Living with Misophonia: Creating a DIY Trigger Log Phone “App”
Living with misophonia, a neurological disorder that causes specific sound sensitivities, is not easy and it’s even tougher to explain to others with anything approaching accuracy. While I’ve covered talking about misophonia in another Medium article, I’d like to share a project that misophones can do to help others — and themselves — understand their daily ordeals with the affliction.
The Challenge: Quantifying Misophonia
Several years ago, I was working at a coffee shop chain that is everywhere and had spoken with the management about how much I was suffering at that position due to my misophonia. The coffee shop was within a larger retailer and I was hoping that I could convince the managers to move me out of the coffee shop and into a less-triggering role elsewhere in the store.
To make my point, I needed a way to show the managers exactly what I was talking about, how much it affected me.
I had carried a small pocket notebook with me which I used to catalogue my daily misophonia activators. It was a start, even though it turned out to be kind of a mess:
These are the misophonia cues that I experienced that day, followed by a severity rating number, and what I did in response [SINS=Suffered in Silence].
This was a good first step, but it had issues. I didn’t always have a pen available when I needed it and I also tended to forget to write some activators down, thus creating an insufficient record.
Since that time, there have been Misophonia Trigger logbooks published, though a normal notebook works fine.
I had to resign from that coffee shop role because of my misophonia — I was not moved to another position. I soon found a higher-paying job working for a digital marketing company in Denver and was required to work in the company office, even though my job could be done from home.
On my first day in the office, I had “the talk” with the owner about misophonia and what I could already tell was going to be tough: the people eating in the office and other sounds.
My own narrative about the struggles I was having with office noises only carried so much weight. I needed to quantify the problem. I needed data.
This is when I decided I needed to use technology and create spreadsheets with factual information. Business owners love spreadsheets.
The Project: A Misophonia Phone App
For months, I looked for a way to create a simple phone app which would allow me to quickly notate misophonia triggers while I was experiencing them. Think of that! An app which I could have open on my phone which would present me with 3–4 cue criteria which I could use to record each misophonia cue with a single hand on my phone in the moment. This would create the data set I needed.
I don’t know how to code phone apps and I don’t have the money to have such a thing developed for me. I hit a wall.
Then I had an “a-ha” moment: What I am seeking is merely a questionnaire, a survey! I can just make an online form for myself and use it like an app on my phone! As it turns out, Google Forms are free and they automatically create a spreadsheet of the submitted data in Google Docs. I could create the form for myself and Google would take care of the rest.
It works just like any app installed on a smartphone. By creating a homescreen shortcut to the web address of the form, I could quickly launch the “app” and fill it out in mere seconds.
Best of all, anyone can do this and it is free.
Anyone Can Do This: Making A Misophonia Trigger Log “App”
To create your own misophonia activator log app on your phone, you simply need to do the following.
- Create a free Google Form to your liking.
If you have a Google account, such as a gmail address, you can create online Google Forms for free at forms.google.com. These are used primarily for online surveys with the responses being placed in a Google Sheet by the people who take the survey. This is exactly what we are creating, except you [or the person with misophonia] will be the one submitting the survey each time in response to misophonia cues.
I created a form that had the following fields:
:: Who? I included the people who worked near me in the office as a checklist with a final option for someone not listed so I could fill in the blank. I did this to get a record of whom in my office was the biggest triggerer for me. You could easily leave this field off and save yourself a few moments of additional work.
:: What? This was a list of 5–6 of my most-common misophonia cue sounds, again with a final one to fill in the blank if I encountered a noise or visual trigger that was not among the most-frequent ones for me. My checklist included gum smacking or popping, pen clicking, and so on. You can adapt this to your liking and make it easiest for your own situation.
:: Rating: This was a rating of the severity of the activator for me on a scale of 1–10 with 1 being not a big deal and 10 being a panic-inducing situation where I had to immediately leave the room to cool off.
:: Response: This means “What I did as a result.” I had a checklist here, too, which included common ways I react to misophonia activators, such as putting in earplugs, leaving, or suffering in silence [SINS]. There was also a fill-in-the-blank option for anything outside of the 4–5 common ways I react.
Google will automatically include the time and date for each entry, so you don’t need to make a time or date field. This saves a few seconds when filling out an entry.
There is a submit button to add the answers to the above questions onto the spreadsheet automatically. Once I hit the submit button, I could put the phone back in my pocket since the record is preserved.
2. Create the Home Screen Shortcut
Once you have created the form, click the “Share” button to get to the web address for the live form instead of the editing screen.
The form works like an app because I placed a home screen bookmark icon on my phone’s main app screen which, when tapped, would immediately launch me to the online form. Both Apple iOS and Android browsers have this function, so it should work on almost all smartphones in use today.
3. Use it!
When confronted with a misophonia cue, do what you need to cope. As a way to deal with it, pull out your smartphone, launch the “app” and quickly fill out the form you created and submit it. Your trigger episode is now part of the data set.
The Results
After a period of time — in my case, a month — I had an accurate sample of data about all of my misophonia cues which I could present to my employer and others to illustrate how much sounds and sights affected me each day.
Conclusion
Misophonia isn’t easy to explain. Having a log of your activators can show people the frequency, severity, and coping methods you do to manage life with this disorder.
Do you like this idea? Can it help you? What would you do differently?
If you like this idea, please drop me a note at soQuiet.org, my misophonia advocacy organization, and let me know! We also have FREE Misophonia Information cards which you can request on our site.
Best of luck to you all out there!
