{"id":208375,"date":"2025-12-24T09:48:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T09:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/208375\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T09:48:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T09:48:14","slug":"why-ill-need-earplugs-to-get-through-christmas-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/208375\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I&#8217;ll need earplugs to get through Christmas dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lottie is looking forward to spending time with her family this Christmas, but says one of the only ways she&#8217;ll manage to get through it is by wearing her earplugs &#8211; especially during Christmas dinner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For the 23-year-old Christmas can be a particularly difficult time as the sounds of other people, chewing, slurping and sniffling make her feel extremely uncomfortable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I get this feeling of sudden panic, my whole body will just tense up and it feels like I&#8217;m in danger, and I need to somehow control these noises.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lottie has suffered from misophonia since she was 16 and for her that makes the festive season &#8220;incredibly overwhelming&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Misophonia is a reduced tolerance to certain sounds, particularly those made by other people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It&#8217;s surprisingly common in the UK. In 2023, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcl.ac.uk\/news\/whats-your-sound-barrier-new-study-finds-nearly-1-in-5-people-in-the-uk-find-everyday-sounds-intolerable\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">researchers from King&#8217;s College London and University of Oxford, external<\/a> found almost one in five people suffer from it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Often it&#8217;s sounds associated with mouth, throat or facial movements that cause distress, as well as things like chewing, breathing, and repetitive finger tapping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lottie is looking forward to spending time with her family this Christmas, but says one of the only&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[103,61,60,410,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-208375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}