Management versus retraining
An interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald the other day ‘Please Stop Making that Noise’, looked at a doctor’s experience of suffering from misophonia (or selective sound sensitivity syndrome). This is a condition where certain sounds from other people like chewing, breathing, coughing swallowing in other people fires an emotional response of anger, disgust even nausea.
Like the majority of conditions I work with Misophonia is an inappropriate response to an otherwise normal thing.
Recognising that the ‘thing’ or trigger is not the issue and it is your response that is dysfunctional might sound straight forward but it is amazing how often we fall into the trap of pointing the finger at something outside us and seeing THAT as the issue. As soon as we go down that path, our options are limited – avoid the trigger or put up with the consequences. This is ‘management mode’ and keeps people stuck.
The title of the article remember was ‘Please Stop making that Noise’. That sums up management mode. Life is so much easier however when you get out of endless management mode and learn to retrain your brain to respond differently.
Once you recognise that the trigger is not the issue, you open yourself up to options of retraining yourself to respond appropriately.
A lot of my work is about retraining people’s responses – physically, mentally, emotionally and behaviourally. It includes inappropriate responses to exercise, chemicals, food in general or types of food, standing up, walking, pollen, moving, light, noise, chemicals, smells, movement, tiredness, pain, people, places, touch, temperature etc etc etc.
The first step in the retraining process requires a shift in perspective – recognising the issue is NOT the trigger. And importantly, that this does not therefore mean that person is broken, insane, damaged, faulty or injured. Just neurologically stuck responding inappropriately.
Then they can get on with the work of training them self back to good health.
As I often say “Don’t manage the symptoms – retrain the system”. Because life IS so much easier when you are out of management mode.