[00:00:00] Adeel: Eric, welcome to the podcast. I've been looking forward to this salon. Yeah. Good to have you here. You just to start off simple, like where, where are you located, and a little, maybe a little bit about what you do, but I'm sure we'll get into that in relation to Yeah, sure.

[00:00:13] Eric: Ironically enough I work at a very noisy job. I'm a machinist , and so I work

[00:00:19] Adeel: around, it's good noise.

[00:00:20] Eric: Yeah. Be a good guy. It's, so I work around loud noises constantly, and I'm wearing headphones constantly. , which a lot of your listeners can probably Yeah. Relate to. Oh, yeah. But yeah the funny thing about the miso that I've learned is it's an environment where it doesn't bother me at all.

I'm making the noise. You're in control. I'm in control. And of course a lot of. , a lot of us with this strange thing, know that it kind of screws with your control issues. know that's at the heart of a lot of my issues. It's a, it's feeling out of control.

And there's some kind of fear wrapped up in it. But yeah, I work as a machinist and I make things all day. And

[00:00:59] Adeel: and are you working by yourself in that environment or are there other people around also making noise

[00:01:03] Eric: or fortunately I have my own kind of insular compartment, my own little workspace.

Nice. Which helps that a lot. Yeah. So I can I can select the music. I can, any noise I loud noise I make in there is me. Yeah. But what I wrote in your, in my notes to you, like my specific triggers really come from kind of thuds. and banging and off doors. Doors is a huge one.

That, and yeah, my, sorry, rambling, but No, I love rambling. That's . I know. I've listened to enough where I should not put pressure on myself, but yeah. So really I learned the word miso for the first time, misophonia only a couple years ago. And I know that a lot of the listeners can empathize, where once they tracked down a name for whatever this is and this amorphous, weird, terrible condition and actually found a name and found , your awesome podcast, and found some fellowship and some, because a lot of it is really feeling utterly alone and misunderstood.

. And I was trying to make some , in addition to my tight notes, I was making shorthand notes for myself, but a lot of my issues have al have always come with measuring what I'm going through with sound triggers versus what quote unquote normal people experience. And you get into some weird gray areas there where, you know, and I'll use just air quote normal whenever I say it,

Because really there isn't any, there isn't any normal in this world that I , that I'm really aware of. But people who have traditional triggers that aren't, so traumatic they'll hear like a door slam and that's annoying. Yeah. Or their, a neighbor will play loud music and God, that's a little bit annoying.

And that's where my wife is at, where a lot with a lot of this stuff where yes, that's annoying. And then if you ask her about it in an hour, she forgot all about it. , it's in the moment, it's regulated, it's processed properly, or in a more healthy way.

Whereas if I hear it a month later, I'm r ruminating on it and annoying on it. Yeah. And that's the difference where, you know, and from the outside, particularly with my childhood, where I learned to suppress a lot of trauma and mask it and use the freeze Fein response in the wonderful , flight freeze fein often when you're a little kid and you're faced with trauma, you don't know how to fight back or contend with things.

So you either try to make peace or you just shut down. And I came up with kind of a combination of those two things. due to my family situation and the drinking and the fighting and all that kind of stuff. And it was chronic. , which is a, which is another kind of really tragic thing.

And it's harder to get over when things are chronic because if you're in a car crash, obviously that's awful and terrible. But you have the one singular event to go back to contend with and maybe build some

[00:04:12] Adeel: context around, get some distance from to te

[00:04:15] Eric: Yeah. Yeah.

Whereas if you have a lot of trauma dosed out, particularly when you're young and your brain's developing Yep. That gets into some weird territory where that's all you have as context is just weirdness and that kind of stuff. So I think my me, my miso triggers fall. Under that, or for the longest time, I didn't even think about it as something that was troubling, even though it was, but I didn't tag it as such

[00:04:45] Adeel: if that Yeah, no.

So as you, I was gonna ask you before we then do, dive into your passing before you knew it. Yeah. We're going right in. But,

[00:04:52] Eric: .. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:52] Adeel: No before, before we knew. Before you knew it had a name obviously, and I think the listeners will understand when we get into your background, like obviously it was a big deal for you.

How did you describe it to yourself? But what did you think of yourself?

[00:05:08] Eric: So I really I wouldn't even, it was hard to even conceptualize. It was all through my nervous system. , when I would hear these traumatic sounds the slamming doors, the, the, music in another room is a huge trigger.

Real abrupt, banging, slamming argument based type of stuff. I would ju I would experience it, if that makes sense. I wouldn't really think, God, something's wrong, , I'm overreacting to this, that type of thing because I never had the outside context, later I did when I was more in middle school, high school and I started socializing more, staying at friends' houses or their parents weren't drinking and arguing all the time.

I could sleep through the night without, with two or three in the morning, suddenly some craziness starting up. And so that's when I started to piece together that, maybe something is really wrong. Everything was so gradual and so chronic that it occurred to me, but.

by then, I was so ashamed of it all, and I do, when you're middle school, high school, you wanna fit in right? , you don't wanna talk to people about my home life is just crazy. And so I just wouldn't really even bring it up. And so it was a denial. That kind of became an inner denial as well.

Like my nervous system knew something was wrong, but I didn't have a language to describe it. I didn't have a context. How

[00:06:37] Adeel: Did you, because I've been reading about the nervous system also, actually relatively recently, too long after she even know what misophonia was. Did you know about the nervous system and how were you talking to somebody?

Like how, who told you about, was that also a recent thing for

[00:06:52] Eric: you? Or this was all real reason. Okay. Okay. This was, I'm 50 now and I only became aware of all this stuff in my forties. Yeah. Which is, a bit you like. Yeah it's me. It's my life, and that's how it worked out. But, at least I learned about it, period.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of folks don't, you have to have a language, you have to have a context. And it just, part of it was my my family had, mental illness in the family and we also had a very, I'll just call it old school. A code of silence about it.

. And it was non-verbally, sometimes verbally enforced that you don't talk about this stuff ever. So that's why, my parents were both heavy drinkers and both had mental illness. Neither of 'em got help for it and. part of that was probably had to do with substance abuse part of it.

Probably had to do with, a lot of this traumatic stuff I was experiencing was in the seventies and the eighties. Yeah. , which is a different universe. And especially in terms of awareness of mental health. We didn't have podcasts and we sure didn't have a specific Miso Phony podcast with five or six seasons worth of people.

Testified about it yes. So back then, or

[00:08:10] Adeel: social media or just kinda, or social media sharing articles, which is how a lot of us learned about the New York Times article back in the day or however it is now. Kelly Rippa wasn't around. I've talked to people from who are, in the seventies and eighties and talking about, just, it was brutal back in the fifties and sixties, cuz Yeah.

None. Like at least after the sixties you had some, trying to think about some social issues. But yeah, being. Eighties and before it was really like you had to suck it up or

[00:08:37] Eric: it suck it up. Yeah. It's really interesting now that I've hit this 50 year old mark and, at work I interact with, younger folks and millennials and just talking about our different . This world. Yeah. This alien planet I come from called 1971 when I was born, at, you had your immediate circle of friends, you had three stations, three TV stations, maybe and public access.

And you had the radio and you had magazines and books. And I never, and this is the tragic part of it, I never had an outside kind of adult presence to provide the context that. , this is, this is wrong. Yeah. Family situation is wrong. You had a

[00:09:24] Adeel: confidant or no mentor or no yeah.

Family friend or something that could give you that context Yeah. That smart cool uncle kind of

[00:09:33] Eric: thing or whatever. Yeah. So I just and once I got out of the house, I started, living my life and burying any of those issues, . I had denied or just diluted them to myself.

To the point where I just lived with them. It's really strange to think about now and how I made it this far and, put myself through school and, I've always had a job and, but I've been hauling around these issues. , this invisible, bag of misophonia and trauma and stuff.

Yeah. Just carrying it around. So really but to go back to your question, I only started learning about my nervous system as it pertains to my emotions and traumatic memories and that type of stuff. I don't know, about 5, 6, 5 or six years ago when I started seeing a therapist

[00:10:19] Adeel: Oh, that's when you started? Just five or six years ago. Just in for any reason.

[00:10:23] Eric: Yeah. Okay. I, yeah, I started I started really having like kind of nervous breakdowns really for a variety of reasons. Like my, yeah, my parents died and just interpersonal stuff and it you can only get away with ignoring your mental health for so long.

, it

[00:10:38] Adeel: catches up with you. Yeah, it does, because think it weakens you, your nervous system or whatever to a point where, something, it something can it's easier for you to maybe go over the edge. Absolutely.

[00:10:49] Eric: Yeah. It's, it softens you up. And in my case, I started getting, like your physical constitution, your mental constitution.

You, you can't take as much you need to, you can't. I feel like I devoted a lot of mental strength to suppressing trauma or just holding it or living with it and that kind of stuff. And you get older and you just start, I can't do it. And stuff starts to break in. And so finally I just, I started cracking up, honestly.

And for the first time in my life, I was just, I just came to a point where I've gotta do something . Yeah. I need, tho those magic words, I need help, which I've never used ever. I think people,

[00:11:32] Adeel: yeah, started. going to see a therapist and trying to, yeah, trying to talk. And so was it, oh, and were you see was it, what type of therapy was it?

Was it like c b T was talk, talk therapy or any, anything else more exotic or,

[00:11:44] Eric: Yeah, so I started just going to a talk therapist and I really didn't even know what I was doing. What, yeah, what

[00:11:51] Adeel: didn't expect.

[00:11:51] Eric: Yeah. I was a complete, absolute beginner with this stuff. I just, just getting to the point where I could finally say I need help was, okay, that's huge.

But now what, who do I, I had again, the con, the word context keeps coming back up, but, I had no contact. So I just , I would get on my insurance through my work. I would go to the right, go to the list of who's on the list that I can go see. And she looks like she has a nice kind face. I'll go see her

That was my criteria. And

[00:12:22] Adeel: And you didn't look for anything particular cuz we were, you're a beginner. You didn't look for anything particularly I don't know. Certainly not misophonia, but any particular experience that they were, or

[00:12:31] Eric: specialty? I kind of of looked for anxiety and I just knew that I have anxiety mixed with some really heavy depression and that, that was the, those were the two key words. And I would just scroll through faces and see those two words highlighted and, she's in my neighborhood and I can . So I started very practically. And so I went to one therapist who was strictly top therapy.

. And we did a few sessions and. even after those few sessions, I could tell that it wasn't quite what I needed and I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure why. Yeah. But we just kept talking and, I started uncovering some really bad memories that you had forgotten about or that I, you, that I had that were so gauzy and so detached from the impact that they actually had on my nervous system.

That it was really a kind of a form of detachment. But the talk therapy started to help me contextualize, the and I think this first therapist I went to was actually a pretty skilled therapist cuz she started to dial in on a few things. And of course I was very evasive.

about those things. And this took me a long time cause I've been doing therapy for six years, five or six years now. And it's it's, I've learned that it's a skill in itself to go to therapy and to allow it to work. Because at first I was just really proud of myself that I went.

Okay. I went to a therapist. I guess I'm better, , if that makes sense. I'm go, I'm going to therapy, so I've gotta be Yeah. Check. But you have to, it's really only as good as you're able to give

and

[00:14:17] Adeel: as vulnerable work as I someone told me in a recent interview. Yeah.

[00:14:22] Eric: And so I really had to learn a lot of really difficult lessons and one was to stop pushing back so much. , but I went to several therapists and then I learned more what I needed. And I knew that I had certain memories and certain triggers, and a lot of them, which is why I'm here, were sound related.

Yeah. And then I started to refine my search, and then I found this Sensio motor therapist. Okay. And I'd never heard this word before in my life. I don't know, but I read her blurb, where it's it's somatic triggers and it's talk and body based which sounded very intriguing to me. And I knew I needed more than talk. , something inside of me was telling me talk is not enough. And so I started seeing the woman who I currently see and. , she is a super skilled talk therapist, so I rehashed my childhood and my adolescence and all this kind of stuff.

And she would just sit there and then fish for words. And she was very almost creepily, observant. , or she would just sit, and then she'd look at my feet and look at my hands and I'd be in the middle of the story. And she would, and this was different than the other therapist where they were strictly up in the mi up in the mind.

It's just, it's a dialogue, which is good, and that's great for some people, but this particular therapist would look at my feet like, what's going on with your feet? Or What's going on with your hand? And I would say what does that have to do with anything? It's let's focus on your hand.

What's it doing there? Every time you say the word, , door or something like that, your hand seems to start doing something. Oh, interesting. And so she would, she started collecting like clues and hooks and tr it, it kind of these body cues that I was giving off. Yeah. That I had zero awareness of none.

No really. Yeah. And again, it's very strange to think about. But, and then over time and over the various sessions, we would start really focusing on, okay, what's going on with your leg? It's really bouncing. And then it got into this really hyper aware memory stuff. And so I would say I'm thinking about my childhood.

And then she would say yeah, every, everything would start macro and then work micro. , childhood about what age? , I don't know, 10 years old. , where were you living? Blah, blah, blah. And just winnowing it down until we would get to the specific events. So she was slowly picking her way through the chronic stuff since I couldn't point to one particular event the car crashed, or a stranger attacked me.

Mine was just a few times a month the family would completely disintegrate for my entire life. It's the wallpaper of life. So she had to pick her way through that and pick through my defenses, because obviously I don't wanna talk about this stuff. And I've been, I'm a macho guy and I don't need help and all that kind of crap. She just very patiently. equated through all that stuff until eventually we'd, we would get to, like a memory, for example. It's it's 2:00 AM in the morning and I hear a door slamming.

And then as we really winnowed it down, I would my nervous system, my reactions would become more isolated and more extreme. Okay. Because she was able to really put me in a bit of a time machine and not just have it be this amorphous I hate the sound of slamming doors, and this took months and months of work.

Yeah. But we would then focus on a particular point in time. How does that make you feel? It makes me feel terrified and surprised. What does that mean? in your body. Is it your heart? Is it your breathing? Is it your leg bouncing up and down uncontrollably, because And then it became very isolated. And this was all very unpleasant, by the way, because who wants to relive their Misa when they're not, you do anyway when you're anticipating , the next the next Turing fatty. Yeah. Yeah. Which is just awful. Awful. And I, a lot of my childhood was anticipating and becoming very hypervigilant and waiting and when it's

[00:18:55] Adeel: chronic, yeah.

You don't know when it's gonna, you know it's gonna happen again. Yeah. And it's just a matter of looking for when or your nervous system has learned that it's gonna happen again and it needs to protect

[00:19:06] Eric: you. Yeah. And it's what do you call it when something is.

confirmed, not self-fulfilling prophecy, but it's basically I would reject any positive evidence. I would only gravitate to see it happened to get like

[00:19:19] Adeel: a confirmation bias or something like

[00:19:21] Eric: that, or yeah. Confirmation bias. So I got into that really insidious loop of, see every time, and then it becomes that.

[00:19:29] Adeel: I think a lot of us listening are probably very familiar with that. It's if we can, we see somebody maybe eat something and then we're like or just they're ordering some food and then you're already like, oh, they're gonna, it's gonna sound terrible. And then when you hear it, yeah.

You tell yourself Yes. A hundred percent of the time I'm right

[00:19:45] Eric: you're primed for it at all times. Yeah. And cuz I I can remember. , particularly with the with chewing. Chewing invoices are also some of my triggers and Yeah, a lot of the stuff, yeah. I just lived with and then it would, I think I wrote you in my notes that this stuff really hit ahead a couple years ago.

. And again, it was another set of trauma related triggers that had not exactly late dormant, but they were ready to explode and it's, I was already so stressed out about other stuff that my bandwidth could not handle anymore. And so when I would hear my neighbors, which was, which always bothered me, but the, but.

It always bothered me, but then it went to this different place of just absolute like murderous rage. Yeah. When I would hear it and then again, we get into what's normal because, like a slamming door. It's something a lot of people live with. Like a lot of people live in apartments or they have roommates or whatever, and it's something you put up with.

But for me, if I heard a door slamming way down the hall, it would drive me absolutely bananas to the point where I spent a couple hundred dollars buying acoustic panels and just taping them to our front door. To absorb this the sound of from the hall. It was getting to the point where I would get home from work and just immediately put on headphones and just tell my wife like, I'm sorry, but I can't, I either this or we gotta get outta here.

So it would become flight stuff where often I would just say I gotta go, I gotta go see a movie. Can we go to the park? , I don't care. , or it would be internalized fight stuff where I just become so angry. How could these people be so thoughtless and so rude. And this is something that I hear practically at every podcast episode.

It, oh yeah. It's the outrage and the rage. And that's something that is hard to people who don't deal with sound triggers. It's hard to understand.

[00:22:07] Adeel: It's hard to understand the level. It's hard to understand that it, this what they consider something that they experience.

They, it's hard for them to consider that being amplified to the point that we feel it. And and so that, that's why you get the get over it or just snap out of it,

[00:22:20] Eric: Snap out of it, get over it. Toughen up. , why are

[00:22:23] Adeel: you like know you haven't been, you haven't quite been there.

It's just, it's a very different movie in my head.

[00:22:28] Eric: It's really, yeah. It's such, there's such a gulf inexperience there and that's where you start feeling really alone. Am I crazy? Yeah. Because I, and I would just hear like a neighbor, sometimes they would play legitimately loud mo music.

Sometimes I would just barely hear it. But that would be enough. It all became the same to me. And that's something I had an early childhood as well. And I get into kind of these chicken and egg thoughts. Where did I have misophonia was when I was a kid. And then it dovetailed perfectly with a.

an upbringing that contained a lot of the triggers is that's often what I feel like. Or did they create the triggers? I don't, doesn't unknown. Yeah. Unknown. And there's so many unknowns with this stuff, it seems like.

[00:23:20] Adeel: Yeah, it seems like I'm not a doctor, but it but it seems something epigenetic where we're probably, some of us are predisposed and then this kind of just activates something that, if we had a different life, maybe we wouldn't have even, nothing would've happened, but we just happened to be predisposed.

Whereas maybe if you had a sibling who was not somehow predisposed, they might not be affected as much. Or and I'm starting going a tangent, but maybe they, other people like we, we can experience things and the outcome is maybe in direction of misophonia with somebody else. It can be something completely different like bipolar.

It's some other mental health condition. It's not like there's no straight line necessarily here. Yeah. And so we just happen to be stuck with this . Yes, definitely. And maybe some other things too, but yeah. It's a cloud of possible outcomes cuz we're, we're messy wet brains,

[00:24:12] Eric: so messy, wet brains.

I like that a lot. Do you like that a lot?

[00:24:16] Adeel: I think people are probably inr, I don't know how much you want to like, describe the past, but I'm sure people by now are pretty intrigued as to what was that, speaking of context like what kind of, in the, in summary, like what are some of the things that were going on back then?

I, you talked about like alcoholic parents and whatnot, but there are, there's some other things that maybe, I don't know how much you want to get into or but,

[00:24:36] Eric: Yeah. There, there was definitely a Yeah, sure. There's definitely a and none of this was ever diagnosed. None of this was ever. , officially taken care of. Yeah. But it's entirely possible that my mom had a separate personality. And after she passed away, and this was years and years ago now found some journals written in the voice of another personality, and there were descriptions of blackouts and headaches and yeah.

Really some crazy, really difficult stuff. And you're talking about if this is true, I can never, I can't say for sure , but her behaviors would change because my mom during the day was the sweetest woman you ever knew. And that as a sidebar that this is what made my childhood so strange because a lot of it was so positive and so loving.

Yeah. But there was this dark flip side. where this other personality entity, , not to get supernatural, but it, that's what it felt like, particularly to a small kid. Cuz this goes back as far as you as, as far as I can remember, is, see, you can imagine the confusion and the, the lack of trust I had.

In the universe. When you're, 5, 6, 7 and one of your folks turns into someone else. And this was like really different, distinct, it's very hard to describe, it's very spooky, but distinct way of talking and very aggressive and really, thankfully, not physically abusive, but yeah, verbal abuse and just emotional abuse can be equally as scarring.

And and this was never really talked about and my dad and they both drank too, later he was bipolar and I think he had a lot of stuff that also went undiagnosed. A lot of this is a big mystery to me, like I'll never know the full

[00:26:47] Adeel: story. So both of 'em are not with us anymore

[00:26:50] Eric: or yeah.

They both passed on which was just awful. Obviously when you lose both your parents and, I wanted to make sure to say they, whatever they were dealing with they managed to bring me up. You always had a roof over my head. Always had something to eat,

[00:27:07] Adeel: so it's, you're right. It sounds like a lot of this was, not in their control, which is even more tragic as yeah, they were suffering just as much.

They're in their own way.

[00:27:18] Eric: And it's interesting because the older I get and the more I learned how I've struggled with me, so with dep, with depression, with anxiety or, and whatever I deal with when those things meet it, I also feel like I don't have a lot of control and and if I grew up, when they grew up, in the fifties and sixties, I think the seventies were weird. You were saying earlier, like they, and they're, they were from the Midwest and they came from a different universe from when I grew up. So they,

[00:27:50] Adeel: I'm in the Midwest and people are still talking about step out of it.

So it's, yeah, I can't imagine what it would've been like back then.

[00:27:56] Eric: Yeah. Yeah. My, my mom, she grew up with the Minnesota nice and

[00:28:00] Adeel: the Yeah, I see that all the time. Drive me crazy and so

[00:28:06] Eric: not really conducive to you saying, I've, I'm really struggling with something. I need help.

, they didn't know how to deal with it. And so I always keep that in mind, like it, it gets into a very strange area where they did the best they could. I still have issues with without, yeah. Yeah. But with the substance abuse as well. The drinking.

I don't know how much control does a person have over that? I don't know.

[00:28:31] Adeel: So were they both so it sounds like a lot of the late night door slamming and just the craziness, it would it be like your mom would just in the daytime be normal and then as the sun as the sun, the hours got later.

It'd be like a, I don't want to make fun of it. Like a kind of a Were werewolf, just kind. No, it's it would just be, it's true. Just go down and then she'd be like making all these. doing stuff, it sounds

[00:28:57] Eric: like doors. Yeah. So it would be where, and I would see this, I would see her attitude start to change.

, wasn't every night, but it was multiple times a month first. Okay. Okay. As long as I can remember. Okay. And so it had this, it had regularity, but also it was a matter of which night this month

[00:29:20] Adeel: gonna be? So it had frequency but it wasn't ex exact, it wasn't like clockwork.

It was Exactly

[00:29:24] Eric: Yeah. Okay. Just to make it even more, crazy. More surreal. Yeah. But the, essentially that's it would, 80 to 90% of the time it would happen at night. And we would have dinner and I would dread dinner because often there would be wine out and, and my triggers would happen during meals and just listening to her.

Okay. Talk. And there was voice, a the voice and the voice. Yeah. There was a quality to the voice. And I think I tried to describe it in my notes to you. A patronizing with these hard consonants, yeah. Long Ss and ts. Sorry, I don't wanna trigger anyone. Yeah. It's okay. There was, there were qualities of the voice, right?

That would just drive me completely just make my skin crawl. And would that

[00:30:14] Adeel: be part of the change into this other person, or was it Oh, yeah, just around, around eating. If she would always do that. But it was very, you could detect that something was bad, things were coming if that conson started to

[00:30:27] Eric: come again, whatnot.

Yeah. Okay. And then, and this often centered around the dinner table. , the sun is starting to go down where the meal is on the table. Wow. Things are starting to simmer a little bit, and the voice is changing. It's getting a little more aggressive. The consonants are getting a little sharper.

The ss are extending, the inflection is change. And I would just just skin crawling. Wow. Just horrid stuff. And then often mom and dad would start fighting over nothing. But I think that, I don't think my dad liked this other personality and know how to deal with it.

And they were very combative. And occasionally there was some physical stuff, not to downplay it, but mostly it was yelling and the voice. And . And then often my mom would go, up to her bedroom and my dad would either leave or sleep somewhere else in the house. Yeah.

And I think things are okay, but then I learned to know that two, three in the morning I'm gonna hear a chair hit a wall, or I'm gonna hit a, I'm gonna hear a door slam, or I'm just gonna hear screaming out of utter silence in the night. Suddenly just like screaming and cursing now between

[00:31:46] Adeel: two, or just her screaming just on

[00:31:49] Eric: her own, that's an interesting Well, but it would typically be just my mom. Yeah. Now, occasionally it would be fighting right between mom and dad, but often it was just her. Behind a closed door remote from my room, behind multiple walls. But I could just hear this. This stuff going on and stuff hitting the wall or the door, I'd hear like the steps And then the door slam out of the night. Just very suddenly. And she would always play music. She always had a record player. She had always put a record on. So I knew as soon as I heard music starting. Oh, okay. I knew what was coming after that. So she, oh wow. She in her whatever was going on, thought I'll put this record on and they'll kinda

Yeah. Cover everything up. Wow. And okay. So the, I think a lot of the math here for me is really easy to do where you've got these components, you've got the music, you've got the slamming, you've got the voice. And like even the way she would chew would just be terrible. So all the ingredients were there.

And I've always tried to play detective, was I, because I remember reacting to that stuff and reacting to her behavior, in tandem. So it gets into that chicken and egg thing. But I also remember, especially during my youth being extremely annoyed by certain friends who would chew their food a certain way and with the nasal thing going, would just, to other people it, yeah, he eats annoying, but to me it would just, I would fixate on it.

So I was

[00:33:35] Adeel: gonna ask like, how, with all this stuff going on at night then, how did how did things transpire at school and with your friends it sounds Yeah. And started to proliferate into your social life.

[00:33:46] Eric: I definitely lived. I don't know. Weirdly, a double life because I I was often a withdrawn kid, but at the same time, I always had a lot of friends. I just, I learned to, I don't know, learned to live with all this weirdness going on without really talking about it. Yeah. And, I remember some real depressive episodes, in middle school and high school, but also I've always had close friends, a few of my friends I've had for, since 1986.

, and.

I was always one of these people who had I have one friend , and this will sound like the breakfast club. But this is what I, this is the world I grew up in where Yeah, I had a friend in the jocks. I had a friend in the artsy weirdos, and I was the artsy weirdo, but also I ran with kind of the preppies and

[00:34:42] Adeel: I, that's interesting.

Cause I also had, I was also one of the youth. I, yeah. I wasn't, I don't, I can't say I was super, was drawn. I was introverted. But yeah I seemed to be the bridge between a bunch of different's groups that wouldn't normally, like I had, I was in this, the smarter kids group than I'd also hang out with.

People have all kinds who are in, remedial or special ed or, it's Yeah. All over the place. Or the jocks too. Yeah. Yeah, , I don't know if that has anything to do with what we're maybe our, I don't know, ability to be observant and maybe like you said, oh, it's interesting. Maybe like the fact that we are able to, we are hiding something or we have this weird thing that we're, that we've got under the covers that we're able to shapeshift, the shapeshift that's this, it's like a trait that we have.

[00:35:27] Eric: Yeah. And it, I know for me it may come with some of the fame response.

I keep coming back to this freeze fame, I learned this in therapies. Now have to talk about it all the time. Actually, can you just, those

[00:35:40] Adeel: people, because I was like, I know, fight or flight, and then I recently added freeze and now the Fein thing is another new thing. I gotta, can you maybe define that?

[00:35:49] Eric: Yeah. I'm definitely not no expert at any of this but my understanding of it for this hour, you are . Yeah, . My, under my understanding of it is you it has to do with peacekeeping and kind of. pleasing other people. But when I really reflect on that wasn't how I was either. I wasn't this really obsequious, I gotta please everyone, if anything.

Yeah. It was the opposite, but I liked making friends with a lot of different people. I liked

you. Yeah. I think this is really interesting and there's something about what you said, like the shape shifting, the, and there's something being concealed or misunderstood that I know that I really loved hanging out with, and we get back to this word again with kind of normal people who I perceived as well.

These are very normal people. Yeah. So I had friends who were, quote unquote normal, but then I was also very much attracted to the, in the eighties you'd call 'em the stoners or the shop kids or that kind of stuff. Yeah. The yeah. The, the. ,

[00:36:55] Adeel: Ridgemont High, fast time, Ridgemont high kind of stoners and yeah.

[00:36:59] Eric: But were, always drawing in their notebooks or writing poetry in their notebooks and Oh, couldn't hear. Okay. We're a li little artsy different. And we're maybe smoking some pot under the bleachers and, or they were a big good, they were a bit gothy and they dressed in, yeah.

They had a misfits t-shirt on or , so I really resonated with them at the same time. Yep. And maybe it had something to do with identifying with one group and kind of, but I wanna be normal and there's something, so I wanna be in a normal world and there would be longings, I think.

Yeah. That I was trying to, I was trying to, bring together in some way, And you were

[00:37:35] Adeel: an only child, right? So you didn't, when you going through it?

[00:37:38] Eric: I have a sister.

[00:37:40] Adeel: Oh. Let's get into that.

[00:37:40] Eric: What's going on there then? She was older. Yeah. She's okay. She's older than me. And it's interesting because we were really close when I was really little and when things got really bad in the family, we , we couldn't really help each other. And she was old. She was old enough where she, and she was more rebellious and so she would just leave leave the house leave the house or run away. And she, yeah. And she was more capable of, since she was considerably older, she was able to leave the home sooner than I was and she was more combative with the parents where I, whereas I just sunk into it. Yeah. Yeah. And learned to learn osmosis and that kind of stuff. And yeah. For a long time we had a and then later in life when our parents became more of a, their health started really to decline and things got bad.

put a lot of strain on things and , but we really came together ultimately and we now take pride in being the healthy family that we always want. That we always, yeah. Wanted to be. Like we, we communicate constantly. We're very positive to each other. If we need help, we ask for it.

We,

[00:38:57] Adeel: she knows about your MS phone and all this stuff, or

[00:39:00] Eric: you we've I have probably overs shared with my adventures in therapy and that kind of stuff. And we have, do think. Together we have we talk about all this stuff now we've cracked it all open and we share all of it.

And I've told her about the therapy and, my endless expertise on the nervous system now, but I, yeah. But I've just part, partially because I'm really excited about some of the stuff I've been able to do. Yeah. Because of the therapy and, I wanna share it with her. And I can't really be a crusader for therapy for anyone because it, I don't know what other people need, work for me pretty well.

And I'm not saying I'm over anything, but it's a, , it's, I

[00:39:47] Adeel: don't mean yeah. You're not over anything but it's, yeah. But it helps, it's just knowing that some, that. , there's a path to understanding, there's a path, there's a explanation to things a possible explanation that's at least good enough that can make you put your nervous system and hopefully at ease a little bit.

[00:40:07] Eric: Yeah. It's tools and the toolkit and it is helped demystify things a little bit. , because I think people often deal with trauma. They feel really, bewildered and or rightfully bewildered and frightened by what's happening in their body and they want to get away from it.

And so they wanna get separate from yourself. Yeah. This is so unpleasant. I don't want to, I don't wanna think about this or deal with this. And it, there's a bit of black magic involved where okay, I'm hearing someone chew, or I'm hearing a door slam 10 doors down and for the next three weeks I'm gonna be a mess because I'm.

That sounds utterly Yeah,

[00:40:47] Adeel: I know. , it's, and it's hard to explain and I think at, especially at our age, it's like we probably just give up explaining to most people, cuz we just know we're gonna get the blank stare or the right end of the con The conversation will end

[00:41:04] Eric: immediately. Yeah. It's so what else he up to

Let's get off of this soon. Okay. Back away. All right. Yeah.

[00:41:12] Adeel: I'm not, and we're like fascinated, like our, oh my God. I,

[00:41:16] Eric: when stuff, I swear when I found your podcast and started diving into it, I was just, one it was great to feel some fellowship. Okay, this is something that I really can respond.

. And I need it right now. And it's providing me with a feeling of fellowship and not being so alone, but also just endlessly fascinated by the particular triggers and how it makes people feel, and how long a episode will last if you get a flare up. It sounds like a , flip fungus or something.

I'm having a flare up. But it's true, like I would have these flareups and it's so extreme, , and you probably wouldn't be able to know it from the out outside.

[00:41:59] Adeel: Yeah. Hiding that stuff. What can

[00:42:02] Eric: you do? Yeah. And I remember like confronting my neighbors a couple times and trying to appear normal and talk about a laugh riot, talk about a comedy.

I wish I would've. It had some footage of this where I was trying to appear excuse me, I live next door and could you please, or, in real life, I'm like, could you please turn your, and just like the Hulk was right there not being successfully concealed. I don't know.

I found that hilarious a couple times. I tried that and, you try to be and it just break. It breaks my heart listening to people who would, I had it with my dad, it was so terrible that, we were estranged because of this craziness. Yeah.

And I get it though.

[00:42:49] Adeel: So what are your, so what are your, maybe some of your coping mechanisms is, has the therapy helped in any, kinda, like a tangible way for you or is it still relatively new? Like how do you, how does Eric get, lift

[00:43:00] Eric: day to day? Yeah the

the acoustic panels helped a lot. So it's funny because

[00:43:09] Adeel: it's funny. So you did, and you said in your note that you were living in downtown somewhere and then you moved so moving somewhere helped as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. And then, so the, is acoustic panels on top of that or is that back in the city days?

[00:43:22] Eric: Those are back in the city days. Okay. So yeah, so we lived in Portland and it's interesting to think about how my miso po really spiked around the time that life in Portland became really difficult.

[00:43:36] Adeel: Yes. It's like 2020 when there's a kind of. Unrest and riots, whatever you want to call 'em

[00:43:42] Eric: everywhere.

Yeah. A lot of things dovetailed and obviously the pandemic where you were, a lot of people were trapped inside. It now, I worked through most of that. I was one of the essential people. But still, that obviously had an effect on people. And if you're , if you don't think your home is safe because of sound triggers and you're trapped there all day to stew in those triggers, you know that's gonna good.

Yeah. And plus just the general street life of Portland the homeless stuff and the drug addiction and they, yeah. So I had these additional triggers going on where I would often leave the house to feel safe. But then, and I would go for a long walk. I would walk downtown or I would walk here, walk there.

the streets started not feeling safe. I had, yeah. Yeah. I had so many encounters. I lost count of how many unpleasant to real scary encounters. had . So I think what happened is I felt completely boxed in. Yeah. And we're talking about people with real mental health issues on the streets, screaming, sudden pivots of personalities throwing stuff.

So my Sounds familiar. It sounds familiar. And so I was dealing with it in the apartment out on the street and that, that kind of magnified everything. So I started learning about my window of tolerance, which is your area and your nervous system where you can where you can handle things. And not feel out balanced. And I think. You can correlate it to a bandwidth, or I started thinking of it as a stress tank. , my stress tank was so full that there was no, one drop would cause the overflow. It has

[00:45:30] Adeel: that can have a un disproportionate kind of effect. Yeah.

Yeah.

[00:45:34] Eric: And that's that it was this incredible confluence of stressors, not to make it all about me but that's kinda what I what happened to me where, okay, I've got the, I've got these triggers that are bad Now I go out in the street and the street feels absolutely crazy, so I can't escape there.

I gotta go back inside the neighbors slamming their door again. It scrambled my brain. Yeah. And so what was interesting, that was around the time that I became so desperate that I eventually, I found your podcast and then I was like, okay, here's a word. Here's. Here's some re here's a resource.

And then I took that to my therapist and I was like, I've got all these sound triggers going absolutely crazy. I think I share a lot of Misa phon. I like, I'm resonating. Every time I listen to one of these podcasts, I'm feeling like they're speaking directly to me. And so we started working on sound triggers and then we started going back to some of those older memories that we had been working on.

Yeah. And like I said, it didn't, this is not an, a magic bullet for me or for anyone. Like this is like trimming your toenails or getting a haircut you like, you just have to keep after it forever. But part of my deal was again, to get back to that freeze faint where I would experience these, particularly these anger triggers.

which would then immediately nose dive into hopelessness. So I would be charged with this fight or flight response, but then I would feel like those aren't an option, so I'm gonna crash into some depressive stuff and I can't do anything. I can't do anything about any of this. And so that would be the internal monologue of, I, I'm helpless, I can't do anything.

And then I, this sounds like such basic stuff, but I had to learn what can I do about this? But when you're talking about like depressive dips it stops your will to act or to live, or at least did for me. And I was convinced like it doesn't matter what I do. I'm always gonna be a slave to these triggers.

It doesn't matter. I want to go to sleep. I'll sleep for 12 hours. , , real depressive stuff. But then I eventually, I came to this point where I can take action. What can I do? And just, I would start writing down options and making them real. Like I could put up, this is not gonna take the trigger away, but it's will help me live life if I have a little bit of money I can spend on these , right?

I'm gonna get on Amazon. I'm gonna order these panels and I'm gonna panel the wall. And it helped, it made the trigger less. So I think for me it's a combination of knowing, and eventually this impulse of what can you do? I can also leave Portland. I can not, it's clear. I don't like living at this apartment living.

And I was, me and my wife were actually getting around this time actually getting ready to buy a house in Portland. And then it became clear that, I don't wanna live in Portland. I don't wanna buy a house here. I gotta get outta here. And so I had to overcome my feeling of I can't do anything. And I just, we just had to decide, we're gonna move, we're gonna move somewhere, we're gonna find a place that feels safer, that's quieter.

And lo and behold, , we moved out of Portland. We're still we still work in Portland, but we moved out to the burbs. And we found a place where we have one neighbor who's below us, and we have no surrounding neighbors. And we live in this. And we just had to, I hate to word use words like this, but it had to manifest

Yeah. What do I need to do to make this better? Because before I was convinced that I had to fix myself no matter what. And that comes from. The freeze fame where you have to sit here and learn to take anything. And that was a core belief for me. It was just, you gotta learn to live with it.

But at the ripe old age of 50, I'm like I don't have to live with anything I . Yeah. Where I can get the f outta here. I don't care what it looks like, what it takes. I'm out.

[00:49:51] Adeel: Yeah. Yeah. We've got an expiration date on our, on earth. On earth. On Earth. So it's like we . Yeah. We just gotta make the most of it.

And it's but getting, getting made more realistic. It's because it's a combination of things like it's, yeah, you can, you're gonna, you're working, obviously you're working on yourself and working hard on yourself, but we gotta it's not, doesn't, it can't just all come from us, especially when I think there is such a deep well of history with you and lot of stuff to get over.

You're not gonna get over it overnight. And yeah, it makes sense. You gotta take practical, like actions like moving, who cares? Just move. Quit a job. Just move, it's make those decisions. And in the grand scheme of things, it's not a, it's not a big deal, .

[00:50:33] Eric: Yeah, no it's really not.

Especially when you're already gonna move yeah. Yeah. But in, in that depressive mind or that anxious mind, you just blame yourself, like my, yeah. Like my everyday self knows yeah, I can just, I can move, I can change. But there's this other emotional thing going on where it's telling you, no, you can't do anything.

You're a slave to this. And what

[00:50:56] Adeel: kind of swinging to the. To another aspect of the emotional side. When your parents passed away, you know how the, all the guilt and shame that we deal with Oh sure. Know for was kid was, did any of that, was there any kind of, thinking about like that around the time, like did they know about Foot?

Did they care, before they died? Did you bring it up? Did you, I don't know did you ever think about, oh, maybe I made their lives worse by I, I don't know. You know how, how we sometimes we blame ourselves for reacting wrongly and maybe that Sure. Amplifying their own issues.

Did you know, was that a part of your thought process at all?

[00:51:34] Eric: I went down a lot of those roads, what could have I, what could I have done? What could

[00:51:38] Adeel: I have done differently if I had just not had dismissive phony? I could have helped them. Stuff like that. Yeah. It's nonsense like that.

It's obviously not your fault,

[00:51:48] Eric: but Yeah. No I definitely felt all those things. And eventually I came to a pretty decent place where I, and just a real practical place. Like I, I did the best I could. They, like they did, all things considered. And I really became one of those people who I gotta focus on the positive.

I, I definitely had, I was gifted certain things through my childhood that I didn't have any control over. And, but also they raised someone who can take care of themselves. And always had a roof over my head, always had food. They exposed me to the arts. That's why I'm an artist now. Like they were.

Yeah. I like talk about that too. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They, they were both artists and my dad was an art teacher. And I had this real kind of incredible upbringing exposed to the artists and, so I can't just go down this black hole of my parents are to blame for everything.

I'm 50 years old, I'm in charge of all this now, . Yeah. Like the statutory limitations

[00:52:58] Adeel: is starting pass on this stuff.

[00:53:00] Eric: It's passed. This is what I have, this is what I've been given, and do I make something of it? Or do I just, dig myself a hole and curl up and I wanna make something of it.

And how, of, part of, yeah, part of that I was reaching out to you like, I, I don't know what people might get out of this, but, just collectively with collectively listening to a lot of the episodes that I listened to I feel like it, it gave me something, it gave me a, the ability to take control of things a little bit.

. to feel like I'm not alone, to not feel like such a weirdo, which is important if you're trying to grind through something and make progress, like you've gotta feel like there's other people out there who can hear you or get something. Even a little bit of boost inspiration. Cuz I I get it.

I get it from people and stories and I look for it. Or through the arts or a book, a movie, you get little pieces of good stuff and inspiration and I don't know.

[00:54:05] Adeel: Yep. Where a lot of us are creative. How, so how are you, do you use misophonia in, I don't know as an inspiration in any of your artwork?

How, like how are you using art, I guess to, is it, are you using it to , that's part of your coping overall with your mental health is it or is it just whatever comes out?

[00:54:24] Eric: I definitely look at the work. I was real, I was a real active artist in the kind of early to mid two thousands, and then I, being an artist is hard no matter what level here at, but I showed in some galleries and I had to do with art fairs and stuff like that and was real active.

And then I gave it up and now I've been getting back into it the last couple years which has been humbling, but it's what I need to do. But I look at the work I've done and it, a lot of it is I don't know, this dark, weird artwork. And I can see, the stuff we've been talking about in the work in some way.

Like I, I see it. Yeah. Where it's dealing with mortality and destabilized. I do a lot of portraits that look, these people look like they're simultaneously alive or dead or very ordered and very chaotic at the same time, if that makes sense. And positive and negative at the same time.

So I can see these impulses going into the work are real, obviously for me. Yeah. Cause I've I, and I was always a kid who was fascinated with I used to go to this video store called Flicks and Picks back in the VHS days. And I would rent all these dark art movies and David Lynch movies, or Ken Russell movies and ju I would just feed on that stuff, the darker, the better

[00:55:40] Adeel: something.

I just took a final copy of the the Elephant Mans soundtrack

[00:55:44] Eric: oh, are you serious?

[00:55:46] Adeel: It's interesting. Yeah. I just got, and I have eraser head apparently. Eraser head is it's got all kinds of odd noises that the, just the audio of that film is really bizarre. And

[00:55:56] Eric: That, that's interesting because the David Le all his, most of his films are the sound design is very very particular and often very ominous and strange. Yeah.

[00:56:08] Adeel: So there's a interesting, there's a, I love going on tangents, but there is a I found a PhD that someone wrote and actually the author I recently found out, I started following her on Twitter, but she also has , but she did, she wrote, her PhD was on the sound of this the noise and sound design of eraser Head in particular.

Oh, really? Oh, was it an article she wrote? I'll cut this out. It was something she wrote about it. But yeah it's fascinating. I'm fascinated by sound and noise in art and music not just the, the usual like ambient kind of stuff, but purposeful.

Yeah. And the idea of maybe actually somebody who actually somebody I recorded who I think is gonna be going live this week, but he is a composer who actually has incorporated tri his triggers into some of his music. Oh my God. It's also

[00:56:51] Eric: fascinating. Yeah. That's heavy

[00:56:55] Adeel: But anyways we were going on a tangent, but let's talk about your art. But yeah. Yeah. So you've gone back into it and

[00:57:01] Eric: I've gone back into it and I've picked up where I've left off, where I . I just, I get these fig, I just do these figures that are, and I do a lot of kind of businessmen or very official looking people.

Who are being distorted or , almost melted by their environments. Yeah. And I love it. Yeah. And are interacting, I don't know. They're very dark, but they're also funny. And optimistic. I, I'm fascinated by the idea of the memento mori the reminder of death.

, where, old school artists would incorporate a k kind of a skull into a painting or a distorted skull that you could see in a mirror or from a certain perspective or something. And there, there was a kind of a tradition called the me memento Mori, where it's reminding you that you're gonna die.

Now , but in a way that, so that you can enjoy what's going on now, but have this synthesis and this knowledge that this is all finite. And so you should probably start enjoying your life now, because it's all gonna end. It sounds so dark, but I find it really, and I've starting to make peace with that idea of, for myself, I don't know, I don't know about you, but when I was younger, I just, I thought it was immortal.

[00:58:22] Adeel: It just, yeah. We all do. Yeah. You don't think about your health going or, having to,

[00:58:27] Eric: none of that stuff. Yeah. But, I've bumped up, finally in my life with health issues, beyond mental health challenges. Just, my back, my , my just, my knees hurt.

I have to get a colonoscopy, just this mundane physical stuff. And it is piled up enough to. Tell me, let me know that I'm, I am actually going to die . And I've went both of my parents have died. I have spread their ashes. They used to be people and now they're just ashes.

And you get old enough, you start really just, it becomes this real everyday fact.

[00:59:05] Adeel: Do you ever, when you're thinking about that stuff, do you always, do you ever then suddenly get triggered and think about, wait a minute, that's just a sound. I should not be getting triggered about that one. I should be thinking about dad.

But but we always do. It's, we always do. It's the disgusting thing is

[00:59:20] Eric: yeah. No, yeah. I've definitely tried to contextualize, yeah. All the sound triggers. I can, it's hard but in the moment, it's so convincing. It's so powerful that it's, what can you do? You can just, you can do your best when it happens and.

Yeah. But artwork is a kind of a way to talk about these issues and to think about death and impermanence and just chaos. , work deals with chaos too, which is, something I grew up with and, weirdly got comfortable with. And it sounds like you're

[00:59:56] Adeel: peeling those layers back though, at least.

And hopefully. Yeah. It sounds like you're getting a better and better understanding of what's going on and yeah.

[01:00:03] Eric: It's, and I know a lot of, sorry, I stepped on you there, but no. I, it's like people with Mesa it's hard not to be hard on yourself. And it, or to think something's wrong with you and to be really hard on yourself and to be cri critical of yourself.

And I'm just, I'm trying to relax more and more with that kind of stuff. I'll wake up tomorrow. and do the best I can with it, and I'll chip away at it because I used to just hope that I could conquer these triggers. All right. I'm gonna put these acoustic panels up and that'll be it, and I'll be over my miso , and I would apply this weird pressure because the symptoms are so desperate.

But now I just age relaxes things like I'll give it another go tomorrow. It gets a little bit better every time. And sometimes a new trigger comes up that I didn't know about, but I'll deal with that one too. I'll figure it out.

[01:00:54] Adeel: Do you have the visual triggers as well too?

I would imagine kind of stuff, like watching people eat and thankfully seeing somebody close the door. Maybe not,

[01:01:02] Eric: thankfully. No. No. Okay, cool. No, I It's all, it's audio. Yeah. Yeah. It's acoustic and, yeah. And the thing with the headphones I thought I should bring that up. Would. , back in the day when I would hear the, these family patterns emerging, I started, and this was back in the Walkman days where you had the cassette Walkman.

[01:01:25] Adeel: Kids were, when you had a cassette that you'd shove into your phone, , imagine shoving a cassette into your phone and then the phone didn't do anything else. picture it

[01:01:34] Eric: if you can. It might have a radio. Radio, yeah. And these gigantic fat buttons that would click when you push them. And you had these headphones that were, had bright orange phones.

[01:01:45] Adeel: See if your iPhone was made out of Lego, that's what a Walkman looked like and didn't have much more technology in it. Yeah.

[01:01:52] Eric: Incredible. Nice. But I start, I started wearing Walkmans every. and I was one of those people who would join the Columbia House record club. Oh yeah. BMG and Columbia House.

Yeah. All of that. And get, 24 cassettes for one penny and then pay later. Yeah. So I would lay there in bed in 1985, with a Lionel Richie or a result down,

[01:02:21] Adeel: or a dance on the

[01:02:22] Eric: ceiling. Yeah, A dance on the ceiling. A little Phil Collins, no jacket required. The studio. Yep.

To get I have all the vinyl. Yeah. , little Huey knew Huey Lewis Power. Yeah. Sports Whitney Houston, one and two. , on and on. But yeah, that, that became one of my, that was my first coping me mechanism was a Walkman. And I would wear them every night. And I still wear, I wear earbuds every night to sleep.

And that kind of became. the way for me to go to sleep. And now it's funny, parti, particularly when we live in this new place with where I have minimal triggers and it's taken me a few months to decompress and to get rid of the anticipatory stuff. Stuff that I had going on , but I had going on.

But I, I still put earbuds in no matter what. And I put a podcast in, or some ambient, fan jealous or whatever, and Oh, .

[01:03:15] Adeel: Which I also have a vinyl too, but Yes. Oh, excellent. Perfect. Yeah, there's some great Spotify playlists where it really just you could just leave it on and it's great to go to sleep or just have While you're

[01:03:25] Eric: reading or Yeah.

Oh. Just, synth washes. Yeah. Or or some tink gently tinkling chimes, we'll do the trick. , we'll do the trick.

[01:03:35] Adeel: How does, what about your people around you, like your wife, like how your, other close friends, what do they think? Have they gotten used to it?

[01:03:43] Eric: So my friends are, they understand it, but they don't understand it.

Yeah. They realize that, we all understand that . Yeah. , it's, okay. They can conceptualize it. My wife has witnessed me enough to know to really digest and she's very empathic, what do you call it? And,

[01:04:02] Adeel: HS p highly suppressive.

[01:04:05] Eric: She will really feel what I'm feeling.

And if she sees me, suffering or ruminating on something she'll very much, absorb it and want to try to help with it. Which makes me so really frustrating because. You really feel helpless. Like you can't, I'm sorry. You can't help me. There's . And and often the help is, I'm sorry dear, but I'm gonna put these headphones on and block everything out.

And be a stranger in the home, that does, that's not always great, but she's, experienced the stuff enough and has helped me, like when we put those acoustic pads up, she made, we went and got some little art stamps and just did did decorative stamps and that was her idea.

They're like we, let's make something positive out of this. But I still, and I give myself misophonia I'm also concerned when I slam a door too loud. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. We have one of those really loud Vitamix. Blenders. Yeah. That just sounds like an engine taking off. And I just cringe when I use it cause I don't want to disturb anyone.

Or trigger it. So I project my triggers out.

[01:05:08] Adeel: We have one of those two. It's but it's, I feel like it, it's enough of a white noise that it but I see, I know what you think when it has to rub up, I'm like, Ugh. Oh God. I don't remember how loud it's gonna

[01:05:18] Eric: get.

And I start getting, we moved into this new place and we met our neighbors, this really cool guy and I, and it was just effusive with if we ever make any noise Oh, please let me know. Yeah. And just overly, yeah. Overly explaining myself without really getting into it, but and. , my wife will definitely trigger me when she's using the blender or we moved into this new place and like the cabinet doors are really loud when they close, so Of course, what did I have to do? Get the soft clothes. Yeah. I got the soft clothes. I went to every cupboard in this place and softened em all up because I was cringing.

And again, like she can't, doesn't even really even notice it. Yeah. And I'll be in the other room just cringing, as if I'm being hit or something. It's really strange. Yeah.

[01:06:06] Adeel: Yeah. Or it's like you're that little boy again.

[01:06:09] Eric: Yeah. It really is. It's cheesy as that where it's, it would make a bad movie, but it's true like the past does.

Yeah. Stay with you and trigger you and,

[01:06:20] Adeel: eric, yeah, we I've lo. pleasantly lost track of time. But we are, yeah

[01:06:25] Eric: we're we ripped off an hour and a half, I think. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is,

this

[01:06:28] Adeel: has been great, but I still wanna give you a chance to any I know you had all these notes and you have some shorthand, anything else you want to share with people now and, you can always come back again in the future, but yeah.

Anything else you want to get off your chest and share with people and see what people think about?

[01:06:44] Eric: I think amazingly, I got most, we covered a lot of ground, most of this stuff out, it feels like so much, but just, yeah, I, I wanted to make sure to say that, or be one of these people where you gotta go to therapy.

You gotta go to therapy. I don't wanna be one of those people, but it definitely helped me at least mediate some of the effects of misophonia. And that, and, like everyone, my, my triggers are tailored to me. and my history and all that kind of stuff. But there, it seems like there is help out there and it took me a while to, to find it and I don't know if it would work for anyone else, but I really liked it was mi miserable experience, the phrase, getting into these triggers and hacking into them and they're not solved, but it I did find some solace with kind of body-based hacking into the nervous system to at least soften some of the distress of sound triggers, desen motorist

[01:07:46] Adeel: stuff that talking

[01:07:47] Eric: about, yeah.

And yeah. Yeah, that might not be for everyone. And talk therapy is really difficult and especially if you got heavy trauma and stuff and, everyone can find different types of help. But I didn't solve it, but I got a, I got a. , I guess I'm wiggle room now. Yeah. And some abilities I didn't have before.

Yeah. And go to amazon.com and they've got these panels that they make for musicians. And you can plaster your whole house

[01:08:18] Adeel: with those, the, or did you get the orex or did you get another

[01:08:21] Eric: I don't even remember. They were just these, I don't, yeah, I'm sorry. I don't remember the name of the actual manufacturer,

[01:08:25] Adeel: but No, that's fine.

But yeah, you're right. There, there's all kinds of companies that make like that foam for musicians. Those, everyone kind of recognize what they look like. Those, triangular kind of foam thingies. Or just put, you could also start by putting blankets up in, in, strategically placed blankets or

Yeah. Better other kind of material rugs maybe. Yeah. If you want to go really cheap, but but yeah, these yeah. These foam panels are specifically made for musicians and audio. Yeah.

[01:08:52] Eric: I, sorry, I'm laughing it sounding and make me joke out of it, but it did help me. And the answer is not to insulate yourself from the world, but also you gotta give yourself as much breathing room as you can and , if you're trying to get over some of this stuff you need to give your nervous system a break. Yeah. So you can get strong. Yeah. Yeah. And cons, not feel constantly under attack. Yeah. So you can pull your resources a little bit and if you gotta put up some blankets and Yeah. Hopefully have a partner or a family or whoever you live with who understands.

[01:09:30] Adeel: Yeah. And I would say, yeah, just try stuff. Don't feel like. Just try stuff. You're don't, you're not, you don't feel like you're not going in the right direction cuz what I tell people is mis funny is so little understood and so made fun of that. We are, we just gotta to take, we gotta do it.

We gotta help each other out. We gotta

[01:09:46] Eric: pool our, we've gotta get crowdsourced this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, just try stuff. Tinker with it. If it seems ridiculous and maybe something doesn't work, try something else and just chip away at it. Yeah. There's

[01:10:00] Adeel: ways and come on the podcast and let us know what's worked, what hasn't.

Because cuz not a lot of people are researching, not enough people are researching this. Yeah. So yeah.

[01:10:08] Eric: And just come on and testify and .

[01:10:10] Adeel: Eric yeah. This is as amazing as I thought it would be. And yeah. I want to thank you for coming on, just sharing like some heavy stuff and I'm glad that you are now.

no. Have a name for it and are, going to therapy and starting to pick at it. And I know you're gonna keep working on it. I would love to keep in touch with you. Obviously we're now kinda get on social. Yeah,

[01:10:28] Eric: same here. I

[01:10:29] Adeel: think this is just the kind of the beginning.

But yeah, let's share things with each other as much as we can. Yeah. And good luck.

[01:10:35] Eric: Good luck to you. And I know other people have told you this, but what you do is a big deal. Just, I've stumbled my way into becoming a mental health advocate and advocating for just being open about it.

Yeah. It's painful stuff, but , just get it out there. Demystify it. You're not a weirdo, you're not insane. Just it's a practical thing in your life and just deal with it. Share it. So thank you for having something out there for people to do that with, cuz that's a big deal. That's cool.

[01:11:09] Adeel: Thank you Eric, and I really look forward to doing that follow up interview with you later this season.

If you liked 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@hellomisspodcast.com or go to the website miss podcast.com. It's even easier just to send a message through Instagram at miss podcast. Follow there or on Facebook at Miss podcast, and we're even on Twitter at missoni Show.

Support the show by visiting the Patreon patreon.com podcast. Theme music, as always is, and until next week, wish.