Misophonia: When Life's Noises Drive You Mad

For 18-year-old high school senior Ellie Rapp of Pittsburgh, the sound of her family chewing their dinner can be ... unbearable. "My heart starts to pound. I go one of two ways. I either start to cry or I just get really intensely angry. It's really intense. I mean, it's as if you're going to die," she says. Rapp has been experiencing this reaction to certain noises since she was a toddler. She recalls a ride home from preschool when her mother turned on the radio and started singing, which caused Rapp to scream and cry hysterically. "That's my first memory ever," Rapp says. Over the years, "everybody was pretty confused, but on the inside I felt like I was going insane," she says. It wasn't until middle school that she found a name for it. Her mom, Kathy Rapp, had been searching for years for help. Then she found an article on the Web about a condition known as misophonia. "And I read it and I said, 'This is what I have. This is it,' " says Ellie Rapp. Misophonia is characterized by