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Melissa Gilbert has revealed she was diagnosed with rare neurological disability, misophonia.
In an interview with People, the 60-year-old Little House on The Prairie actor explained she was secretly struggling behind the scenes of the show, grappling with a condition she didn’t understand. When faced with everyday noises - including the sounds of chewing, hands clapping, and gum popping— her anger would be triggered.
“If any of the kids chewed gum or ate or tapped their fingernails on the table, I would want to run away so badly,” Gilbert explained. “I would turn beet red and my eyes would fill up with tears and I’d just sit there feeling absolutely miserable and horribly guilty for feeling so hateful towards all these people - people I loved.”
The actor noted it was “a really dark and difficult part of my childhood.”
She was diagnosed with misophonia, a neurological condition that causes those suffering from it to experience strong and unpleasant emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses to sound, and at times, visual triggers.
“I sobbed when I found out that it had a name and I wasn’t just a bad person,” Gilbert added, noting that she’s partnering with Duke Center for Misophonia and Emotional Regulation at Duke University’s School of Medicine. “I really just thought that I was rude. And I felt really bad. And guilty, which is an enormous component of misophonia, the guilt that you feel for these feelings of fight or flight. It’s a really isolating disorder.”
As she got older, Gilbert found ways to work around her condition, living a normal life as the co-founder of lifestyle brand Modern Prairie and marrying actor Timothy Busfield. After she became a parent, her children developed a hand signal to help her out with her sensitivity.
“I had a hand signal that I would give, making my hand into a puppet and I’d make it look like it was chewing and then I’d snap it shut — like shut your mouth!” she recalled. “My poor kids spent their whole childhoods growing up with me doing this. They weren’t allowed to have gum.”
Later on, menopause intensified the effects of the disorder, causing her reactions to commonplace noises to be much more intense.
“I was more touchy,” Gilbert said. “As the estrogen leaked out, the anger seeped in and it started to really affect me on a daily basis with loved ones.”
It wasn’t until recently when she discovered Duke’s Center for Misophonia that she could be treated for the condition.
“I wrote in just randomly and said, ‘I need help. Please help me,’” says Gilbert, who shared a video about her experience on the center’s website.
“This is an emotional issue. It’s about self-regulation and self-control,” Gilbert said. “I realized I could ride out these waves but that they’re not going to go away. They never go away. But now I have all these tools to enable me to be more comfortable and less triggered. It made me feel in control.”
After learning Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was an effective treatment for misophonia, she underwent 16 weeks of “intensive” CBT therapy.
