up on the podcast a lot is stories from folks as childhood of their having to be Milwaukee on eggshells for some sort of chaotic situation happening at home.

And this, it seems a good potential therapy for that kind of situation where a lot of us have had something that happened, not, maybe not everybody, but something in the past or periods of the past where there was like a walking on eggshells. moment or a situation or years.

It sounds like it is a theory here that as you're working with these doctors that healing, healing that wounded child will help you not be, react to, to, to sounds as a danger.

[00:10:35] Michael: That's the whole thing. Yeah. I think this de I think this condition develops when we don't feel safe.

Yeah. When, as a child, it's learned either explicitly or implicitly, it's learned, especially by the, our an autonomic nervous system or as a, when our brain is developing, we learn how to survive. And if we're not, we don't feel safe. When we're not always comforted, when we're frightened or when we feel our boundaries have been violated or so many little things that can create this kind of situation.

Then we go in, we get into a. Fight or flight or freeze mode. And I think because when we were young, we didn't feel safe at times. If it could be chronic stress, it could be particularly a chronic, unpredictable stress that apparently can cause inflammation in the body, in the brain, which can exacerbate whatever symptoms we have.

And it also just keeps the nervous system, ramped up and agitated. Yeah. Agitated. And we're, when we don't feel safe and comfortable, and this autonomic nervous system is turned up to be always on the lookout for potential threats. We hear everything, our ears perk up. We're hearing all the sounds.

We, we our eyes are looking out for threats. And I just think we're just basically looking out for threats because we don't internally feel safe. and it's all about safety. Yeah. Safety and survival and when our needs are met, when somebody, always, and no matter how much a parent loves it to their child, they're never gonna always be there for them.

They're never always gonna show up when they're scared or when they need them. We do the best we can as parents , but I just think we're, we just get stuck in this fight or flight mode and we just pick up on potential threats. It's just the way the unconscious brain works, it's survival brain, and it's always looking out for the potential threats.

So the key is to try to calm the nervous system down, deal with the past, try to resolve those things. But at the same time, the other approach is to try to calm down the nervous system. And I do that. I've been incorporating yoga. and mindfulness, and certainly a lot of exercise and anything that helps you to feel safe and calm, deep breathing, particularly slow deep breathing and strengthening the vagus nerve.

I'm sure you've, the vagus nerve has come up. , polyvagal, Theus come up. , and they all work together. They're all part of the same thing. They're all ways of calming down your body and your response. If you can calm down your body then you won't be quite as responsive. So if you try to calm down the body and at the same time you're doing a top-down approach, which is to deal with what's going on in your brain.

I'm sure you're also consi familiar with the term memory consolidation, right? Yeah. This is a form, if f s is a form of memory consolidation, we're bringing up the past, bringing it out into the consciousness. Changing it, showing that, showing the unconscious brain that it's safe. Now you're in control.

You're an adult. You're not two years old or five years old because when I do the ifs with Mor, I'm 3, 4, 5 years old. I'm this little part of me that's three or four that's scared. Nobody's coming to help me . And I am, I now as an adult, come in there and take over the role of hearing, protecting listening and helping that part, that little scared part that is triggered by sight or sound and calm him down and hope that he will learn that everything's safe now in the hopes of not res, having my response be so extreme.

[00:14:25] Adeel: This is fascinating. It, and you, like you said everyone's kind of of dealing with something like this in your discussions with the people you're working with is there any idea of something different about what we experienced growing up that kind of puts us over the edge or maybe where more susceptible somehow to to having to create these personalities to protect ourselves.

That's the second line I'm fascinated by is if this such a kind of a, if everyone has a kind of a common experience growing up, parents try to, obviously love us, but there's always something that happens at some point. I'm just always wondering if there's something different about how we react at that age.

[00:14:58] Michael: That's a great question. And it's one that I've been discussing cuz lately I've really been. And it's just what I always thought from the beginning, and then I got sidetracked into other ideas. But I really think it has to do with the trauma and stress and when a, when I say trauma in the group, people go, no, my child had no trauma or I had no trauma in my life.

Everyone experiences trauma to some degree. It could be it's a loaded

[00:15:23] Adeel: term. I've experienced that as well. Yeah. It's a, yeah.

[00:15:26] Michael: All the science is heading in that direction that there's something that happens. Yeah. Some of us may have a predisposition. We may even have a genetic predisposition, but most of the brain wiring happens after we're born during our life and certain stressors and trauma.

They could be very mild trauma. It could be implicit. And there's a

[00:15:47] Adeel: small T trauma as a term as well, which is, I think that's a more what you're just Yeah.

[00:15:51] Michael: It could just be the, so small ones could be that you're, parent favored one child over the other, and you just got the message.

That I'm not lovable. They're more lovable than me and it's painful. And that's trauma. You know that, that's plenty of trauma. There's so many traumas that can happen. You have a surgery, you have a major infection. All of those things are traumatic and they can set this thing in motion as well.

But I, I think most of the time it's the emotional traumas, the little situations in our life, in our family, with our parents and our siblings, that, that seem minor. But I'll tell you, when you go back and you're four or five years old, the little things that you look at now and you think, boy, that's such, such a big deal when you're five years old again and you're emotionally feeling that they're huge.

they're tremendous. These

[00:16:43] Adeel: sessions have to be, these sessions have to be, correct me if I'm wrong they must be pretty intense and emotional, right? When you're working with your, like even now, when you're going back to that time I would imagine that they must be, yeah, you must,

[00:16:54] Michael: yeah. They can be very emotional, pretty, pretty heavy.

Very emotional. I do a lot of crying. I sit in front of my computer and yeah, and talk to this wonderful woman in Scotland. And when I go back to being that little child again and feeling the hurt, feeling I was humiliated, violated, not being loved, not being given attention, not being heard, all these little things, being less, being less favored from my, either my brother or my sister or whatever.

Those things are huge. When you're little and when you know the primitive brain will do anything to survive and when it feels like the unconscious brain will think, oh, I'm not loved. , I'm gonna be abandoned. I'm gonna starve death, I'm gonna die. It doesn't, it's not a cognitive brain. This is a primitive brain and it experiences things on a, on that deep emotional level, and they're huge feelings.

And I was just thinking about the ways we deal with anger and rage. That's such a big part of of misophonia. And I was listening to somebody today talk about it, and there's three ways we deal with it. One is to act it out, scream and yell, punch, hit somebody, whatever, which we don't usually do.

It's not socially acceptable or we suppress it, which is what most of us do. We suppress it. And but there's a third way, which is to experience it. And one practice that I've incorporated is mindfulness. Seeing yourself, feeling yourself, mindfulness is not just sitting there and being blissful.

It's experiencing all of the feelings, being very aware of them. feeling how tense your body is, how angry you are, and actually stepping a away from yourself. And and seeing what's learning to be comfortable with these physical and emotional states. And if you can become more comfortable them with them, that's what mindfulness is.

It's one way of doing it, sitting with it in the moment, become uncomfortable. It's not as threatening and you learn to have more control over it. You're not acting it out, you're not suppressing it. You're actually feeling it and experiencing it, but you're learning to, to deal with it in a better way. And that's another approach I take, which is a mindful approach.

And

[00:19:09] Adeel: yeah. You're talking about taking the mindful approach as your experience and trigger, or is this kind of it's some other time when you're just trying to be more in touch with your mind? Yeah,

[00:19:18] Michael: It's a practice that , a lot of these things require a lot of time and energy and

[00:19:21] Adeel: effort.

because when we're being triggered, like logic is out the window. So I'm just curious if you've made it to the point where you are able to pause in the middle of a trigger and catch yourself and try to be more mindful, that

[00:19:32] Michael: would be amazing. I certainly do a lot of deep breathing , when I feel triggered and I try to step away almost observing myself suffering. Yeah. You can suffer. Yeah. Suffering is not the hard part. It, you can suffer, but it's learning how to be suffering, learning how to live and be comfortable with those feelings and learning that they're not gonna kill you.

The more comfortable you are, the less out of control, the less control they have over you. And that's all part of mindfulness. So this is, and when you're

[00:20:03] Adeel: doing, when you're doing the mi when you are trying to be mindful in the moment, are you also maybe blending it with the ifs work and maybe are you thinking about that?

Sub personality or is it a

[00:20:15] Michael: separate thing? I think that's really separate. I think they overlap at times, but it's more of a practice that you do, I just set aside time. It's set aside 10, 20, 15 when it's whatever it, be mindful and listen to your body. Listen to your thoughts.

Let them come and go and don't respond to them. Don't repress them. Don't be afraid of them. Feel them experiencing them and be in control of what's going on. And it makes a difference, but it's a practice. It has to be something you do on a regular basis.

[00:20:48] Adeel: And as you've been doing this practice, I don't know how long you've been doing these the mindfulness of the ifs, are you noticing you noticing a change yet?

Or is it you just feel like it's in the right direction

[00:20:58] Michael: and it's in the right direction? It's not a quick fix. None of the things I'm doing at this point are a quick fix. We all want the panacea, we all want the quick fix but there isn't one. And another thing I'm doing is ketamine have you been familiar with the resurgence of psychedelic medicines?

[00:21:16] Adeel: Yeah. Oh yeah. , that's funny. When when you mentioned the quick fix a friend of mine had emailed me who doesn't have meson, but his wife does, and he just asked me, isn't there like a, psychedelic drug? We can just take . So yeah, I'd love to hear what you're thinking about, because I am curious.

[00:21:29] Michael: Yeah. I just started this recently. There's a company called Mind Bloom I started

[00:21:33] Adeel: at Oh yes. It's a startup, I think right on the West Coast. I believe I if it's the same one up

[00:21:38] Michael: there. Are they, I think I, they're in Rhode Island's,

[00:21:40] Adeel: like a microdosing

[00:21:41] Michael: kind of. Oh, okay. Exactly. And all of a sudden,

Oh the people that I listened to, the guy who developed I Fs, this is where I started it. , the guy I developed Schwartz, who developed I Fs Gabo mate who's Oh yeah. Trauma expert. Brilliant guy. If you ever want to learn more about misophonia, check out his videos on YouTube.

[00:22:02] Adeel: I highly, yeah, exactly.

I highly recommended that. And oh, you have, huh? highly recommend. Oh, how, yeah. So it was, that was actually recommended to me from another misophonia therapist. Oh, really? That just blew my mind. That just introduced me to this whole world of multi-trauma and ifs and the body keeps the scar.

Yep. And yeah, I've been just soaking all that stuff up like a sponge. Good.

[00:22:21] Michael: Me too. It's fascinating, especially if you have misophonia and you wanna learn why you have it and how. Try to fix.

[00:22:28] Adeel: It's the first thing that really clicked for me. Yeah. I was like I'm reading this stuff, watching these videos, thinking about my past.

I'm like, oh, okay. Now it's finally, something's starting to make sense. So that's

[00:22:37] Michael: great. That's great because I really believe you're on the right track, and I believe I'm finally on the right track. And particularly Go matte is brilliant. Yeah. And he's got a million videos and he is got wonderful books and fellow Canadian too.

Oh. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, he is. And anyway, he he's the one who stresses that physical. So many of these physical and mental disorders that we suffer with have to do with trauma, not extreme trauma. He grew up in Hungary at the end of the during the Holocaust at the end of World War ii.

And it wasn't him, he was an infant, but he suffered from abandoned. But his mother had to give him a away to save his life. , at least temporarily. And, but , he's, he picked up on all of her stress. And that's how, my mother had misophonia and I picked up on all of her triggers and stress, and I tried to protect her from the sounds.

And I, it's a complex thing for me, and my daughter has misophonia and she picked up on, on it from me. She learned it from me. She had a lot of stress growing up with a father, with misophonia and, problems in the marriage and all. And, it was very difficult to have a parent with misophonia and you tend to pick up on it.

But anyway, I'm getting sidetracked, but Gabo matte has talked about how trauma is behind the majority of these conditions. Unfortunately, misophonia yet has not fit in there, but I'm sure in time it'll fit in with the ADHD and right. And anxiety. depression and some of the other ptsd d they're all, they all have similar origins and they all have similar methods of trying to fix them and heal from them.

But I've been discussing, I've been discussing trauma. A lot of my group and a lot of people, a lot of mothers are like no, I don't want to hear My child had no trauma. But it's not quite the same trauma that you're thinking of. And it's a much more subtle thing. And but I really believe trauma and chronic, particularly chronic unpredictable stress in the home, in the family situations they cause us to respond the way we are.

They c they put us into this state of fight and flight. We don't feel safe. We don't have a predictable world, and our senses are heightened. And so we start picking up on. sounds. It's not just chewing, it's dogs barking, it's clock sticking, it's rapid movements, all the thing, my, my senses are just hyped up.

[00:25:16] Adeel: Yeah. speaking of senses this I want to get back to the microdosing. Oh yeah, sorry, second. All stuff, but I do, I No, that's fine. I, like I said, I love tangents, but I, there was one, one thought there that I was thinking about recently how, like why hearing why. Sounds I was just thinking that cuz you know, we have visual triggers.

I'm sure you have probably visual triggers as well, and some people have sound feelings and not touch and whatnot. I'm wondering I was thinking that sound is the hardest at least for me, I think it's the hardest one to block away. Like you can close your eyes and avoid Yeah.

Visual triggers. Yeah. Obviously touching you can just be by yourself, taste and smell. You can hold your nose, but you can, you can hold your ears, but that's not gonna completely block away sounds. And I feel like maybe it's the first one, the first exactly length that falls, and then the other ones come in.

I feel like it's it's bigger than, it's not just a sound sensitivity. It's it goes deeper than that. And I feel like this idea, the nervous system and trauma, these aren't specific to sounds. And I feel like hopefully, we'll the understanding will change to beyond just the sounds sensitivity.

And maybe we can get to that, the root problem, which I think, you're alluding to.

[00:26:22] Michael: I just think when we don't feel safe, especially as a child, yeah. When our brain is developing, we pick up we just pick up on that and we, we learn to be on guard for, I used to think there were monsters under my bed and in my closet and stuff, I didn't feel safe.

Some of that's normal. , but. We all have a certain amount of survival instincts that kick in, we, we don't have the olfactory senses that a dog has. They would probably use scent more than sound, but we don't. And so sound is probably the one that's the most salient that sticks out and we pick up on.

So I think our hearing is our greatest source of first line survival.

[00:27:00] Adeel: Yeah. So getting back to drugs, what yeah. Fascinating by fascinated by the idea of psychedelics, microdosing. Wh what are you what can you say you're trying and what have you heard? What would you what are you most interested in there?

The only

thing

[00:27:11] Michael: I've been doing is ketamine. There are other, , ones. A lot of 'em, all the mushrooms are becoming popular and there's a lot of. , a lot psychedelics, microdosing, and some not so micro that people are doing and yeah, this one in particular was recommended. If you go on YouTube or read any of their books, cab Mate Schwartz with the ifs.

Some of the other ones, they're, they've been, they discuss it. You can see it on YouTube, but they discuss it. I think Steven Porges too with the polyvagal theory they're finding that this really helps facilitate the process. It helps with depression, anxiety, PT h, PTs D and key in I Fs work is to bring out your authentic, true self, which tends tended to be pushed to the side because these other subparts had to show up to protect you and.

something about these psychedelics. They helped to bring out your true self. They helped the self, the authentic self that was lost in the process of protection to bring it out to the fore. And Ketamine does that other psychedelics do that. They also, it also helps rewire the brain.

It facilitates and speeds up that process of breaking old neural connections that aren't working well. And making new ones. That's what memory re reconsolidation is all about. That's what IFS is trying to do. So anything that'll help move that process along quicker is helpful. Dr. Schwartz discussed it in his book, so I thought, okay, I'll check into this.

And then I found mind Bloom and I did them for a little while, but then I happened to find a doctor who does online , medicine and he, I, I see him every month. He's $250 for a visit for about a half an hour or whatever he prescribes. The ketamine, it doesn't cost much. It's only like 60, $70 for 10 doses.

So I get 10 doses. , take it every three days. And it's a magnificent experience. , I really enjoy the experience and , I cover so much during this experience. I put sleep mask on. I put on my headphones and I have this wonderful meditation type music, and I lay back, I'm on a recliner and I take it it takes about 15 minutes to start kicking in and it lasts about an hour and a half about, and I go back and to my past. I go through my life. It's a very spiritual experience. , a lot of my understanding of God and my spiritual relationship with God and with myself, my inner spirit, they're all touched on and it leaves me wanting to always be a better person, to be a good person, to do the best I can with this life that I've been given.

And it also, I, it takes me to parts where I go back to the work I'm doing with the I Fs, I go back to being this old, this young child who's wounded and I delve into those areas and it, in, in an hour and a half, sometimes I feel like I've lived an entire lifetime , but time I come out of it.

Wow. And then one of the important things about psychedelics is having support, built a support system, but having some trained therapists that you're working with. that can help you to process what's been going on what happened during the experience and process. The experience. Not just having a, crazy psychedelic experience, but taking out what you learn and using it and processing it and absorbing it and making sense of it and using it in a positive way in your life.

So you can't just take them and just go on a trip all by yourself. You need support. You need hopefully trained therapists who understands a little bit about this. And at least I know when I'm work doing the IFS with more of an, we can discuss what's going on, what happened, and treat those wounded parts like I have been doing and what they're doing.

They're not all wounded parts, they're protective parts. They do a lot of complicated things, but trying to understand what's going on with them. So it's a helpful thing. It's been kind of life, pretty life changing, really. Yeah, it sounds like it. That's, and I do it every three days now, and it's not expensive.

It costs me about $300 a month, and that's about $30 a session and , that is, a lot of people are doing intravenously and end up paying about $200 a session or more Yikes. Yeah. Or more. That's intense. And I love the fact that I can take it orally. I just, they're just lozenges and dissolve under your tongue, and you can do it at the safety of your home.

You don't have to worry about driving anywhere or having a driver to take you home because you can't drive afterwards. I found a way to, to use the psychedelics in a. cost effective manner and use them in a positive way along with all the other things that I'm doing.

[00:32:33] Adeel: But, and so when you say you, you do the, when you do the doses, you don't have a professional there with you.

It's more like you, next time you see them, you can talk about what you went through. Maybe. Do you keep a journal while you're I

[00:32:45] Michael: do. While you're going through six weeks, I have a journal. It's hard to read my handwriting, but I do have a journal. Yes. And I do have support. I always have my wife, she ends up coming down and I talk to her afterwards.

I, I kinda like being alone. There's nothing she can do while I'm going through this. I'm just in my own world for an hour and a half. But having her to be there, hold me, listen to me, what I have to say, feel loved, feel support, that's a really important part of this. And and then I have weekly sessions with Morgan and on the computer.

So I, I do feel like I have a support system. I talk about it a lot in the group, but I don't think anybody else out in the group is doing it. I've thought of starting a group, there are groups for people who are doing psychedelics, but nothing related to misophonia. So maybe eventually

[00:33:33] Adeel: there will be, Hey, I'd be interested in that.

I'd be, yeah I feel like not enough people are talking about the whole, the gi, the gama circle of sphere of past trauma and, connected to misophonia. Yeah. And so this is also, I feel like it's part of that sphere. I feel like this this, yeah, all the ifs all this stuff I think should

[00:33:53] Michael: be explored.

It all makes sense. It makes

[00:33:54] Adeel: sense to you. I'll be the first person in that group, . Yeah.

[00:33:57] Michael: Yeah. It does. It does. Intuitively, it didn't, you feel like at some point, What you had this, it had something to do with your childhood and some

[00:34:07] Adeel: past. I knew immediately. I knew immediately it had to do with when my dad would flip out if we misplaced something in the house.

And we would have to, we would have to be, we didn't know. We, I'd be listening very carefully what, what mood is he in? What floor is he on? Am I searching? Am I looking around enough?

[00:34:22] Michael: Yeah. In my room. Boy, you're perfect. For you. That's a, you're describing exactly why somebody would have his condition.

you are absolutely describing it. I had an alcoholic father who, not physically abusive, but a, but verbally and emotionally and unpredictable. And he got extremely drunk and my mother drank with him, so she was not there to, to protect me. So that was a, that was not a safe environment to grow up with a mother who's out of it not even aware of you when, and the father who got meaner and meaner as the evening progressed and it was, almost every night as I got older and a very unsafe, unpredictable, stressful place to grow up in my and then with my mother having it as well, I was a perfect candidate to pick this thing up.

Did you, did

[00:35:12] Adeel: I think you mentioned something about siblings. Did you, what was their kind of, how did they fit into this? Were they also experiencing the same things you were, did they end up getting misophonia as well?

[00:35:24] Michael: That their key part of it? My first trigger was my brother. Or a typical night would be my parents would go into the living room, they would drink, and my brother and sister and I, and we're all, we're, I'm a loving, I have a loving family.

I love my brother and sister. I love, I, I've always had friction with my father, but he's no longer around or my mother, but, they loved us. They just had. a bit of a drinking problem that, that I think made things unsafe for me. And I'm sorry, I lost your, oh, and my brother and sister, my brother, my younger brother, four, four or five years younger, he was my first trigger and it was just unbearable when he chewed with his mouth open and it was just, drove me nuts. And I sat right next to him growing up, watching eating dinner every night. And my sister didn't, wasn't a trigger so much unless she was chewing gum or chewing on candy or something. She became a trigger. But it was mainly my brother. And I just remember it, we've gone back there.

And then a lot of the situations that went on, I felt when my brother came along, I didn't get as much attention. I was the middle child. I was the. Whipping by from my father. I took the brunt of all this frustration and anger for the longest time. , my sister always, got straight As.

She did everything right. My brother was the little cute little baby that couldn't do anything wrong. And here I was the one in the middle that took the brunt of everything and I played that role. Somebody had to take his, it was a dysfunctional family. So you have to, somebody has to make my role in making the family function was to take all of his stress and anger and take it on to myself.

And I became the living boy in the family. That was the role I had. And you carry that the rest of your life. You learn that and you continue to be that way. So I've something I've had to try to overcome over time.

[00:37:14] Adeel: How did that how did you carry that forward? Even in other family situations like with your own family or is just family get togethers with your.

Your growing up family, like you're still as an adult being, mentally abused.

[00:37:25] Michael: I think it just affected my self-esteem. Yeah. My self esteem my ability to, I was very ambitious and productive and I was always driven and I always doing things, but I , but I I know that sense of feeling, not good enough, un not lovable.

Unimportant, less important, and then being always anxious about it. They affected how I acted and probably how I was as a father and how I was as a husband. , they had a, certainly didn't have a positive effect. , they had a ne negative effect.

[00:38:05] Adeel: Did. So I'm, yeah, I guess I'm assuming you well, at least.

Definitely. Probably before, at least before you had, you knew it had a name, you were probably, there's probably just a lot of reactions and just not getting a lot of confusion and not knowing

[00:38:18] Michael: how to deal with it. Yeah. It was only 10 years ago when I found out this had a name. Yeah. Before that I, I knew my mother had it, so I knew somebody had it and I just thought I picked that for my mother and there's something wrong with me and I've spent a lifetime going to different therapies I to figure out what's wrong with me and try to fix it.

Yeah.

[00:38:34] Adeel: Did you have other comorbid situations that conditions that you would go to see doctors about? And did you ever get misdiagnosed for other things? Rather than misophonia?

[00:38:43] Michael: Yeah. Just general anxiety. Yeah. Yeah. And. A mild depression. I didn't, I was never really deeply depressed. I stayed too busy and was too, getting too much exercise, or I dealt with it when I was young by drinking and they were smoking pot.

, when I was real young. And then I stopped doing that, and then I just became an exercise bicycle addict, an exercise addict, . And that, yeah, it is an addiction for me. It's very addictive and it's the way I used, way I found that would calm me down, calm down, the anxiety. If I don't exercise, I do get depressed.

So I think, I don't even know how depressed I would be because I'm always exercising. , maybe I would be a depressed person. I know my father was, but maybe I would have depression if I didn't do the constant exercise, morning, afternoon, and evening. I do exercise. Gotcha.

Yeah.

[00:39:38] Adeel: And how did it affect so many ? So many different ways we can go how did it affect, yeah, like career choices? You said early on, what kind of jobs did you end up taking or quitting? ?

[00:39:48] Michael: That's a good question, , because I ended up becoming a chef when I was young. , . I'd be in a kitchen around food all the time, which was insane.

So that didn't last too long. It lasted for a while. I moved to Las Vegas, worked in hotels and then I had to get out of that. So I also loved gardening, so I went back to school and became a landscaper and I did a landscaping for a number of years and eventually evolved into real estate investing.

So I did that for the better part of my adult career, adult life. So what, anything to avoid being in an office, being stuck in a situation that I couldn't escape. I always had to deal with some of it, but I had to do things that would. keep me out of a situation where I wouldn't have to deal with people eating to minimize it anyway.

[00:40:38] Adeel: Yeah. So it, it was really, yeah, even before, long before I had a name, this was really the overarching known issue in your life. You knew it was a thing. A lot of us assume, like you said, knew where, we just have an extreme pet peeve or something. But for you, you knew that it was much more than that and it was special and it not special, but it was its own thing that just didn't have a name at

[00:40:58] Michael: the time.

Yeah. I didn't have a name for it. I just all I know, like I said, and my mother had it, I have it. It doesn't make any sense. It's crazy. Maybe if I go and even all these top therapists, I went to really smart people who deal with all kinds of problems. They didn't have a name for it. They really didn't understand it.

I was not the only patient that showed up at chemotherapy with this problem because other people have had it. And that's back in the eighties, right? Even back in the eighties, seventies and eighties. Yeah. Actually I went in the eighties. It started in the seventies. Yeah. But I found out that other people who had this same problem, my situation, my mother used to say that when she finally did admit that she had this, she said, oh, my father scared me.

We'd sit at dinner table. He would make a lot of noise when we ate. And if he was just al I was always afraid of him. He was he wasn't I didn't know that part of him when he died when I was young. But she was afraid of him. She was a nervous, a nervous slightly timid person.

And then there was a girl that came to primal therapy, and this one was much more extreme. Her father would take her in the back room, molest her, sexually molest her, come back in the, into the dinner table. The mother would act like nothing was going on. Ignore it. And she sat there and couldn't stand the sound of her father's eating.

So I think there's a connection there to the little bit of a trauma or a traumatic situation or a stress . Yeah. Yeah. And some of these situations is extreme. Some it's not. That's horrible. But my case was not extreme like that, but it was an uncomfortable situation. I know. With,

[00:42:32] Adeel: but it was enough Yeah.

To tip it over.

[00:42:34] Michael: That's, it. Doesn't take much. Doesn't take much. Especially if you're a highly sensitive person. I'm sure you're familiar with the H S P. Yeah.

[00:42:42] Adeel: I was gonna bring that up at some point too. Yeah. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, I guess I, I debate with myself a lot. Yeah.

Am, am I that? Cuz it would explain a lot, but yeah, I'm just, yeah. I wonder about that lot.

[00:42:52] Michael: I told, I've called the group before about the hsp Yeah. Other people as well. And I've, and I'm familiar with , Dr. Aaron's books and I am definitely an hsp. I'm a highly sensitive person, I'm sensitive.

By nature, I cry easily. I'm very empathetic. I get I, little things affect me little, some little slight that somebody will say or whatever. , it'll keep me from sleeping half the night, and I'm just sensitive to sound. I'm sensitive to just about anything. And that it's a two-edged sword.

It can be good, but it can also make life a little difficult for you. But I think it's just my opinion. I have never, I'm not taken a poll or anything, but I think the majority of people with misophonia tend to be HSPs, tend to be highly sensitive

[00:43:38] Adeel: people. Yeah. A lot of us have even labeled ourselves as such.

So I'm, I figure as even many more that don't. That don't know. It would definitely be on the spectrum if it's a

[00:43:47] Michael: spectrum, yeah. It probably is a spectrum. It probably is. I don't know if there's a gene. Yeah. I don't know if there's a gene that, that makes us that way. I don't know if it's ever been discussed, but I did, I just posted something recently that about, there's a couple of genes.

I put it in the group that I found a book I'm reading that the, they found a couple of genes that make people more susceptible to more sensitive. There are a couple of them. And when you have that gene and you also have a situation where you have trauma or stress and you're much more likely that epigenetically switch on that gene that will, yeah.

[00:44:25] Adeel: I was gonna say epigenetics is something I've heard a lot here as well, where it's not like you're a hundred percent predisposed to, to something happening like the color of your skin. But it's more with they're in under the right conditions. It could definitely you're more susceptible.

Right, which

[00:44:42] Michael: is right. It's just waiting for some environmental situation to trigger it. And for that change to switch on, because I was just listening to say that very few of these conditions are actually genetic. That they're actually in the genes and the, in the DNA sequence they are just switched on by situations and in the environment and they're, they can be passed on.

Even the epigenetics tendencies can be passed on multi, through generations. But it's not actually in the genes themselves. It's more of a switch on or switch off depending on your environment, your whatever goes on in your life. Yeah,

[00:45:23] Adeel: absolutely. Switching back to something you said earlier you said your, when your mom finally admitted that she had it, can you talk about that?

Like how did you did you tell her, did you tell her, did you guys find out about the ar the name together? I'm just curious how that conversation went and how she maybe reluctantly

[00:45:41] Michael: admitted that she had it. Another very good question. I went to Primal Therapy. I told you that it was back in 1984.

I sold my house. I was living in Las Vegas at the time. I sold my house and moved to Los Angeles to be close to the Primal Institute in Los Angeles. And I was explaining to them why I was selling my house and moving to another city and going to this therapy chemotherapy. And I just said it was about the sounds and the eating and it's something I grew up.

hearing my mother say, chew with your mouth closed. And, ver I could see her squirm and make comments about other people's eating. , I knew she had it, she just was too embarrassed to admit it. She to admit it to me, especially when she found out I had it, I think she just felt so bad that she denied it at first and then fi finally, I wasn't trying to make her feel guilty, I wasn't trying to blame her or anything.

I just had to explain what I was, what was going on. And I just said, I know you had it too, mom. And she finally admitted it and then she told me about how her father scared her and she sat at the dinner table and it admitted that, but that's how that conversation came up with my mother.

[00:46:52] Adeel: Gotcha. And did she, after she, did she take any steps to try to deal with it or just live with it?

[00:47:00] Michael: The only thing she knew how to do and what most people. did in the past before therapies and treatments and everything else was to drink alcohol. And that was how she dealt.

And I noticed she could be around people when she was drinking, but much more comfortably. And

[00:47:17] Adeel: It's, the thing about alcohol is it kinda helps to a certain point, but it can also, I feel like I feel like we maybe, I don't know, weak in the nervous system, just to the point where you're almost like you can get angrier quicker.

Like you're you're less in control of your reactions. And at first it, it's just, there's always a tipping point.

[00:47:37] Michael: Yeah. It is. It's a funny thing. It takes the edge off at first, but Exactly. You feel good for a while for an hour or two, whatever. As long as you keep drinking things don't bother you as much.

And that's what I liked about alcohol when I was younger. Things didn't bother me. I could be around people eating and I didn't even, it didn't bother me. But, as it progresses it's terribly addictive and it's physically harmful, mentally harmful and makes you depressed. So it's a good temporary fix, but it, long term, it doesn't work.

And my father is drinking, started out feeling good. At first he was much more sociable and relaxed. And then as the evening progressed, he became very mean and critical and, turned him into a monster. We used to call him Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because he would become a different person and a very angry, all the repressed anger that he had finally came out when he drank too much and he could be volatile.

[00:48:29] Adeel: Yeah. Interestingly, Mia, I refer to Ms. Phoney as Dr. Je, Mr. Hyde as well. as cuz you can definitely turn on a dime

[00:48:36] Michael: if you get Oh yeah. You can have a sweet little. sweet little lady with misson sitting there and, being very pleasant and somebody starts chewing in her ear and she'll just go into a rage, , or shut down. Since most of us repress those, that anger suppress it and don't go into a rage. We just shut down and get quiet and moody and stuff.

[00:48:58] Adeel: Yeah. What did your maybe Yeah, going back to I know we're, like in, I guess an hour and a half we started I could keep going on for definitely a little.

Oh, as long as you want. As long as you want. Great. Great. Yeah. One thing I wanted to, yeah. Let's see. Yeah. One, before I forget. Yeah. One thing I wanted to talk about, I guess your, in your family life growing up and how you dealt with or maybe didn't do it as well, like your the families that you had.

Grew as you were growing up. Did knowing that you had misophonia help you at all in dealing with, I, I don't know. Did having kids or being married at least for at any point, did you try to temper your reactions? It sounds like, there were issues, but I'm curious if you were mindful of that as you were, starting families.

[00:49:42] Michael: I'm not quite sure. Did I try to temper the, my response, I was gonna

[00:49:48] Adeel: mum mumble that question, but yeah, basically how did you deal with misophonia as you were having kids and growing a family? Did you try to did you try to take stronger steps to control your misophonia, or was it just something that you couldn't control until you, maybe more recently?

[00:50:02] Michael: Having a nervous breakdown is helpful. There were times when I just lost it and I just I didn't go crazy. I didn't act it out. I just felt like I was having a nervous breakdown and I was shut down. Or I would leave a situation, I would have to sell a house to move away because of the parking garden next door.

Or I would have to get a house, a different house because my kids got older and I couldn't have the kitchen being close to this room or whatever. I had to have more separation so I could eat separately, which I did, growing up. And now I live in . You wanna hear something funny? I, we actually ha we have three homes.

We have two in Phoenix. We bought two lots right next to each other, and we have two houses there, my wife and I. And we are constantly back and forth. We don't like having two houses necessarily, but it gives me my own space. It gives me my place to, to put music on and have quiet and not be in the same kitchen, not be in the same office.

And then in the summer we have one big home with two levels. So I have the downstairs level , but I have my own kitchen office, bedroom, bathroom, tv, everything in the lower level. And we're back and forth and we prefer that being in the one house, but we actually have to live in either two floors or two separate houses in order to make.

[00:51:31] Adeel: Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

[00:51:33] Michael: Okay. It's it's a crazy situation and it's been taxing on my wife, but she's a saint about this. She's just remarkably, not saying she doesn't get upset about it and it affects her and I hear about it, but she's been remarkably loyal and patient and forgiving with it.

And

[00:51:53] Adeel: has she known about your misophonia? Yeah. Oh, she must have known about her forever, right?

[00:51:58] Michael: Yeah. We've only been married a little over 10 years. I was married before , so the mother of my kids is but she's been really good for the past 10 years. If it's been good. I have a good, loyal wife and luckily we're able to find and afford to be able to live in separate places so that we can just overlap when we need to.

.

[00:52:18] Adeel: . And do you feel like with the current treatments that you've been starting, is that, are those overlapping moments going easier in any way?

[00:52:26] Michael: So far? It, yeah. It has helped. It helps, yeah. When I was younger with the kids growing up, it was difficult. It was difficult. I didn't have this much space.

was living with the kids and I, and it was hard. And the kid, I think it was harder on the kids. I was stressed out, but I was working a lot, so I wasn't home all that much. But with the kids that I know, they were stressed. And I think it's had an effect on me, particularly my younger daughter who has dysphonia.

She's had a lot of issues, a lot of anxiety, the misophonia social anxiety, other problems. And so it's had an effect on my family, which is heartbreaking for me. Very difficult. Luckily my oldest one. Doesn't have it. She has a, just a normal life with kids and doesn't seem to have any of the problems that I had.

She could pick it up. Only my younger

[00:53:13] Adeel: one. Is your younger one. Are you and your younger one able to bond over it or any way does she come to you? Is, are you able to be around each other, like normal because you're at least aware?

[00:53:24] Michael: Not a good question. She lives in Florida.

,

[00:53:27] Adeel: Oh, so she's not like young. She's, oh,

[00:53:29] Michael: she's 40, she's five years old. Okay. Yeah. She's in her forties. Yeah. Okay. I'm 70. She's 40. Yeah. She a lot of times has a hard time being around me. I guess I tri, I trigger her. I don't know if it's the sounds I make or she's just, she's overly sensitized to me and my moods.

not I'm not a moody person, but growing up with me and knowing the, all the little things that bother me, she, I guess she feels it's so stressful that she's so afraid that she's going to, I'm gonna get upset. She's gonna do something wrong, make the wrong sound, or whatever. Yeah. And so I think it's affected her.

So I see her every year, but she says it's difficult for her. And she's on medical marijuana. That's how she deals with it. Ah, and

[00:54:15] Adeel: yeah. So I was gonna ask do you know what kind of marijuana she is it, there's different kinds of Delta eight, delta nine, or medical marijuana. Do you know what she uses and if it's helped?

[00:54:26] Michael: It helps her to function and get by and deal with the stress, and deal with the anxiety that she's always feels and deal with the misophonia. But it's, Sea use is a very powerful form of thc, and it's a powerful drug. What they've done to marijuana is not the stuff that they smoked in the sixties.

It's high bread, properly concentrated, and whatever they do to it. And it's a very powerful drug, probably. I don't think it's good for her, but it's the only thing she says that works for her. So that's what she takes and while I'm with her, she's every 10 minutes she's taking a puff because she needs it for her.

For her. Oh, anxiety. She's just, it's just, wow. My father drank my mother Dranks. , used to drink. I don't, I now I exercise like a maniac but my daughter smokes marijuana. It's how we've all dealt with this anxiety. My father had anxiety and depression and he found a way to deal with it.

Even my grandfather, my father's father, Was a nervous person, but he didn't drink or didn't do any of these things. He just could always tell he was a fidget nervous person. So I think it, yeah, I think it ran in the family. And a lot of this is probably generational. My, my father's father was Jewish and the family grew up in Eastern Europe under pogroms and holocausts, and he lost his fa family to the hol his parents died, were murdered in the Holocaust.

And so I think generations of being Jewish in Eastern Europe and the unpredictability of your life and the persecutions and all the they made, that got programmed into to us, and it got, yeah, got passed on. Have a nervous mother and father. You're gonna pick up that nervousness and it just gets passed

[00:56:10] Adeel: on.

What about your friends, like your social life? Do you tell people around you who are not in your family? I

[00:56:17] Michael: am much more open about it than I used to be because it has a name. , I, I'm involved in the community and people are much more understanding, but I didn't, in the past, I never wanted to bring it up.

I'm much more comfortable doing it now. My wife's real good about telling everybody I have it. So she can say, explain why you can't chew your ice cubes while at dinner table. And people give her a perplex look, but say, okay, I want you my, whatever. But they know, and there are certain people that I, unfortunately, nice people that they will have some eating habit.

They chew ice, they constantly sip on their a drink. They're noisy eaters, they're chew gum, whatever. I have to avoid a lot of people, . And, yeah. But I still have a good social life. Luckily I play pickleball and it can be social when it's not at. Not a misophonia thing.

And I play that all the time, right? So I can be around people, have fun, laugh, and not have food involved. So yeah, it's been helpful.

[00:57:18] Adeel: And so you're, I guess we don't, without having to maybe explain them all, but your triggers are the usual, like mouth related, mouth, nose, throat related, eating, chewing,

[00:57:27] Michael: all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. All the mu mucusy sounds, throat clearing, mucusy sounds, anything, mucusy anything. Eating, drinking, dogs ticking clocks. I have all silent clocks in my house. I've just picked up so many triggers over the years.

[00:57:42] Adeel: Any memorable moments having issues or somebody react, maybe somebody reacting to you in a perplexed way and just you remembering that?

There's been a

[00:57:49] Michael: bunch of them. Unfortunately, I meant once I was stuck at a restaurant with a guy for an hour eight, a plate of nachos, and it was. Ooh. And I think that was 30 years ago, and I'm still haven't calmed down from that one. And my wife has a friend, a younger girl that she's adopted and she just has this terrible eating thing.

It's a whole thing. It's wrapped up in, she's, she plays with her food. She doesn't, she makes, she just takes little bites. She makes it, everybody's done eating and she's gotta continue picking on her food for another hour. And it drives me insane. And it just makes me absolutely insane. And I shut off and I become numb.

I can't feel, I can't sleep. It, I go into this fight, flight, freeze and flop. There's four different states you can go into. So

[00:58:38] Adeel: Yeah. Flop Flo's a new one, but I totally get it. So this is even after the meal has long ended, you're just still in

[00:58:45] Michael: flop mode. Yeah. You can freeze and just stay there, but you're tensed up.

Flop is when your body just goes flacid. Yeah. You go completely dead and you don't feel anything and you just shut off. And it's a vagal state, and it's a nervous system state, and that's the lowest state. That's really when you get to that lowest dorsal vagal they call it, when you get to that low state.

Yeah. It's the only way you can survive. Just shut off. You can't even feel anything anymore. And that's a terrible pla way to be. It's a terrible place to be. You just don't even wanna be alive when you're human. Dead.

[00:59:16] Adeel: It's like a hum. It's like emotional

[00:59:18] Michael: hibernation or something. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good analogy.

Yeah. Oh,

[00:59:22] Adeel: fascinating. Yeah wow. I guess we, maybe we can have you on in the future. But any while we try to wrap up, any other recommendations you have for other books that we've mentioned A lot of things here that I've personally find fascinating. Books or therapies or.

Things that you recommend, to people to look into?

[00:59:37] Michael: Yeah in that group there, I do put on all the therapies that I do. I have a lot of stuff in there, book recommendations, videos and stuff, people to, okay. Okay. To learn. I have been, lately, I've been reading anything by Gabo. The body says when the body says no.

Yep. It's he talks about becoming a, not your true self, becoming a person in order to be loved, which is your primary need. So you survive. You will do anything you can to please people and you can't say no. You can't say no to helping people. You can't say no to where you feel people may not like you or love you or accept you and.

It has a long-term effect. In this book, he talks about the fiscal ramifications, a lot of autoimmune diseases, rheumatoid art, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, other things that eventually over the years, it takes a toll and it'll show up. If you can't say no to people, when you're, you feel like you have to be somebody other than you are your body will say, no.

Your body will react. , he has this, he has so many good books with this one is when the body says No the, if you wanna learn about Internal Family Systems, the, if fs, Dr. Schwartz has a doc, a book called Internal Family Systems Therapy. It's the bible of on ifs. Fascinating.

Absolutely fascinating stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I've been reading oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

[01:01:12] Adeel: Oh I was gonna say near the beginning you said that I, Fs is a popular therapy. I had just heard about it in the last year, so yeah, I don't know where I feel like it's not well known. It's not well known enough if I haven't heard about it.

And I'm 46 years old. You who claims to be somewhat, enlightened on health and mental health stuff. So it's, yeah, it might be popular, but maybe in some small circles, I, it's definitely something I feel should be shattered from the rooftops.

[01:01:35] Michael: It is, and it's growing in popularity and people are realizing, wow, it really does have validity.

It's really helping people. Yeah. And it's a form of memory consolidation. It, utilizes neuroplasticity and changing the brain and updating it and helping with helping the nervous system eventually. And yeah. And , and it's extremely popular and it's growing in popularity. But in order to get training, which is essential to become a certified, there's three levels of training In order to become even get to the first level, the waiting list is two year, three years long.

, every therapist, people that are in the field are learning about it, wanting to do it, wanting to get trained. So it's it's huge. It's huge.

[01:02:16] Adeel: Is it related at all to somatic experiencing? I think that's another, something in that realm. Yeah. think Peter Levine is

[01:02:23] Michael: Proponent of that, right?

Bessel Vanco and Peter Levine. Those are the other two guys that, that I would definitely recommend reading their books. Van VanDerKolk, luckily his book, is a, on a bestseller list, so everybody's reading that, but, levine, not as much. They're more but. Luckily, Peter Levine is becoming more and more popular in his book.

They're popularized now. Another yeah

[01:02:43] Adeel: I've got the body remembers on my desk down by the Rothschild, so Great. Which I was told is like a smaller version of a, basically a yeah, a gash basically a shorter version of the body keeps the score.

[01:02:55] Michael: So you can see how this intuitively makes sense and all of the things that they're talking about, the trauma and the stress and the treatments to you, don't, they seem like they apply to misophonia?

[01:03:11] Adeel: Absolutely. 100%. And I felt that from as soon as I heard about Gama Mate and yeah, body keeps us cool. Yeah. But I, I wanted to let it absorb in my own me because I know it, I could definitely think of experiences, but I'm trying to be take a I'm trying.

Yeah, I'm trying. I wanted to wait. And see you do some research because I just wanna make sure that I wasn't sure does this affect everybody? Is this universal? And yeah, I'm just, I'm tr this why I'm starting to ask more and more people about their backgrounds and do they have these similar issues and Yeah.

I hear about, the walking on eggshells Yeah.

[01:03:39] Michael: Kind of experiences. Unfortunately, misho almost all the time, mis funny is not in the DSM yet. So it's not recognized, but I think it'll eventually right. Fall under the rubric of all of these other conditions that, that are, you know, anxiety, depression, P T S D and it'll eventually fall in with them.

We just don't know what to do with it now. It's just like a, an orphan child that doesn't have a home right now, but it eventually will fit in as it becomes, as I would love to contact I'd like to find a way to contact somebody like Gabo Matte or I know we're in contact with Bruce Ecker, who wrote the book about me, memory consolidation.

He's very familiar with this. And the woman I'm working with Morgan is in contact with him. She works with him and discusses it with him. Okay. So he's aware of misophonia. Yeah, it was something else I was gonna say. Anyway, another book that I'm reading, I've been reading more fascinating stuff is by Donna Jackson Zawa.

She has a book that's been out. She has a couple of them. This one's Childhood Disrupted and it's a very sim it's called How Your Bi Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal. , she's got a lot of great information in here, so she's another good one. We've got Gabo, we've got Vanco, we've got Levine, we've got Schwartz.

Rothschild and Rothchild. Yeah. So there's a lot of good reading to

[01:05:02] Adeel: do. There's a lot of stuff out there, and I feel like it's still, I was like, why did it take me 45 years to, to find ? So hope, hopefully this is just on the up and up. Oh, and speaking of just other than nonfiction, have you seen these kinds of things addressed in like fiction or theater or film or

[01:05:20] Michael: music?

I've, somebody just mentioned, I was watching a Netflix program the other day and they were talking, some guy was chewing on nuts and this woman was saying, have you heard of Misophonia? ? And he is oh yeah,

[01:05:34] Adeel: I forget that was yeah. Now I forget what the name of that did go in to watch that scene.

I think it was I think it was on FX or something like that. Yeah, it was something I was watching

[01:05:42] Michael: it Old Man or something like that. Oh yeah, you're right. That's right. That's the one it was, yeah. Yeah. I was surprised when I hear that. I was like, oh my gosh, people know about this now. and there are celebrities, and I know there's somebody in getting her name

[01:05:54] Adeel: Sarah Silverman, who Sarah Silverman has it, and she talks about it on our podcasts.

Oh, she does.

[01:05:59] Michael: Kelly Rippa and Kelly Rippa has for a long time, but we're trying to get in contact with them so we can discuss it with them. Maybe even have them come to the convention. Not, I'm not part of the convention, but yeah, the more you can get a celebrity involved, the more exposure you'll get and the credibility you get.

Yeah. So it'd be nice to get to some of them out there talking about it. It's just a matter of time over time. We'll, people will know more about it. It'll be accepted. They'll try to figure out what to do with it, where it fits in. It's just, it's a long process. Yep.

[01:06:30] Adeel: Michael Yeah.

You're doing a lot. And I just want, yeah. I just want, I wanna say Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for everything you've done and and are doing and are sharing here and in the Facebook group. I definitely will get off and try to find it again and try to get in. But yeah, I think this is a mountain formation here in this episode, and I'm glad to finally talk to you and hope we can keep in touch.

Good. Oh, for sure. It seems like we're sure, seems like we have very similar thinking . Yeah. In terms of where this is going. So I'm I'm, I feel validated.

[01:06:57] Michael: good. I'm glad cuz I feel validated. I feel like, I'm not the only one that thinks trauma is, has something to do with this, I'm got a lot of kickback when I'm accusing people of being terrible parents.

And that's not the case at all.

[01:07:08] Adeel: I've been getting that recently too. And it's memorable, but it's, yeah, it's I remember those moments and so I just, so it gives me pause, but then Exactly. Then I feel like where So I watched my language a little bit, but I feel like it, it is definitely there's something

[01:07:20] Michael: here and we have to be, not take it personally.

We have to look for the truth. Even if it might hurt at some point, yeah. Whatever. You have to face this with clear eyes and not take it personally and whatever is what it is. We have to face it, honestly,

[01:07:35] Adeel: Weiss words in on many regards. Yeah.

Thanks

[01:07:37] Michael: again, Michael. It's been a pleasure. I appreciate you having me on and I hope you can filter this, edit this thing down to something presentable, but for your podcast.

[01:07:45] Adeel: Oh, I will, . Thank you, Michael. This was another classic that I'll be listening back to for a long time. If you also like this episode, don't forget to leave a quick review or just hit the five stars wherever you listen to this podcast.

You can hit me up by email hello misophonia podcast.com, or go to the website@misophoniapodcast.com. It's usually easiest to send a message on Instagram my podcast. Follow me there, or Facebook and ms. Funny podcast or Twitter atonia show. Support the show by visiting Patreon patreon.com podcast. The music, as always is and next week.