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Gaps in our knowledge about misophonia exceed what we know.

The generative power of individual disciplines helps create scientific knowledge.

Binary thinking can get in the way of understanding the dynamics of knowledge production.

Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which make it useful. Verse 11, Tao Te Ching

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Verse 11, Tao Te Ching

When our family was new to misophonia in 2019, I felt surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Everywhere we turned for research-based help and information, we came up empty-handed. No definition, no treatment, no professional help. Lack defined our experience. Each gap felt cruel.

What I couldn’t yet see is how productive those empty spaces were. The Tao Te Ching illuminates the flexible purposes emptiness can serve. Holes in a wall are not void, but complexly utilitarian. Human beings are impelled toward meaning. How do we define that empty space: vessel, door, or window? We don’t simply experience our circumstances. We give meaning and purpose to the forces shaping our lives.

The search for meaning takes on urgency when suffering is involved. Although most of misophonia’s terrain remains uncharted (empty), emerging research and anecdotal evidence expose legions of pain: about 5% of people experience clinically significant misophonia symptoms (Dixon et al., 2024). Consider the spheres of relationships that surround each of these people, and suffering ripples through millions more.

As a mother, sister-in-law, and daughter-in-law caught up in misophonia’s thrall, I have witnessed and experienced the condition’s devastation across generations. Misophonia’s terrible threats to intimacy separated me from my child. Although we lived in the same house, we painfully avoided each other’s presence for years. We did not talk or touch. Our experience is not uncommon. In families with misophonia, parents can lose straightforward access to children; siblings retreat and grow apart; life can be reduced........

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