overcoming noice sensitivity?

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Hello,

I have great difficulty with noise sensitivity especially when someone is eating and making noise with a plate and folk the sound sounds very painful to me and is unbearable. Which means I have to avoid all places people eat like cafes etc and family meals to avoid the unbearable noise . I really dont want to live like this though. I know I will always have difficult with this but does anyone have any advice at all on how to cope better with it please? Any tips or advice at all I would be very grateful for. Thank you.

Yes, I spent the last two years of high school lunch periods in the library because of this. Also, I found public transportation to be crazy loud and hectic. Now, I buy 50 packs of earplugs and use those for relief in these kinds of situations. I find great peace in silence. It could make some situations tolerable. Although, this may not work if you want to eat too, because you will hear your own chewing. You may just have to be honest and say to your family, "Y'all chew too loud, can I eat in my room?" but more nice and diplomatic.

Thank you for your reply. That's a good idea I will try the ear plugs. Sadly I have never been able to eat with my family due to this problem..it's to unbearable. Have you ever tried anything to overcome it? I have heard there are tapes you can buy which help you get used to the noise I was looking into getting them but wasnt there if they work.

I am a "one trick wonder" as I applied biofeedback to the body and the mind.
In order to "relearn" you have to do "something different.

Think about "I was injured in the arm." You want to drink a cup of tea so you pick it up and raise it to your mouth. Unfortunately, this movement hurts the arm.
So you say "I want to lift the cup." I do NOT want to lift it "the old way" I want to lift in "another way" which does not hurt my arm as I lift the cup. And you work out that if you move the arm slightly differently, you can have a drink and NOT hurt your arm in the process.

The process to learn - have a goal - try things, until you achieve the goal. Then this becomes learned.

To relearn, you also need a goal, something you can measure. Something concrete.
You need to understand what you are doing.
You need to set "another goal" as well.
You then need to try things until you achieve the new goal.

That is my "one trick." Biofeedback plus a bit. It works on the muscles of the body. It also works in the mind.

When I was into this area - I tried a neuro-processing methodology. One of those very expensive "treatment programs" which are sold and promise all sorts of things.
Different sounds in each ear which was designed to force the hardware of the brain to develop. It was a six month program. I did it twice. No outcome for me.

But they did tell me an important fact.
They told me I heard through the skin as well as the ears. They were trying to build a filter in the brain using their process. As I said, it did not work with me.

Years later, I used my "one and only party trick." It did work.

I had a model of what I was doing. In it, I was a simpler organism which heard through the skin. I developed ears which gave direction and distance - a far better "hearing system" than the skin. Most people turn off the skin as they develop their 'ears hearing." Mine was left on.

My one trick was to "picture myself" as having a sound system with the background input "always on." and only the foreground which I could adjust the volume and tone.
I pictured myself unplugging a plug from the background noise.

I wanted something to measure it by - and I pictured myself in a store where there was the normal music in the background, and someone was playing the star wars soundtrack right beside where I was shopping.
When I could ignore the background music, THEN and ONLY then would my hearing be normal.
The "feedback" part to measure if something was a success or not.

As I was quite proficient at normal muscular biofeedback, this was just a less ... overt application.
To remain able to hear - but to restrict the processing only to the things my ears heard, and ignore what my skin heard.

It either works 100% or woks zero percent - nothing in between.
In my case, it worked 100%. Quick, permanent, total.

You might want to give it a try.

Trying to define a mind trick of this order is difficult.
I had an advantage, I was forced to learn biofeedback for my body, including the "relearning" type. It is something you have to learn how to do, and like rock climbing. You learn by doing (no matter if you have an instructor or not.)
If you can learn this "mind trick" it opens many possibilities in many areas.

I must admit, there is a down side to turning off the skin. Before, if i was listening to an audio book or lecture, I could do something else and I would always know what was said.
Afterwards, I could be thinking about something else - and suddenly realize I had lost track of the audio and had to "backtrack" to regain the story.

In other words, I became "normal" in that area.
Personally, I am satisfied with the trade off.
But it is a down side.

Hi, Thank you so much for reply! I have been looking into it and I think it could really work if I work at it! It's given me hope. Can you recommend any good Biofeedback books please? thank you again

Noise is part of the reason I'm moving into a new place really soon. I've lived here for six months and I've HAD it with all the noise my roommates and landlord make. By "normal" standards they're fairly quiet, but by my standards, I can't stand them. My landlord vacuums the hallway every evening, throws my mail under my door which makes this annoying scratching sound, and he also has this cooling pad under his laptop with a worn-out fan that drives me nuts. The roommate in the room next to me, meanwhile, is almost always playing music loud enough for me to hear, and when he walks by I can hear him breathing and stomping past my door.

I'm getting so god damn sick of waiting. I paid my landlord off so that I could leave without giving a full month's notice, but I still have no idea where the hell I'm going to put all my stuff, or how I'm going to deal with my huge pile of dirty laundry.

Aww no it sounds awful. I really hope you get sorted with somewhere not so noisy!

I used to play records while I worked on intellectual stuff, to see if I could learn to screen out my noise sensitivity, but it didn't really do much good. The only thing that really works for me is to drown out the incoming sound with (e.g.) pink noise, played through speakers or closed-back headphones. Earplugs don't seem to help me much and they feel uncomfortable - I have a lot of tactile sensory issues as well as auditory sensitivity.