Noise Pollution and Sound Trauma as a form of Torture
Have you ever experienced noise pollution or sound trauma?
Those are my words for it, and in my definition, sound trauma is an overly long, extended exposure to a loud, uncomfortable, grating, penetrating noise. For that matter, I suppose the noise / noise pollution could be quieter, yet when it gets repeated extensively, it would still be effective in creating emotional turmoil and internal distress. Has water dripping from your faucet ever driven you nuts? I suppose almost any unstoppable sound — repeating over and over again, digging into your brain and creating tension, anxiety, irritation, frustration, overwhelm, etc — qualifies as noise pollution, sound trauma, or sound torture.
That was my day yesterday.
One of my lovely little ol’ neighbor ladies needed to trim one of her giant trees. This tree is very very old, super tall, and some of it’s limbs are getting brittle and starting to break and fall. She didn’t want any of the giant tree limbs to fall onto her house, or to hurt anyone, or to cause damage from breaking off during a storm. The tree was beautiful but it was becoming a dangerous hazard, so she hired a local tree business to help with her problem.
Now this is a big tree. A super big tree. It was probably 6 or 7, or maybe even 8 stories high. Its trunk was so big no one person could wrap their arms all the way around it. I have no idea how tall this tree was in feet or metres, but it was way-way-way-way up there.
Yesterday, a day packed full of important things to do, started like any other normal day. I was working on our new Forum — which is a wonderful but busy place — so I had a LOT to do!
However, by around 9am, a team of about 10 guys arrived at my neighbors house, driving 3 or 4 big trucks, hauling a variety of saws, mulching machines, etc. There was tons of equipment and a huge group of people wandering all around. While this tree was clearly growing from my neighbor’s yard, the limbs were spread out all over everywhere, including over my backyard. Naturally, these worker guys were in and out of my area as well.
Of course, in trimming the branches off the tree, dozens and dozens of tree limbs dropped with loud thuds into my yard. The workers were repeatedly driving in and out, in and out, revving their big truck engines, speaking loudly in order to communicate with each other. Several workers climbed high into the tree, carrying noisy chain saws. The painful cracking of breaking limbs falling down was heard over and over.
And with all the nearby danger of falling tree limbs and numerous large moving vehicles, both my dogs had to stay indoors during this whole time. Barking. Growling. Guard-dogging their area. They wanted to play, and how dare such a noisy crew interrupt their play day! Who are these people, woof woof woof.
The biggest noise problem came from the unrelenting sawing and mulching.
It went on and on and on.
Hour after hour.
And another hour.
And another.
Thank goodness they took a very short break for lunch, but then it went on for more hours.
In fact, it took that big ol’ group of guys a full 7+ hours of noise, noise, noise to trim all the branches off that giant tree.
Let me say real quick — for you who are worried about the beautiful tree — the tree isn’t dead, and it will be okay. It’s had a significant haircut, but new branches and limbs will be able to grow from it in a safer, more secure manner.
But the amount of excessive layers of unrelenting loud noise for the entire day yesterday was just exhausting. It felt traumatic. Overwhelming. Unbearable.
There was too much noise to do Phone Consultations, so my plans for the day were interrupted. To watch TV, the TV itself had to be blaring loud to be heard, so that didn’t help. The beautiful birds I love to hear were far far away. Everything everywhere was noisy.
It would have been a great day to do errands, except I just did all those the other day.
It would have been a great day for shopping, except I didn’t need to buy anything.
I probably should have just done chores, but yuck! Who wants a day doing that?! 😉
I couldn’t concentrate on writing so I turned my energy towards other simpler tasks. I made some soup — all you Saddest Little Bear people know how much I like soup! I did a few simple tasks, and rearranged the rest of my week to recover from the day of interruption. I had a million things to do and yet wasn’t highly productive at anything so it was frustrating. Stressful. Tense. Exhausting.
What made such an impact on me was how devastating NOISE could be.
I wasn’t injured. I wasn’t bruised. I wasn’t battered. But oh my goodness, I felt like I had been in a battle all day long. A battle against excessive sound, noise, and chaos.
Have you ever been in a battle against sound?
Have you ever experienced sound trauma or noise torture or noise nuisance?
Have you experienced noise as a form of psychological torture?
My day yesterday was highly uncomfortable, off-putting, irritating, and frustrating. But it was one day, and the source of the turmoil was obvious, and relatively short-lived. I could see what the problem was, and I had the option to walk away / drive away. It was inconvenient to restructure my plans, but I had options. I didn’t like it one little bit, but I wasn’t trapped.
However, this unplanned, unexpected, overwhelming day of noise was definitely enough to remind me, in no uncertain terms, of the dissociative trauma survivors who have experienced noise as a repeated form of torture and trauma.
Has that happened to you or for anyone in your system?
Do you have certain parts that have a real sensitivity to noise?
Do you have inside parts who have been abused with sound, on purpose, by their tormentors?
Sound torture definitely exists. It doesn’t leave a mark. There is no bruise. But it can be horribly effective because of the amount of pain and turmoil, distress and anxiety it creates within the person.
Noise is hard to stop. It digs right in there, and some sounds feel impossible to block. After awhile, you can feel it penetrate through your whole body. Now maybe your dissociative skills can help separate certain sounds from reaching all the way in, but that would certainly require a lot of energy and a lot of strength.
How do you help your insiders who have noise trauma?
What do you do to help them feel more comfortable and settled?
How do you protect their ears now?
What do you do to shield them from overwhelming noises?
What about Inside Noise and Chaos?
Oh boy, when I think about how many times I’ve heard dissociative trauma survivors say they hear constant yelling inside, or constant screaming inside, or ongoing cries from babies, I think about how all that internal noise must be so incredibly difficult to hear for extended periods of time. Or for always.
Is your head ever quiet?
Can you sit peacefully, and ONLY hear the birds, or the wind, or the crickets, or the gentle sounds in your environment?
Has your whole head — or whole self — ever been able to listen to one simple thing at a time?
If these situations feel impossible for you, my heart goes out to you. Maybe you can’t relate to the concept of complete peace and calm, and oh my goodness, we’ve gotta teach you how to find that.
Because genuine peace and calm is a beautiful thing. It’s restful. It’s quiet. It’s so very soothing.
The more you can teach each of your insiders, one by one, that screaming and loudness and constant noise isn’t necessarily helpful anymore, the quicker you can find that internal peace and healing.
Of course, addressing the internal noise means addressing the reasons for the noise in the first place.
- Why are those inside babies crying? Who can help tend them and meet their needs?
- Why are those angry ones yelling? Who can talk with them and help them find other ways to express their anger, or to resolve the conflict they feel?
- Why are those other ones screaming in pain? Find ways to rescue them from their internal trauma, separate them from any internal perpetrator / introject parts, and move them to safety.
- Who in your system experienced purposeful noise torture / psychological torture, and what are you doing to help those parts? Sound torture can be used sadistically for mind control purposes. Are any of your insiders reliving that pain?
Are you hearing all that noise inside?
Because if you are, that’s a LOT.
Internal noise and chaos is an absolute indicator of internal work not yet done.
It’s time to do more System Work!
No one in your DID system has to be silenced or denied expression or refused freedom of speech — shoving and hiding all that deep deep inside is how so much of the inside noise was created in the first place. You probably weren’t allowed to express your feelings in your outward life, especially not in front of your perpetrators, so your system folks learned how to internalize all that inside your inside worlds. It has to be expressed somewhere, and maybe your inside world was the only option.
It could be years later, but your insiders are still expressing their very deep feelings, and their pain, and their fear, etc. What they are experiencing is very real for them, and while they may be caught in a different space and time, they are not crazy for having such strong reactions to what they experienced. They definitely need your help, and the help of your therapy team to find the safety and the freedom to have a life not centered around their abusive experiences.
Finding appropriate and healthy outward opportunities for emotional expression can help reduce or eliminate the constant internal expression. This is a long-term goal — it doesn’t happen quickly — but allow your insiders to gradually, and safely, express their feelings externally. The more they release it for real, the more it can be genuinely released.
And of course, as your insiders achieve more healing, they will be able to exist with more peace, quiet, and calm. As their pain, anguish, emotional distress is resolved, they can have a more gentle and softer experiences in life.
That internal noise level can definitely get quieter.
Increased Noise During Difficult Times
In times of heightened fear, anxiety, PTSD, trauma memories, etc, the intensity you feel inside — and the amount of noise and chaos you feel inside — can increase. You may look quieter on the outside, but feeling more noise and chaos on the inside.
When this happens, it’s time to do a combination of responses.
Do whatever you can to help calm the inside ones.
Also, do everything you can to create and confirm both inside and outside safety from harm.
Your insiders will need a lot of reassurance and a lot of extra help seeing the outside, external, here-and-now world. They will likely be stuck back in time, and feeling terrified of whatever they are remembering. Help them to see NOW, and HERE, and hopefully, both now and here are much safer places than what they are re-experiencing.
Listen to their stories, as you can, and try to understand why they are so scared and upset. You don’t have to hear details, and they don’t have to explain details. But the more you can at least understand the general ideas of what has happened for them, the more you will know how to help them.
Balance your listening with comfort, gentle caring, meeting their needs, and providing genuine safety.
Go away, Noise.
It’s not great to experience noise, noise torture, noise trauma. It gets horribly uncomfortable and debilitating. Noise is everywhere in the world, so the parts in your system who are Noise Sensitive need a lot of extra care and tenderness to cope. It’s not their fault, and their sensitivity to sound is a normal PTSD response to the trauma they experienced. Have compassion for these insiders. Their pain was extreme.
I do encourage you to do what you can to address the needs of those who are noisy inside.
I also encourage you to find ways to decrease the amount of external noise and chaos you have in your life.
As always, I wish you the very best in your healing and hearing journeys.
Warmly,
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2022 Kathy Broady MSW and Discussing Dissociation
Thank you for this thoughtful article. I found it ‘googling’ noise as a torture method.
Over 6 1/2 years ago, a person was moved into the apartment next to mine and on the very first day a small dog was left alone in a tiny (these are one room apartments with small bathrooms and kitchens) apartment directly next to me in the middle of several trash bags and boxes and he barked for over 9 hours straight until someone came for him.
I will spare all the background details even though they apply to the situation. It has been nearly daily dog chaos for all these years, also the person themselves bellowing all over the place and then a couple years ago they put an aviary in an apartment that already is overflowing with trash and no space for the dog/s….and put in cockatiels.
I had a roommate years ago who had 4 cockatiels. I have never in my life heard this sound. They scream like you can’t believe. I am not joking when I say I am going insane. The landlord issues I’ll skip, but if this doesn’t stop I absolutely will lose what’s left of my mind. I have PTSD (complex, not the PTSD from accident or assault, etc.), I have derealization / depersonalization. I have anxiety. I have depression. I have a variety of physical health symptoms that are getting worse. There is no way to describe this situation that will give it the reality of what it’s like to live like this.
Other people (one time upstairs, now there is a woman in her 70’s who can’t hear the birds, but is afraid to complain about the dog/s…and 2 times households on the other side of this person) moved out. I can’t afford to. It is a nightmare. It has changed who I am as a person.
Thank you again for taking time to thoughtfully write about the problem of noise causing this type of damage.
Oh my gosh Brandi but that sounds awful. I take it that moving is not an option and you are getting no help from your landlord. You really are between a rock and a hard place. Maybe ear plugs and/or ear buds with music or even just background sounds of nature or something like that would help? I know that you cannot spend the whole day like that but it could offer a few hours rest from the noise. Maybe try and get out of the apartment for parts of the day too. Just anything that removes the constancy of the noise is what I am thinking. Oh, and practicing your grounding techniques. For me, meditation grounds me and takes me away from outside distractions … even noise.
Best of luck with this!
ME+WE
11/13/21
I’m so sorry for what you are going through with loud neighbors. I can relate. I am currently having a mental breakdown because of the noise trauma I’ve experienced in the past and now we are faced with it again. I used to live in a horrible neighborhood where ppl would play their stereos with the high thumping bass all day and all night. And then a business moved close by and their machinery was so loud we would hear a high pitch siren type sound all day and all evening that blasted thru our house. It didn’t matter if the windows were closed. We still heard it, along with the ppl blasting their music. My daughter is pretty mellow and even she started having her personality change because of it. She got so upset that she said she wanted to break things. And she doesn’t have a violent bone in her body. I had a nervous breakdown at one point and I had to spend every evening, when my husband was at work, at my mom’s house because I couldn’t be alone. We finally got out of that after 17 years and now we just bought a house in what appeared to be a quiet, nice neighborhood and we were working on the house last Sunday and someone did the same thing, played their rap music with the heavy bass all day and all evening til we left. Then we went back to work on it a couple days later and the same thing, music being played loudly. I’ve been a mess ever since. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I am crying all the time. I’m scared to move in there. I can’t handle living like we did before. Buying this house was a huge mistake. We thought we did our homework but it looks like we just screwed ourselves again. I’ve been begging my husband to just sell the house, I can’t live like this again but it would ruin us financially. He wants us to wait 2 years, but this noise trauma paralyzes me. I can’t function, I can’t eat, all I can do is cry and sleep. I’m usually a very balanced, logical person, but noise that doesn’t stop, even when its not that loud but I can’t get way from it, does something to me. I can’t control my emotions and I turn into a mess. I just want a quiet place to live but that luxury seems to only be afforded to the rich. I just wish we could all be considerate, so we could all live in peace.
Noise hurts my ears so bad. All of us. It makes us shut down. All day at school its even noisier because of almost 30 kids in the classroom. So all day we are overwhelmed. And now we also have inside tornados being so loud all the time. One of the boys is trying to make a sound proof room. We cant get away from the tornados the past couple weeks. People talking hurts our ears too. We feel like we been in a deafening environment for too long. Outside we wear noise canceling headphones while that man watches tv. On the inside i wear them all the time. Theyre just not drowning out the roar of the tornados. But the headphones help outside some. Its painful in our ears.
This has literally destroyed me inside and out. It never stops, never. It has made me homeless, demoralized, degraded, and left for dead one time. It still happens every day – I can’t escape. There is no way out. No one cares, helps – and esp, no one hires.
I hear you Jack. This is such a difficult part of DID. You cannot put in ear plugs to stop the internal noise (I am assuming that this is what you are talking about here Jack and apologize if I have read this wrong).
This may sound odd but … listening to my inside folks is how I stopped the noise. Now, I know that that sounds crazy (and I felt that I was being driven crazy by all of the internal chatter) but getting to know my insiders and their needs opened the door on mutual understanding and cooperation. I found out that a lot of the internal chatter was about them expressing their needs or feeling neglected in some way. So, addressing those needs helped to alleviate some of the noise.
As I began to understand who they were and what roles they played in the system, I was able to build communication and cooperation with them. So, for example, one of my little ones is ALWAYS chattering in my head. I now get to negotiate with her some quiet time in return for something that she wants to do.
I am not sure if any of this makes sense or feels doable to you Jack. When you are in the middle of the chaos it is really hard to see a way through it. I am just hoping that you find that way.
Now, I am not knowing what your situation is but Kathy and Laura both do consultations (link at the top of the web page). If you could manage it, I am thinking that they would be able to speak more directly and pointedly to your needs and working relationship with your insiders. They are both extremely knowledgable about this stuff and have a lot of insight, wisdom and tools to offer.
Just my thoughts Jack. Please know that we are all listening here.
ME+WE
10/25/21
Hi kathy its Willow i used to have our very own special Willow tree i would sit under it and read the branches made like a tent all around us so i could hide from our mean brother i had picnics under our tree we could cry and nobody saw us not even mommy and our brother called us a baby when he saw us crying and run to tell mommy we were crying and she came out and made us go to our room until we “settled down” made us feel worse like we were bad. the most awful terrible horrible thing happened next i came home from school and there were big scary men with CHAINSAWS in our backyard cutting down my tree!!!!!!!!! screamed cried wanted them to stop but they wouldn’t and mommy stopped me from letting the big branch from squashing us we wanted to die too so we could be with our tree forever and our brother laughed at us for crying and being upset we went to our room to hide away from but we heard the chainsaws anyway and heard every thump when they kept chopping it down we hate that noise it is a mean bad sound that hurts your tree we hate it
My Favorite Quiet is when it snows. The whole world gently takes a ‘hush’. Things slow down. All is quiet. And if I get my head space quieted at the same time – it is bliss.
Thx Kathy. That was a great blog!
Hi, Jessie. Sounds sucky. When parts want our attention, they ring our ears. We call it ringing the doorbell. Ear doctor said ours is not tinnitus. We checked ear doctor before we knew we had PTSD and DID. Went in 1995 and again like 2012.
I’ve heard brain can train to get used to tinnitus maybe? Sorry that is happening to your body. 11/8/18
T.Clark
My sound Is a high pitch . I hope I get use to it soon. It is driven me
Bonkers the war doctor said that with time
It will not feel as loud. Cause I will get use to it. Then other days I will want to cut my ears off like
I do now.
I went to the ear doctor today. Because I’ve been having hissing and arguing and ringing in my ears. First I have a hearing test.The earing was fine Well mostly fine then the gave me the bone part of the hearing test that’ part was not fine . I have Tinnitus. Nobody complained about all this noise just me . It s not fair. I just want to cut my ears off. The doctor said if I increase the noise out the head to let it n my ears, then it will not be as bad. I told him sometime it’s so bad even if lots Of noice s going in my ears. I like this doctor he told me even though noice in the outside is happening The sounds are not
Less on the inside . He said It still can be very stressful. He was a very nice doctor. Because the first think I told him was my therapist said it might not be real. That it could be stress. He said the ear bone vibrations test says otherwise. Am only 10 why do I get a old people ears? And it just no one ear it’s both Lori should get her old people problem not me dose anyone else have this problem and only one has it not all. This happen with other stuff to . I just want it all to stop I want to cut my ears off
EVERYDAY AND NIGHT! OMG! Every night it’s a challenge to find a quiet place to park… I’m talking on a spectrum, because when you’re around semis, there is no quiet place. Does anyone here know what it’s like to have one (or many) semi truck engine(s) running outside their bedroom window, all night long? I have it every night. When I look for parking at night, it is always a challenge. I look to park in the opposite direction, when I can, so that my truck is between two trailers. I try to stay away from trailers with refrigerated units (Refers). They are ungodly noisy! Arggh! The WhisperJets are better than the older refer units, but they’re still excessively noisy. Older trucks like 1996 Peterbilts are just as noisy. Sometimes both are worse, if they also vibrate the ground– including mt truck and the pillow under my head. I like it when I run into lots of truckers who feel the same way I do. So many of us try to find quiet spots, or the lesser of the evil. I always carry a set of earplugs in my pocket. I also wear earplugs at night.
Today I walked into a truck stop/gas station. There were the overhead speakers playing loud music, too loud (makes people spend more money, I hear). A machine was making lots of noise calling people over to put their money in, and take a shot at winning a prize. Another machine/game was doing the same thing, getting people’s attention with repeating, fun/happy/fair-like music. All three going on at the same time, were making me crazy! I could hardly stand it while I waited to pay for my food. I put my ear plugs in!
We have so much to say about this topic, it’s overwhelming atm. Maybe we’ll come back to it. Great topic, Kathy!
Naturluvr
10/23/18
Nuturlur
I will be making a trip to Wytheville or one of those small town on 81 in va this weekend. Can you recommend anything to do in that stretch of road. I’m taking the perpetrator “father” should meet up with a pedophile brother this weekend. The good news is I’m meeting up with my friend from South Carolina. So we agreed to meet Or 81 and 77 come together. I will hang with my best friend Friday night all day Saturday before I come back to New England. Most the time when I make the trip to Tennessee to drop them off.
So if you have any recommendations are greatly appreciate it. And as I travel I will be thinking of you from the road questioning every truck I drive by if that’s you I will keep my mind focused on other things and I having an asshole sitting next to me for 12 hours.
Hello All,
Trying to jump back into discussions here. Fascinating subject and article Kathy. Once more, thank you for sharing of yourself so that we may learn about ourselves.
I have had two different reactions with regard to sound (or lack of) in my life journey. I have dealt with tinnitus as long as I can remember. The first time that I really recall the tinnitus was waiting for a taxi to take me to my T’s office some 37 years ago. I thought that the noise was so loud that there was no way that I would be able to hear what my T would have to say. Since tinnitus is a brain thing (i.e., not a physical problem with the ear), I am wondering what the connection is between trauma and tinnitus.
Yes, I do hear voices all of the time in my head. Most often it is like I am in one room and I hear talking, arguing, crying etc. in the room beside me. I cannot make out exactly what is being said but I know by the tone of the voices if it is angry, sad, fun, etc. talk. My one little one talks to me plainly ALL of the time. I have to ask her for “time outs” for some quiet time. The first insider I am aware of (in the sense of feeling like someone was living inside of me) was when I was 20 years old and being raped by an abuser. She screamed to loudly and kept saying “why is he killing me?” I did not know what to make of it other than I felt like I was holding her afterwards and that she was dying. Then I lost all memory of the incident for six years.
As to trauma and noise abuse, well … this may sound a bit strange but the answer is yes in a weird way. My grandmother would come and live with us for significant portions of the year when I was growing up. This grandmother did not like children (and did not hide the fact), had a part to play in my sexual abuse as a younger child and caused havoc with my parent’s marriage. There would be a lot of angry fights at night. I felt responsible for soothing my father who told me everything including that my grandmother was to blame. So, when she came to stay with us she brought flashbacks/triggers, anger, fears of abandonment and a whole lot of turmoil.
Now, I always had a very hard time getting to sleep … usually a two hour or so process. I shared my room/bed with my grandmother and she snored. I am not talking gentle heavy breathing here … I am talking sonic snoring that shook the house. So, getting to sleep before she came to bed was a priority. But, she also had a zillion paper bags lining the closet floor where she kept all of her things. Her habit seemed to be to wait until I got in bed and then come in and rummage all through the bags making it impossible for me to get to sleep. And then that meant that she would come to bed, the snoring would start, and I did not get to sleep all night long. I was sleep-deprived and had a real, deep-seated feeling that she was trying to destroy our family and kill me. Childish yes but it was my sleep-deprived reality.
Now, about six years ago, I participated in a weeklong program to deal with my dyslexia. What I did not recognize at the time was that it was hugely triggering for my insiders (because I did not know about my insiders). The night of day two in the program, I had a massive panic attack. I had found that I could not hear. We were at the cottage and the quiet and feeling like I was going deaf scared the life out of me. My panic attack lasted about two hours in its most extreme intensity. I finally calmed down enough for my husband to go to bed and for me to lay there listening to him breath. Now I was thankful for snoring! For about eight months, I had nightly panic attacks about three to four times a week where I would have to sit up in the living room and put the TV on really low so I could hear noise and fall asleep. My ears were raw from my trying to clean them out and sticking my fingers in them to try and open them up. I needed noise to keep me grounded. The loud ticking of the antique clock in our bedroom became my best friend and the only thing that would keep me from flying into a panic attack. If the clock wound down, I would wake my husband up in the middle of the night to rewind it and get it going again. I still do sometimes.
So, noise has been a life condition (as in the noises in my head), my enemy (something that brought fear and disruption to my life) and my best friend (the one thing that kept me grounded).
ME+WE
10/13/18
ME+WE,
Wow, I am learning so much about trauma from this article. I’m sorry you endure tinnitus. I do not, but I do have trouble with noises. Even now, my mother is yelling at my dad because he can’t hear and has Alzheimer’s and it’s very triggering. I just want it to stop. I’m sure you’ve endured similar things.
When you say you have noises in your head, do they bother you? Or are they peaceful and soothing? My inside noises vary from being not that bad to being so triggering I can barely see straight. I was just wondering if you knew how to get things to quiet down inside. But I’m sure it’s all part of learning to communicate with your insiders, as always!
Anyway, I’m glad you jumped back in to the conversation. You are a bright light in our DD community.
MultipleMe
10/14/18
Hi MultipleMe,
Thank you for your kind welcome back. It feels like I have been away for some time – mentally that is. When I am in crisis, I tend to go off by myself and hibernate. In part it is to deal with all of the chaos happening in my head. I cannot take any additional outside stimulus. In hindsight, that is actually probably not a good thing because others (especially you folks here at DD) help me to ground myself and be present in the here and now.
When you think about it, we have all been trained to hibernate with our hurt, with our truth. We were never given the opportunity to voice what was happening let alone work through the emotions of our abuse. We were alone and silenced. All we had was ourselves and our insiders. So, when we are triggered or going through a bad space, we crawl into ourselves once more feeling that that is the only safe place to be … the only place that we are allowed to have our pain and emotions.
Silence. Hum … it truly is a my friend and my madness. I have a lot of chatter in my head all of the time. I am aware that a whole life is going on in my head that I am not an intimate part of (unless one of my insiders chooses to talk to me or I try to talk with them). The chatter has always been there so I guess that I am just used to it. But, it is what makes me hypersensitive to any other noise going on around me. Outside noise is overload to my system. So, I crave silence.
But, I never truly have silence because of all of the insider chatter taking place in my head. I have to think that there is so much inside chatter because I was silenced on the outside. Learning to find my voice and to let my insiders speak their truths is the ultimate path to silence. Finding my voice, speaking my heart stories invites the silence in because it breaths out the toxic chaos of abuse. The more my insiders are heard and accepted, the more quiet times follow.
I am not sure that this makes any sense at all but I sure hope so!
ME+WE
10/15/18
This is interesting to me. I was certainly programmed/mind controlled mostly so that the various people abusing me had greater control over their “little habit” so to speak. My uncle was a fireman and had a cb-radio that was used to let the firemen know when there was a call and what kind of call it was. However, the sounds they used were very much like the sound a fax machine makes when you send a fax through or also like the old dial up modems for internet. This sound would play every time I had an overnight at my uncles house and became a control for switching to a programmed personality. I don’t know how many other people have this experience or why I am able to remember a portion of it from childhood but I am certain this really happened and was used to control my parts. It always played as a sort of alarm clock for bedtime. When I was a teenager, a boy who’s dad worked with my uncle, obtained the recording they used to control me – and began to control me with it. That is the reason I never answer the phone if it is not someone I trust! Flashing lights were also used. Light/color/sound in various intensities and patterns are used to modify the way the brain responds to stimuli.
Anyway – I never thought about how this affects my mind other than being a trigger for programmed control. Something very different about me (as far as I can tell anyway) is that I have a very quiet mind. It is only when I am feeling less stressed that I can hear or maybe pay attention to other parts inside. The greater my insecurity is, the more shut down I become internally. My house tends to be very loud though. It can be very overwhelming when my kids direct their attention towards me all at the same time and very loudly – especially when there is usually every other sound making device playing at the same time!! I can ignore sound that is not intended for me. Now that I read this article and am commenting on it, my daughter is tapping at the door and is agitating me. Usually, I deal with noise intensity by stepping outside, or going into the bathroom and locking the door and covering my ears in a desperate attempt to comfort myself.
Thank you for this article it gives me another avenue to direct my healing!!
Angela,
It is so interesting and infuriating at the same time, isn’t it!? How they come up with this stuff, I’ll never know. I don’t even care to know the why necessarily because I don’t know if I want to. I just want to know how they knew this would hurt us.
Noise pollution can hinder us in so many ways. There are still noises that key me up to this day that make me uncomfortable, to put lightly. My system shuts down too, when I’m triggered. Unless it’s a body memory, then we go all chaotic.
Anyway, just wanted you to know I read your post and hope this helps you further in your journey like it has me!
Nice to meet you!
MultipleMe
10/14/18
Yes, Kathy, that sounds like a tough day! I’d suggest to the tree trimmer that their clients notify their neighbors ahead of time, so that people can plan to be away for errands or whatever.
In that situation, I would tend to forget my work for the day and, if I couldn’t leave, I’d put on movies – adding to the noise, but at least it would be noise I chose. And call the dogs for a movie and brushing time.
I have this being done to me. Pulsating pure tones that go louder sometimes at night to where I can’t sleep in my own bedroom. They will go on and off sometimes or when in my car they can be heard on and off, louder or softer. No one else hears them and because I can drive away from the sound at times, it is not tinnitus.
I have people who are hurting me and I am afraid to talk about what we experience. I am scared they will use it in programming. I don’t know when or how these people came into my life. My boyfriend is involved but I am scared to leave.
I know people who have gotten out. my niece had marks on her for a month at least and my sister in law was shaking for at least six months, but they got out and are still alive, too! I know that you are scared, I feel for you, I really hope that Kathy or somebody safe is getting in contact with you.
Hello This,
I just want to support what Angela has said here … you do not have to stay in an unsafe place or relationship. Finding safety is very important. And, you can talk about what is happening to safe people. Is there a woman’s shelter in your area? That would be a great place to start if the abuse is happening now. I also hope that you have or can find a therapist to help you navigate through your trauma. This is not something that you can do alone. Keep talking here too. You are not alone here.
BTW – thank you for telling us some of your story Angela. There is such wisdom and tenacity in your journey. Thank you for sharing with us.
ME+WE
10/14/18
This,
I echo what’s been said by Angela and ME+WE. There is a better way and hope, but it’s very difficult to do it alone. Healing can happen, but support is needed too. Please think hard about how you can reach out to a safe person for help. Don’t give up. You deserve safety and peace.
Please keep writing here if you feel safe.
MultipleMe
10/14/18
I don’t know about Noise Torture, so to speak. I don’t believe it was part of the abuse, anyway, other than people scolding us and sometimes yelling at us. But I do have severe sound sensitivity. Somehow my TMJ(D) affects how certain sounds reach my ears, and the result is that certain frequencies are quite painful. (Thank goodness my ears are older and I can no longer hear the almost ultrasonic whine of fluorescent lights!) When people (that I call Deadheads) drive through the neighborhood with their music thumping so loudly that I can hear it from a mile or more away pass my house, the littles in turn start freaking out–so that adds more noise to the middle of my head, because they are now crying from pain and terror.
When I attend church, I can stand the organ for prelude music only; for hymn singing it is so loud that I literally attend church by sitting in the foyer, which makes it feel like I’m being partially ostracized by the congregation (I know I’m not, but when I can’t sit with them, it feels a little like that). When asked by others why I sit outside, I ask them if they know what it’s like to be with loud Deadhead-type music blaring in their living room, and then tell them that this is what it is like for me to be in the chapel with the organ playing.
In the USA, we have this Emergency Alert system that sometimes comes over the TV or radio. Mostly, it is the broadcasting people testing their equipment to ensure that it is working properly. But whomever chose the sound to use chose one that is so grating that some day there will be a real emergency, and I will never know about it–because my automatic reaction to that specific noise is to change the channel, turn off the device, or at the very least, mute the sound. Hearing even one second’s worth of it drives me INSANE!
A couple of years ago, I attended a kite flying event with a friend and was accosted by blaring music. My littles freaked out to the point that they came out, and to my chagrin, a total stranger noticed. Fortunately, she thought I was ill and wanted to know whether I needed water and should she call for medical help for me? Also fortunately, my best friend who knows of my DID offered me some earplugs and assured the lady that she would take care of me, that I would be fine in a few minutes.
I’m a children’s librarian (I LOVE working with the children) but when there is a little one who suddenly gives a piercing scream for whatever reason, I literally jump, followed by covering my ears and cowering for a second or two before I can recover myself. The first time it happened, I automatically shushed the child in question before realizing it was a young toddler. Once I realized what had happened, I watched the toddler wander around the children’s section with her mother. I was watching with a bemused look, totally entertained by her antics, but watching because my littles needed to know that the shrieks were coming from a HAPPY child, NOT one in pain. Unfortunately, another adult patron took the fact that I had first shushed the child and was now watching her as proof that I was intolerant of children. She told me off and then went to my supervisor to complain.
Barking dogs also bother me (and all my neighbors own yappy dogs who go off every time I sneeze inside my house and then keep barking for hours on end). So does the TV. I seldom have it on unless my husband is home. I will listen to music and audio-books for company. I prefer audio books to TV because then I can choose to imagine the scenery without all the Hollywood explosions and screams and loud music that they use to hype up the tension.
When I first learned that I have DID, it was because one of my youngest alters started screaming in terror non-stop for weeks on end because her older sister kept showing all of us what happened in a particularly traumatic abuse event. Fortunately, most of my headmates are quiet like me; we prefer to communicate visually and/or telepathically with each other… and most of us like quiet music and the quiet sounds of nature.
So… we’ve learned to keep things quiet (most of the time). We’ve learned to carry ear-plugs. And we’ve learned to avoid situations that trigger (like going to Food 4 Less with their florescent lights and the constant beeping of backing up fork-lifts). We are all musicians, so we do enjoy noise to a certain extent–but catlike, we enjoy it at our own pace and in the way that we like.
Caro
10/11/2018
PS. Kathy, we are glad your noisy day came to an end, and we are sorry your day got ruined. Noise is a very difficult thing to endure!
Our noise in the ears and head NEVER stops! It is constant torture we can’t stop! For more than 20 years now we have constant loud, loud, high-pitched, screeching, shrieking sound in our ears and head. It started in left ear and now in both ears. We can’t never get away from it, even for a minute. It makes it really, really hard to concentrate on anything, and almost impossible to sleep unless the outside lady takes a sleeping pill. Sometimes it’s so bad it causes real physical pain in our ears and head.
Used to be just our outside lady heard it but since we have gotten more conscious of each other, now we all hear it all the time. It’s horrible! It really is torture!
Doctors call it tinnitus and say they can’t find a cause for it and there’s no cure for it and nothing can be done about it and learn to live with it. But how does someone learn to live with constant shrill shrieking noises? Our outside lady has tried every so-called “treatment” she has learned about and spent thousands of dollars over the years trying to get relief from it, but nothing has helped.
Lots of times the noise is so physically and mentally painful that we sit and hold our head and cry and beg God to either make the noise stop or to let us die! But it never stops! 😭
From Nicole (one of the teens with MyCircleOfLife) 10/11/18
I’m so sorry to hear you have to deal with tinnitus, too…
First off, I just wanted you to know you’re not alone, I’ve had the same struggle, to varying degrees, for the last decade or so, and it really IS super hard to deal with! It seems like I finally got to a point where my internal space was more quiet and peaceful, and then the tinnitus overwhelms all of us!
(also, just curious, but do all of your parts, aka alters, have the tinnitus, or is it all of you? It sounds like, if I read correctly, that maybe it wasn’t everyone at first, but you’re better connected with each other now, so now it’s everyone? I guess I wonder because for me, sometimes I have trouble knowing if a pain or sensation etc is physical or emotional, so if I check in with different parts of my selves, usually if everyone is experiencing it the same, I try to treat it as a physical problem, vs if one of us is having lots of pain somewhere and the others aren’t as much, I try to do self care and tend to the part that’s hurting and tell them they are safe and stuff… Point being, my tinnitus seems to happen to all of us, pretty much with equal intensity, which I think is what you are saying… Mostly just curious, you don’t have to share if you don’t want to. My old therapist before I moved who helped me most would say that it’s good to try and treat things spiritually (if and however that feels safe to you), emotionally, and physically, so hopefully one of the things helps).
I’m not trying to give any medical advice or anything, but I thought I might share some of my experience with what has helped me, in case any of it might be something you might want to look into, but I definately don’t pretend to have any answers, just… Idk, I know it’s really hard so if something that helped me might help you, I figure I could at least share my experiences?
For when you’re having it, and it feels really overwhelming, it helps to kinda play mental games to help myself feel I have some greater control over it… I know that sounds silly, but humans experience greater levels of stress when they feel they have no control vs when they feel they have some control, they feel less stress.
That’s not to dismiss that it most likely isn’t something you can just will away… Or that it’s any less obnoxious, invasive, and just… Feels intolerable after awhile. I think the inability to make it stop is why it gets so much MORE upsetting, cause you can’t just run away or cover your ears etc… It’s scary BECAUSE there’s no “off” switch.
There are ways to feel greater control over it, though, like for me I try and figure out what note/pitch it is… I was in band for years and I’m definately not pitch perfect, but it’s… Well, you’ve got all the time you want to try and figure out what note it sounds like… Or think through (or listen to?) music and songs you know, and try to see if you can hear that pitch in the song.
You can also try to hum the pitch to yourself and try to practice getting it to be the same sounding note as what’s in your head. (harder if you get a couple at a time… Luckily I seem to be the minority in that, and I don’t usually have more than one ringing in my head)
I’ve tried to get the note to change, but I don’t seem to have control of what note it gets stuck on.
I’ll try to make up songs that have the same note in them, so it’s like a background music type thing instead of just… I guess a nerve in my ear or brain or something doing that constant incessant pitch…
Sometimes just reminding myself that it’s real to me, but that I’m safe, and it’s just a mechanical issue somewhere in my ear or something, helps me to feel like it’s less of a “threat” to me.
Maybe these are all really stupid ideas, idk, but maybe it gives you idea on how to make it into a game of sorts, in order to feel greater control over it.
There’s a few things that might be worth trying (if you haven’t) to help get it to give you a break at least, idk if anyone cares or if any of it would help anyone else, but I’ll write a bit in another reply just in case it might help.
Hang in there, I hope things improve!
-Emma
Hi Emma,
Thank you for the ideas of some ways to try to deal with the tinnitus screeching noises. I will try some of them. Our outside lady, “Reba”, just got a CD of guided imagery for tinnitus from an online place called “Health Journeys”. It just came in the mail today so she said we could start trying it out tonight.
When we were more separate from each other, Reba was the only one who heard the noises. The rest of us didn’t experience a lot of the physical stuff she did because somehow it wasn’t there when we came out to use the body. But now that most of the barriers between us are gone, we all experience whatever is happening with the body.
Like in 2002, when the Reba was in a bad car wreck and the body had a lot of injuries, only Reba felt the bad pain. When one of us others came out in the body, we knew about the injuries and could see the external ones, but we didn’t feel all the pain like Reba did. (I don’t know how that worked, but it did.)
But now when the body is sick or hurt, all of us have to deal with it when we come out into the body. Like last year, the body got an abscess on the appendix that grew and caused a lot of pain for a like 6 months, but didn’t show up on the x-rays and CT scans. All of us had the bad pain and fevers and felt sick whenever we used the body. (The doctors kept telling Reba that it was all in her head because we were not having “typical” symptoms of appendicitis. Finally, last December, the Nurse Practitioner who we go to sent Reba to the surgeon that the NP’s family goes to, and he did a laparoscope. Sure enough, it was the appendix! He took it out, and in just a few days we didn’t have any pain anymore.)
There are still some things in the body that we don’t all have the same experience. Like most of us still don’t have the same eye sight, and Reba’s glasses (bifocals) are too strong for us and give us headaches. Some of the little kids don’t need glasses at all; but most of us from age 9 and older do need glasses, just not all the same strength. Reba can’t afford to get different glasses foreach of us, so we have to make do with the ones we have.
I don’t know if other people with DID like us have different physical things like this or not. I read somewhere that most people with DID have parts with different physical and medical conditions that not all of the other parts have. Doctors don’t know how this happens, just that it does.
From Nicole
In case you’re curious what helps me physically with the tinnitus (sorry, I feel like I’m being annoying, and I know I always write way too much so no one has to read this I promise, and I’m not giving any medical advice, just sharing my experiences so please don’t take it as anything other than my experiences and what’s helped me some).
I have a friend who does cranial sacral massage, and that’s the TOP THING that helps the ringing go away, and it helps my body feel so much better in so many ways, and idk, it’s a very gentle touch and you stay clothed and everything… I’ve tried lots of other types of massage and they never helped even a tiny bit as much as cranial sacral… So I’m really thankful for that. So thankful. It’s helped me heal in emotional ways, too, it’s like… I feel like it’s been really so so so beneficial for me in lots of ways, and definately helps my headaches and tinnitus and just… It gets my nervous system to kinda remember/learn how to feel safe, in a way I didn’t even know I was missing. I’m lucky to have a friend who is really well qualified and she says massage is a luxury for most people but for me it’s a need, so she is really kind and charges me way less than regular.
CBD oil (full spectrum, the kind that’s ONLY CBD doesn’t seem to help me much) seems to help when nothing else does, I only recently discovered trying it though so idk overall. (I haven’t been able to have massage in a couple months for… Various reasons… So my problems that would otherwise resolve from that haven’t, so I’m glad I tried CBD cause it helped a lot, for me anyways)
I’ve had it for lots of years, it used to come and go, but then it just stopped passing for a really long time, doctors said it was part of migraines, and for over 2 years I had a migraine that didn’t go away (I’m not exaggerating, either, even the er couldn’t make it stop, just it would be not as bad sometimes as other times, I figured it must go away sometimes, too, and that I just didn’t notice, but when I finally, out of PURE despairation, because it WAS 24/7 migraine and tinnitus and I would pass out from the pain and vomit several times a day and somehow still managed to work back then, haha… But I stopped eating gluten, it took about 2 months gluten free till it got out of my system and I suddenly realized my head had gradually gotten better and I still got migraines and tinnitus but not CONSTANTLY, and my joint pain and lots of other stuff got less painful, so now I still look at stuff with gluten and miss it and dream about it sometimes haha, but I couldn’t bring myself to willingly eat it ever again, I’m so glad I figured that out… And eventually got my whole system on board with it, haha… It was tough cause I was just learning back then about communication with my insiders, and I’ve never had any food allergies/sensitivities before, though I HAVE had to go through not having food as punishment… Not sure what I was being punished for, but yeah, it was emotionally hard to not be able to just eat anything, and I’m really off topic, sorry about that)… I know “gluten free” is kinda a term that’s sort of a “fad” type thing, and it’s definately a drag and harder to find cheap ways to afford food, but I just figure it’s worth sharing with others, because gluten can cause a lot of inflammation throughout the body and even cause neurological problems, and not one of soooo many doctors ever suggested it, so it might be worth looking into if you’re having… A whole huge range of unexplained medical things can improve – there’s plenty of info about it so I’ll stop rambling, there IS a simple blood test you can ask your doctor to do that tests for certain antibodies being present in your blood, or something like that, if you ask about being tested for “celiac”… Celiac is an autoimmune disorder where when you have gluten in your body, your immune system attacks its own cells and causes inflammation and a bunch of other stuff.
I didn’t know about the test until I had stopped eating gluten, and apparently for the test to work, you have to be eating gluten, and for me I KNOW it causes neurological issues, and so much pain and tinnitus goes so loud and then I’ll even suddenly lose my hearing and/or vision for a few seconds if I’ve accidentally had some gluten, so it seems ridiculous to basically poison myself just to get a goofy test… But if you’re eating gotten, it’s worth at least getting the blood test (I know that can be scary for some people, it used to scare me lots but I got used to it much better now)… Sorry cause I still rambled a lot, but also if you get desperate even if the blood test doesn’t say you have celiac, your body might still be sensitive so trying it (for at least a month… I tried a couple times giving up gluten for a couple weeks and there was no difference, apparently it takes awhile to clear your system)…
Idk if any of this is helpful, just wanted to encourage you not to give up on feeling better, it sounds like you’re doing all the right things searching for answers, I get disheartened sometimes to realize how rare it is to come across a doctor that seems aware and willing to keep supporting their patients in a quest for better health, which doesn’t mean not to keep trying to work with doctors, just also trust your body and if you feel like something is wrong, don’t give up just because you’ve seen whatever doctors you’re told to see and all of their tests come back “normal”… It’s great that we live in a time with so much information avalible to us through the internet, so we can do our own research, too, and hopefully you have at least one doctor who will be supportive and treat you respectfully and appriciate your learning more about your condition – they DO exist, just can be a long journey to find one, unfortunately, but I’m glad they exist 🙂
I really hope you find something that helps either get rid of the tinnitus and /or make it feel more tolerable.
Sorry if none of this was helpful, idk why I use too many words and I just… Yeah. Maybe something gives someone an idea, but always check with doctor and all that jazz, I’m not a doctor, I’m just a rando on the interwebs.
Feel better soon!
Hi Nicole (and MyCircleOfLife Folks),
Tinnitus is a really bugger to deal with. I have had it most of my adult life. The things that set it off for me are my allergies, lack of sleep and stress. It is really like being a gerbil on the exercise wheel, the more I concentrate on my tinnitus the more stressed I get and the more my ears go crazy ringing louder and louder!!!
A friend of mine with the same condition went to a clinic that specializes in tinnitus. The radical treatment was hearing aids that put out white noise in your ears continually for two years. She did not do that. The second idea was to use white noise at night to sleep. So, she bought nature tapes with waves and rain and that kind of sound to help her sleep.
When my tinnitus gets bad, I try and distract myself with other activities because the more that I think about the ringing, the worse it gets. I also meditate to try and calm my system and “think past” the ringing. That works well for me but it took a lot of time and practice at first to get there. My meditation teacher has a condition that causes continual ice pick headaches. He keeps himself in a semi-meditative state to survive the pain. I have not gotten there yet. But, I find that the more that I do not “attach” to the ringing, the less impact that it has on my daily life.
Interesting question Emma. I am not sure if all of my insiders have tinnitus or not. I suspect not but I will check that out. I do have different medical problems with each one and definitely eyesight is a big one. I have been having eye issues (a glaucoma pre-condition that I inherited from my dad). That has meant a lot of specialists, laser surgery (that I have to do again in November … argh!) and testing my eyesight. The problem is that my different insiders have different vision capabilities. And, many of them are triggered by doctors (part of my trauma past) so, I struggle to keep everyone calm and in their safe place so that I can do the eye exam. Two weeks ago, I had a new round of testing and darn it if I could not read the chart. Then my one insider came out and wow I could read everything but he skipped out on me and I was back to struggling.
ME+WE
10/14/18
Thank you very much for this article. I am trying so hard to help those littlest littles who are stuck crying and alone but cannot reach them yet cause of the shocks. I don’t know where the shocks come from but might have an idea of which part is doing that. I will keep trying and talking to my therapist and hope it gets better soon. Thank you for all you do to help people.
crowded inside
Yup i hear ya on every single point in this and especially your day being ruined.
We are stuck living 2 hrs from anywhere but on a highway in a town with 4 lanes of traffic a stop sign right outside out bedroom and, a massive speed hump outside the other bedroom and SIX peak hours a day. Not even kidding. SIX. Then there’s a primary school which gets mowed once a week and blowered clean with a petrol blower every single morning at 7am.
And of course, being out in the bush, these aren’t just normal cars going over the speed hump at 3am, they’re turbo diesels and trucks. And because they’ve got the clearance, they fly over the speed hump and all their tools come crashing down into their steel trays. It sounds like lightning crashing right outside your door. Add to that the neighbours dogs barking from 6am till 6pm when they get home and them giving 0 cares about it doing so or who it’s keeping awake in a shift working town… We fixed that tho, haha got an ultrasonic bark device and he’s learned barking = a noise you don’t like!
But i get it. It literally never ends here.
I have actually had to start wearing my sound deadening headphones and hubbys industrial ear muffs over the top to be able to get some peace and quiet.
We would love to move but we have no other alternative but to live here, cos our other options are us not seeing hubby for 8 months of the year. And never more than 3 days at a time when he is home, and that’s just not a marriage…
So yeah, *sigh* I totally get how destructive and grating noise can be. I’m glad it was only 7 hrs for you though Kathy. And that yours and everyone else’s homes are safe from the tree. It is coming up to storm season now, so the owner did right in getting it done sooner rather than later.
As for system noise, i get REALLY uneasy when our systems go quiet. If they go totally quiet i generally function for about 2 days before i just have a breakdown cos i’m all alone and i hate it HAHAHA. Its crazy how you get so used to certain noises (eg little’s playing and doing crafts and bigs taking care of them, and even teenagers making smart, usually dirty remarks and narrating your life haha)
There are some days i can’t stand noise and others i’m totally fine with it. You have some good ideas in here that i will definitely try next time i’m close to the edge of screaming at cars publicly LOL. Thanks for this post, i’m also really glad to know i’m not the only one with this noise sensitivity. I did some research on it many yrs ago and learned its a major trigger for PTSD and I’ve gotta say boy are they right! Sensory overload is not enjoyable. But here we have some good new ideas to try so thanks again for that i really appreciate it. Have a good peaceful day!
Sometime when I have a lot of noisemakers in my head (disagreeing parts ) the external noise gets to be to much. Nothing is worse then adding to it ,from the outside. It doesn’t happen to often but when it does ; it feels like the only way to get it stop is, cutting of the ears. Fortunately Nobody ever tried to do that. It’s been close a few time , but Medicating helps Journaling as sometimes helped it gives everyone a chance to talk.
i wer hedfons
i wer erplugs
and most uv the tim nowon tok to us at hom
and the tv off
the onle sond we like be rain and thundr and are tokr lady her voys. and when babys laff
I’m really sorry that happened Kathy. it sounds like torture. and you love your peace and quiet so much, I bet it was a very very long day.
we have a lot of issues with noise. Inside its very loud all the time, kids yelling/crying/talking.
Outside our environment is loud at work for 8 hours a day.
At night when we get home the tv is off or the sound is very low.
radio is always very low.
we also keep earplugs nearby all the time, in our purse or next to the couch. to shut out all the outside noise that can. i cant stand any noises, from chewing to whispering to music. it shocks my insides and it hurts my ears and my brain,
inside there is no protection from the noise. we have tried everything.
noise freaks me out a lot because i have autism. it also freaks out jadie and boo, but they are both noisy kids anyway. but i am extremely quiet. i rarely if ever talk on the outside.
jasmin
Thank you for this post. I don’t know if noise was used to torture me, but I remember as a child that my father and sister would play music super loud. Like very loud, all the way turned up, speakers thumping loud. And it used to scare me. And cause great anxiety and I would cover my ears with my hands. I didn’t like it one bit.
As far as inside, yes, we here screaming from angry parts and crying too. While reading the article, I paused and had to provide comforting things for my insiders. I don’t know who exactly needed them, but I made blankets and stuffies for them. I hope they are okay. I can still hear crying so I hope they will feel peace soon. If not, I’ll try something else, I guess.
This was a really interesting article. It’s amazing to me how people will go to such ends to abuse and torture sweet innocent littles. Makes me mad.
MultipleMe
10/10/18
Kathy, I love this post. I often have pain associated with noise; I have a low tolerance for music, tv, and even children not being tended to in the store. I am sensistive to music while shopping. Other parts tolerante tv, and enjoy talking and playing and kidding around. Right now my system is mostly quiet, except when triggered.
In the past, we have heard crying children in our head, (when noone was there), voices that are angry with people, voice that gets down and sad, and sometimes we are happy and we want to dance and be social.
A solution we recently found was some good quality headphones to cancel out loud noises at home – my husband normal speaking voice is rather loud, and my kids like to play music, and roughhouse. Sometimes it is too much. I plan to use these when I get overwhelmed to help.
I don’t think my noise “torture” was a loud tv on all the time, and my Father yelling quite a lot. It was a lot. So those things are triggers for now.
Thank you for this post, Kathy! The noise can def. be too much sometimes!!!