There’s no E in CBT for Misophonia. Despite the fact that Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) is a prevalent part of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for numerous disorders such as OCD or Anxiety, this is not the case in CBT-MISO. Why? Because exposure therapy is for conditions that are cognitive, and misophonia is most likely a neurophysiological condition. That core principle guided my reasoning for creating a CBT manual that is completely devoid of exposure. If exposure cured misophonia—we would all be cured as most misophonia sufferers cannot go a day in their lives without being exposed to the sounds that cause this fight-flight-freeze response.
The purpose of this book is to offer practical coping skills for misophonia from a cognitive behavioral perspective that do not include the false promise of treating misophonia like an anxiety disorder—because it isn’t one.
As a clinician, I firmly believe that there is a time and place for exposure therapy—and neither of those involve living with misophonia. As a sufferer of misophonia myself, I take issue with outdated models of cognitive behavioral therapy that are callously applied to misophonia without careful adaption. All of this is what lead me to write Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Misophonia, which includes 50 worksheets for clinicians or sufferers of misophonia, none of which promote harmful practices like exposure therapy.
While this book doesn’t offer false promises of a treatment or cure, it does offer a practical and realistic perspective for living with misophonia. It is my hope that this book helps clinicians and persons with misophonia understand the condition and view coping with misophonia as a way to adjust and manage the emotions and distress surrounding the triggers, rather than view misophonia as something that can be bullied away with outdated psychological practices.
Learn more about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Misophonia by Shaylynn Hayes-Raymond here: https://misophoniacbt.com/