I am NOT a misophonic (and neither are you).

This statement appears in the description of the Misophonia: Coping and Solutions Facebook Group:

"It has been shown in cases that sharing triggers with other misophonics [sic] can create newly acquired triggers for them."

OK, I have 2 problems with this statement:

1) I don't like it when people make up words. There is no such word as misophonic. There's no shortcut (yet) for saying person with misophonia. While I'm on the subject, there is no such word as miso. I see people use this non-word in sentences like: blah, blah, blah... my miso makes it hard for me to blah, blah, blah... you don't have miso, you are a person with misophonia. I've blogged about this sort of thing before. I don't like cute words people make up to replace an already perfectly good actual word. Why do people feel a need to be soft-n-cuddly with words? (Vegetables are not veggies. Ugh.)

2) This may or may not be true. I suspect it isn't. The person writing the description doesn't cite any source of this statement, they've just said it is so. What cases are they referring to? Who studied this and published a scientific paper on it? I swear, this person just made this up on the spot. I've read pretty much everything there is to read about misophonia and I can tell you that there's far more that is not known about it than is known. There is no known cure, no proven cause and no studies that one can cite to make any significant definitive statements about any aspect of misophonia. The science just isn't there yet.

I wouldn't have paid any attention to the suggestion/concept if the writer had said something like "it's possible that sharing information about triggers with other people with misophonia could result in creating newly acquired triggers..." After all, nobody knows if this is true or not so suggesting it's a possibly keeps a healthy dialog going. But making definitive statements about misophonia without backing your assertions with facts is misleading and not going to helpful to anyone in the end (especially if you're wrong!).

I understand the desire to sound authoritative when writing about one's personal experience and wanting to share information. But having a disease or being in a disadvantageous situation doesn't automatically make one an expert and writing something down doesn't make it so or give it any credence. You need facts and figures to present your case. If I am reading your work and you make assertions of facts not in evidence, I start to doubt everything else you have to say.