I HAVE ALWAYS been fussy about noise. I don't mind overhearing people talking, but I recoil from other instruments in the discordant orchestra of everyday life: open-mouthed chewing, rhythmic sniffing or coughing, phone alerts, pen-clicking, nail-clipping.
For a long time, I was able to tune these sounds out or politely remove myself from situations where they were bothering me. But during lockdown, when I was forced to work from home over a neighbor's loud metal workshop, my ambient fussiness festered into a fixation. The problem was that there was nowhere to politely remove myself to.
Fortunately, there were plenty of noise-canceling solutions to pick from. Whenever I sat down to work, I would put on my Jabra headphones and fire up an app called Noisli, which allows users to create layered soundscapes. Over that I played music on Spotify, swaddling myself in a curated cacophony. I kept my headphones on all day, thrilled by the control I had over my environment. I had always envied people who seemed unbothered by distractions, and now I was one of them.
That was just the beginning. My noisy neighbor moved out, but my devices stayed. I bought a loud air purifier and put it on the left side of my bed. I then put a white-noise machine on the right side. With the ceiling fan on, I slept enveloped in a womb-like whirring. I even got a portable white-noise machine meant for babies and toted it around my apartment like a daemon. I was safe. I was smug.
Then human error abruptly ejected me from my sound cocoon. Packing in a hurry for a work trip to Albuquerque this spring, I forgot my baby whitenoise machine, my earplugs, the earbuds I exercise with, and the charger for my noise-canceling headphones, which crapped out midway through the flight. I bought new earplugs upon arrival, but they were too big for my narrow canals. I didn't sleep well that night or the next, or on the plane home.
My devices had been effectively masking noise, but they hadn't made me any better equipped to stay calm and focused when the world intruded. Because these tools work so well, it's easy to think of them as panaceas rather than spot treatments. Going without them for a few days made me realize I had overdone it. Noise nullification wasn't just a habit it had become a lifestyle.
I scuttled back into my sound hidey-hole for several weeks, content in my routine. But one morning, as a man across the street began his leaf blowing at dawn, I realized that I'd been so absorbed in what I was reading and eating that I hadn't heard it start up. I hadn't needed my baby white-noise machine. I saw a glimpse of life without noise cancellation, or at least one with a balance, and I liked it.
Intrigued, I reached out to Jane Gregory, a clinical psychologist and doctoral research fellow at Oxford University who specializes in and suffers from misophonia (a phenomenon whereby certain sounds inspire a very strong negative reaction in the afflicted). Gregory told me about her own armory of noise management tools: three pairs of headphones, foam earplugs, and a smart speaker (whenever she feels compelled to police her family's chewing during meals, they all take turns picking songs). But she is careful to employ these tools only once a noise starts bothering her, rather than wielding them preemptively. That way, Gregory doesn't unnecessarily risk over-sensitizing herself to her surroundings. Noise-canceling headphones, earplugs, and other devices may provide relief in the moment, but because the brain works harder to hear sounds when it's receiving less auditory input, they can have unwanted longterm effects on your aural sensitivity.
I wasn't prepared to quit noisecanceling devices cold turkey, but I asked Zachary Rosenthal, director of Duke University's Center for Misophonia and Emotional Regulation, for some advice on weaning myself off of them. He recommended evaluating which situations are likely to result in a particularly negative outcome, like actually confronting someone. If, for instance, you know that sitting next to a crying baby on a pl...
For a long time, I was able to tune these sounds out or politely remove myself from situations where they were bothering me. But during lockdown, when I was forced to work from home over a neighbor's loud metal workshop, my ambient fussiness festered into a fixation. The problem was that there was nowhere to politely remove myself to.
Fortunately, there were plenty of noise-canceling solutions to pick from. Whenever I sat down to work, I would put on my Jabra headphones and fire up an app called Noisli, which allows users to create layered soundscapes. Over that I played music on Spotify, swaddling myself in a curated cacophony. I kept my headphones on all day, thrilled by the control I had over my environment. I had always envied people who seemed unbothered by distractions, and now I was one of them.
That was just the beginning. My noisy neighbor moved out, but my devices stayed. I bought a loud air purifier and put it on the left side of my bed. I then put a white-noise machine on the right side. With the ceiling fan on, I slept enveloped in a womb-like whirring. I even got a portable white-noise machine meant for babies and toted it around my apartment like a daemon. I was safe. I was smug.
Then human error abruptly ejected me from my sound cocoon. Packing in a hurry for a work trip to Albuquerque this spring, I forgot my baby whitenoise machine, my earplugs, the earbuds I exercise with, and the charger for my noise-canceling headphones, which crapped out midway through the flight. I bought new earplugs upon arrival, but they were too big for my narrow canals. I didn't sleep well that night or the next, or on the plane home.
My devices had been effectively masking noise, but they hadn't made me any better equipped to stay calm and focused when the world intruded. Because these tools work so well, it's easy to think of them as panaceas rather than spot treatments. Going without them for a few days made me realize I had overdone it. Noise nullification wasn't just a habit it had become a lifestyle.
I scuttled back into my sound hidey-hole for several weeks, content in my routine. But one morning, as a man across the street began his leaf blowing at dawn, I realized that I'd been so absorbed in what I was reading and eating that I hadn't heard it start up. I hadn't needed my baby white-noise machine. I saw a glimpse of life without noise cancellation, or at least one with a balance, and I liked it.
Intrigued, I reached out to Jane Gregory, a clinical psychologist and doctoral research fellow at Oxford University who specializes in and suffers from misophonia (a phenomenon whereby certain sounds inspire a very strong negative reaction in the afflicted). Gregory told me about her own armory of noise management tools: three pairs of headphones, foam earplugs, and a smart speaker (whenever she feels compelled to police her family's chewing during meals, they all take turns picking songs). But she is careful to employ these tools only once a noise starts bothering her, rather than wielding them preemptively. That way, Gregory doesn't unnecessarily risk over-sensitizing herself to her surroundings. Noise-canceling headphones, earplugs, and other devices may provide relief in the moment, but because the brain works harder to hear sounds when it's receiving less auditory input, they can have unwanted longterm effects on your aural sensitivity.
I wasn't prepared to quit noisecanceling devices cold turkey, but I asked Zachary Rosenthal, director of Duke University's Center for Misophonia and Emotional Regulation, for some advice on weaning myself off of them. He recommended evaluating which situations are likely to result in a particularly negative outcome, like actually confronting someone. If, for instance, you know that sitting next to a crying baby on a pl...
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WIRED (Digital) - 1 Issue, September 2023