Misophonia Treatment: EASE Therapy

If you take one thing from this article, it’s this:
Misophonia improves when your peace no longer depends on control.

That doesn’t mean becoming passive.
It doesn’t mean approving of the sound.
It doesn’t mean forcing yourself to like it.

It means something more specific and more powerful:

• allowing the trigger to exist
• allowing the anger/disgust to rise
• allowing the meaning (“violation,” “unfair,” “they shouldn’t”) to show up
• noticing the urge to escape/correct/control
• and practicing non-action—not feeding the loop with defensive behaviors

This is counterintuitive for most people, because the urge is to do something.
But in misophonia, doing something is often the mechanism of maintenance.

So “help” is not primarily:

• better coping
• better soothing
• better relaxation

“Help” is learning—through repeated experience—that:

• you can remain present with the trigger
• you can experience the emotion fully
• you can have the urge and not act on it
• you can survive the injustice feeling without trying to correct it

When that happens, the trigger loses authority.
Not because you forced it away.
Because you stopped reinforcing it.

A Different Approach to Misophonia Treatment

At our practice, we treat misophonia using a model called EASE:
Experiential Acceptance & Stimulus Engagement.

EASE is based on a psychological model of misophonia that explains how the condition develops and persists. The full model and treatment protocol were published in the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders in the paper, “Misophonia: A psychological model and proposed treatment.” Read the study →

This is not a “coping skills” approach.
It is not “habituation-only.”
It is not “just do exposure to chewing sounds until it feels better.”

EASE is built around a different goal:
You learn that you can experience misophonia triggers fully without escaping, controlling, or neutralizing them.

The Three Components of EASE (in plain language)

1) Experiential: contact what’s actually happening

Misophonia often becomes a fast, global reaction:

• “This is unbearable.”
• “I have to leave.”
• “Make it stop.”

Experiential work brings it back to reality:

• Where do you feel it in the body?
• What sensations show up?
• What does the urge demand?
• What meaning is the mind assigning?

Not to analyze endlessly—just to stop the autopilot.

2) Acceptance: allow without collapsing or fighting

Acceptance here has a strict definition:
Allowing emotions to exist without acting.

Acceptance is not:

• liking the sound
• agreeing with it
• calming down
• approving of unfairness

It’s choosing to stop fueling the fight.
And for many misophonia sufferers, that fight is the most exhausting part.

3) Stimulus Engagement: deliberate contact without escape

Engagement means you practice approaching triggers:

• intentionally
• repeatedly
• in a planned way
• while removing defensive behaviors

Not to “get used to it” as the main metric.
But to learn something deeper:
“I can be here, feel this, and not act.”

The defining move: ending the “escape hatch”

In EASE, we take seriously the idea that learning only happens when the nervous system realizes:

• leaving is not required
• controlling is not required
• correcting is not required
• masking is not required

When someone always has the option to escape, the brain continues to believe escape is the solution.

So treatment involves carefully reducing escape/defensive behaviors in a gradual, structured way—while building willingness and flexibility.

Why this is relational

Because misophonia is often person-linked, part of treatment involves working directly with:

• triggers involving family/partners
• the meanings that arise in those moments
• the urge to correct or punish
• the shame that comes afterward
• the “I shouldn’t have to tolerate this from you” storyline

This is also why it’s not enough to do “random chewing sounds on YouTube” and call it treatment. Sometimes that helps a bit. But for many people, it misses the real target: the relational meaning and the control/hope system.

What success actually looks like

Success is not “I feel calm when they chew.”
Success looks like:

• You notice the spike and don’t reorganize your entire behavior around it
• You can stay at the table longer
• You can let the sound exist without it turning into a crisis
• You don’t need the other person to change in order to be okay
• The urges to escape and correct become quieter over time
• Life becomes bigger again

Symptom reduction may happen gradually—and it often does—but the core victory is flexibility.

Living With Misophonia Doesn’t Have to Mean Living on Guard

Misophonia can make people feel trapped in constant scanning:

• anticipating the next sound
• bracing
• negotiating seating
• rehearsing conflict
• planning exits
• resenting loved ones for existing normally

Over time, life gets organized around prevention.
Treatment is the process of undoing that prevention system.

Not by forcing yourself to tolerate everything with a smile.
But by learning—repeatedly—that you can experience the trigger and the emotion, and still choose how you respond.

If misophonia has been running your household, your relationships, or your internal world, the path forward is not “try harder to calm down.”
The path forward is learning to stop treating triggers as emergencies—and stop treating control as the only route to safety.

If you want help with this, we provide specialized therapy for misophonia and misokinesia using the EASE framework, with a structured plan tailored to your triggers, your patterns, and your relationships.