I have kind of a problem

I’m not sure if I have mentioned it on this site or not, but I have a condition called misophonia, which is basically mild to extreme irritation caused by ‘minor’ sounds such as chewing, paper rustling, slurping, whispering etc. And yes, it does include breathing as well. On good days, I don’t react to these, since I only have mild misophonia, and thank God most of my days are good days. But on bad days, these sounds set me on edge, makes me want to hit something compulsively, and makes me restless as heck. If you haven’t heard of this condition, that’s normal, because not much research had been done on this. Anyways, back to the story.

So there’s this girl that I always have classes every Monday and Friday. It’s for an extra qualification that I have class with her, and we often work on our own under teacher supervision (I’m in one of the classes now). Because we have a mutual free period between these sessions, she often tags along to the empty classroom I spend my free period in even though it’s reserved mainly for history students (the reasons she does this is because that classroom is legit next to the classroom where we have teacher supervision).

Anyways, this girl, she fidgets. All. The. ing. Time. She taps her leg, she taps her pen, she fidgets and rustles the piece of paper she’s reading. She also makes a lot of ing noise; whenever she has to take something from her bag it sounds like she’s digging through an entire room’s worth of stuff. Imagine everything you do on a daily basis, and magnify the amount of strength or whatever by ten, and the noise by ten, except when my misophonia hits bad it feels like it’s magnified by fifty. And this girl always sits next to me. Imagine the torture I go through.

The worst part is that she’s not that mean. She’s very nosy, and the way she speaks is kind of aggressive, but I can deal with that. She tries to be friendly with me, but I kept trying to avoid her because she’s the cause of many of my misophonia triggers. She’s also very hyper, and I get very irritated when things move too fast in front of me (idk if it’s part of my misophonia, but essentially continued knee jerking, or continued fingers tapping and stuff like that drives me insane). And I can’t tell her about this because I’m always pissed off when I get triggered, which is not the right way to approach this. She’s also kind of nosy, so I don’t want her to know (especially since only one or two people know that I have this condition and it’s usually scoffed at by people since they think you’re ‘over-reacting’). The best way people approach this is to remove themselves from the situation, but obviously I can’t do that either. 

Any advice? 

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Skyful_Poof
#1
I'm going to give one of the most basic advice I can think of. You should talk to her. You may feel distressed when the sounds trigger you, so try talking to her before she does anything 'noisy'. Even if she may seem aggressive and nosy, you should let her know. Ask her to come to one corner, tell her about your condition privately, and hopefully, she'll understand. Although the others might not consider your condition serious and may refer to it as exaggeration, they could search it up and once they read about if, they'll know it's true. Don't worry about what others may think of your condition. Also, when you're talking to her, tell her that you've said this to a couple of other people as well so it doesn't seem like you're only bothered by her behaviour. I don't know if I'm making sense, but all I can say is that you should talk to her about it. <3
BlueSkySeeker
#2
Honestly? I think you need to approach her outside of one of your moments of distress when you're feeling okay and you're not set of by anything and explain to her about the condition. If you need to, you might consider likening it to anxiety, since a lot of people have experience with that and it's easy to understand. Explain about how too much sound overwhelms you and that she's very nice, but that by that point if the day, sometimes you're getting a little overwhelmed. School is noisy. I'm sure she understands that.

Don't blame her or make it totally about her, but make it seem like it's sometimes outside of your control (since it is??) and make it seem like there are ways to help ease it.