Almost all my life I’ve absolutely despised children. Pretty much from the moment I stopped being a child I’ve hated being around children.
It doesn’t even matter what the child is doing. Whether they’re laughing and having fun or screaming and throwing a tantrum. The sound of a child being loud activates an almost primal rage that I can barely contain.
I’ve had to leave social gatherings/restaurants/grocery stores all because if I’d stayed I’d have made a complete ass of myself by screaming at a child just for existing.
It’s even worse with infants which makes me feel horrible because I know they can’t help it. I know the kids don’t know any better and it’s our job as adults to get them through childhood, but my blood boils when they get loud or demand attention.
Has anyone else dealt with something like this? Is there anything I can do to stop from getting so angry?
Therapy. It’s clear this is causing you problems in your life. And that’s exactly what therapy is for.
I’m just a dickhead on the Internet, but what you’re describing doesn’t sound normal or healthy to me. Have you tried therapy?
I’ve done therapy a few times now and we never really covered this.
It doesn’t help that I live in a small town so the therapists here are extremely underqualified for actual mental illness and not just helping people through “tough” times
I’ve tried that more times than actual in person therapy and it’s extremely hard for me to form the emotional attachment necessary for me to let my guard down and bare my thoughts and feelings.
It feels so fake and forced. I feel more like a subject being examined than a patient there for care
That’s not a terrible idea. They might even tell you that your emotions are not uncommon and give you some tips for dealing with it.
Or something else could be going on and you could get some more complete therapy.
Source: being some other jerk on the Internet.
The sound of a child being loud activates an almost primal rage that I can barely contain.
Yeah, that’s actually a thing for some people to various degrees.
It’s called misophonia
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24460-misophonia
I had it for high pitched sounds as well, went on Beta Blockers for migraines and it fixed this as well.
The noises are triggering your adrenal response and your body is screaming at you that the noise has to stop and it doesn’t matter what it takes. Beta blockers block adrenaline, so now noises that used to set me on edge are just normal noises to me.
I think one of the current hypothesis is that it might be close to a sound that would attract predators, but sometimes wires get crossed and you have the reaction to a random noise.
Most commonly it’s people hating the sound of others chewing.
I was unfamiliar with misophonia so I went looking into it. I know it is a poorly studied issue, but I wasn’t able to find any peer reviewed research where children’s noises in general were used or reported as a trigger. I found lots of discussion forums, but that is anecdotal.
The reason I went digging is because the op describes all children’s noises, happy, sad, whatever, whereas what I read in the literature was very specific noises were reported as triggers. E.g, lip smacking, chewing, pen clicking, etc. In one study, they even used videos of children and dogs playing to help participants calm down and establish a baseline. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227118
While I’m admittedly ignorant, it seems OP may have a more general aversion to children than I would expect of misophonia given what I’ve read from medical sources.
I only mention this as a counter suggestion to help op avoid self diagnosing and maybe going down the wrong track.
I think counseling is warranted to help sort it out.
Not specifically kids.
But kids make lots of really high pitched noises, and those can be a trigger.
Happy, sad, for no reason at all.
Kids make a lot of noise, and it’s almost all high pitch
I have misophonia and kids are definitely a big trigger in a lot of ways… Screaming, crying, chewing, coughing. It’s anecdotal, but yeah the high pitch sounds don’t play nice with my brain. Misophonia suuuuuuuuuucks.
I also don’t particularly like kids, but that’s not really about the sound. Just not my cup of tea.
I’ll have to look into this again thanks, but Just a cautionary note that it can be hard to get off of beta blockers iirc
While true, it’s not that they’re addictive or dangerous or anything.
It’s just a long half life so they stay in your system for days when taken as prescribed.
So if you take your doses regularly, your body gets used to never having adrenaline.
Take a week off, and your body is suddenly dealing with adrenaline again while having like zero tolerance for it.
So if you’re on it for cardiac reasons, stopping abruptly can very likely lead to a heart attack.
So (like most meds) if you’re going off them you need to titrate slowly so your body adjusts. But it’s not like Benzos where it causes withdrawals or anything.
If someone takes them “as needed” then they can just stop taking them whenever without cause for concern. Because their body is still used to occasional adrenaline.
Obviously consult your doctor though, I just took a few classes on this stuff over a decade ago
Whether they’re laughing and having fun or screaming and throwing a tantrum. The sound of a child being loud activates an almost primal rage that I can barely contain.
This is actually a neurological thing. It has a name and everything (though I can’t recall what the name is). A lot of people on the spectrum have it. You may want to talk to a therapist about it, if this isn’t merely hyperbole.
That’s misophobia, misophonia is when you don’t like how soy paste sounds.
Never hurts to check.
Unless you’re American and don’t have health insurance. Then it might hurt.
I have it. The sounds of people eating, especially slurping or crunching, are literally repulsive. I have to have something else to train my focus on or else I’ll get up and bolt.
Other repetitive sounds trigger it too: people popping gum, chewing ice, clipping fingernails, etc. But not too bad with keyboards and typing.
I have no advice, but I have to say I really admire and appreciate you for acknowledging that it’s unfair for the children and trying to change that. Most people aren’t strong enough to introspect
I would even argue that you’ve already done the hard part
