Hyperacusis

For Natacha Chetritt-Bonneyart, hyperacusis is a malfunction of the auditory sphere due to the memory of an emotional trauma.

As a preamble, the idea according to which hyperacusis symptoms are the expression of an auditory system affected by an irreversible lesion and that “you will need to live with it” or that “no other solution exists” as often bombarded must be refuted.

Every illness requires medical attention. Only a doctor is qualified to diagnose. Thus, complementarity, openness, shared intelligence, offer better chances for healing than any isolated approach.

The symptoms which affect the hyperacusis patient are varied, without all of them necessarily manifesting at once.

Here are the ones most commonly referred to, of a physical nature :

– Hearing discomfort capable of reaching physical pain
– Clogged ears or fluffy sensation, hushed sound perception
– Tensing and snapping in the ear
– Warm auricle, sometimes with an exterior visible sign
– HeadachesNausea and dizziness
– Pain in the lower maxillary
– Acustics distortions
– Chronic fatigue
– Muscular tensions in other areas of the head or the nape of the neck
– Vibration feeling of the eardrum

Those relevant to emotional disorders :

– Loss of ‘joie de vivre’ (joy of life), “ life becomes dark, it loses meaning”
– Behavioral issues « solitude, withdrawing into oneself, physical and mental seclusion”
– Relationship hardships «  the subject feels rejected, excluded, misunderstood by the medical profession and his/her close environment”
– Anxiety disorders and depressive state “the subject sees himself/herself without any solutions, a lonesome path that many qualify as a descent into hell”
– All communication becomes progressively difficult both in substance and in form
– Tendency to wall up in silence, to distance oneself from loved ones, desperately seeking a way to protect themselves from potential danger to come
– The person flees or endures, again and again, until exhaustion
– Behavior that can be perceived as obsessive by those around you
– Fear of having an irreversible pathology

In such cases, everyday benign noisy situations can then prove unbearable, such as: the noise of the shower jet hitting the tiles, the noise of scotch tape being rolled out, the noise of dishes clinking against each other, applauses, or high-pitched voices.

The sound of your own voice, the noise of your own feet and simply chewing can sometimes become intolerable.

Quantifying the pain is by no means proportional to the length of sound exposure; however exposure time may also be as detrimental as intensity.

Thus, the simple shout of a child can provoke a very strong pain that can last from a few hours to a few days.

Aware that the perception of certain sounds or the exposure to certain sound levels, even for a very short timespan, causes pain and fatigue, the hyperacusis patient will tend to protect himself/herself against any potential sound “attack” by wearing hearing protection (ear plugs) in most of everyday life situations.

In effect, hyperacusis concurs to a notable behavioral change in the affected subject, by setting up functioning patterns disproportionate to everyday situations.

It should be noted that hyperacusis does not fall under phonophobia, but that the legitimate protective attitudes of the hyperacusis patient can be the consequence of induced phonophobia.

It is frequently observed that one suffering from sound hypersensitivity sets up conditioned behavioral reflexes, without being aware of it, which considerably alter the quality of one’s everyday life and impact, up to the point of ruining it, one’s professional, personal and social life, thus affecting profoundly and lastingly one’s existence.