BBC - about fidgeting (with subtitles and transcript below)

Описание: You're watching BBC News.
Let's turn to a fascinating story because fidgeting, tapping fingers on the desk, clicking a pen, twiddling hair might seem quite innocuous, but those actions can cause some people to want to vomit or experience explosive anger. It's a condition called mysokinesia, a diagnosable hatred of fidgeting. Scientists are striving to understand more about the phenomenon that has no known cause and as yet no known cure.

Well, let's first speak to Andrea Guest, who's developed mysophonia, aged 13. And Andrea, welcome here to the programme. So tell me, what triggers you?

Well, first of all, I don't just have mysokinesia, I have mysophonia. So I'm triggered by both sounds and by movements. And those, as you say, create an explosive emotional response within me, which I have to control. So with sounds, it's sniffing, tapping, thud of a ball, sound of machinery outside my home, overhearing music, all those sorts of things. And with movement, it tends to be people picking at their nails, touching their face, twiddling their hair, feet fidgeting, and just noticing particularly any kind of repetitive movement.

And when you see that, just tell me in terms of the response it generates from you.

Well, it typically generates a fight or flight or freeze response in me. So the anger I experience is just explosive. And so I use up a lot of energy just trying to control that. Or sometimes I'm so overwhelmed by it that I just shut down and can't do anything to help myself. So the solution might be to leave my house, get in the car and drive somewhere to escape the sound of a neighbour hammering or a ball in the back garden. But I'm just so frozen by the intensity of the emotion that I just shut down and I can't do it. And that's a really difficult position to be in and one I've often experienced.

It sounds extremely difficult. Has it progressed over the years? And when you go and see, say, a doctor, what do they say to you?

Well, over the years, I've had all sorts of therapies, psychotherapy, CBT, medications. I've been experiencing it, as I say, since I was about 13. It was initially thought to be a symptom of depression, then a symptom of anxiety, then had something in common with OCD. But nobody's ever actually given me a diagnosis. I suppose it's something I've had to explore myself and find out myself. And so very rarely actually gets addressed as the primary condition. It's always looked at as something, a symptom of something else, which actually isn't terribly helpful.

Yes, and I'm sure many, many people simply dismiss it. Andrea, we will leave it there because I want to continue with this and talk to Dr. Jane Gregory, who's a clinical psychologist at Oxford University. And doctor, thank you for being with us. Just briefly, tell us a little more about these two conditions then.

So the difference between the two is that misophonia is specifically related to sounds and misokinesia is specifically related to repetitive movement. And the similarities between the two is that both of them involve not being able to filter out these things. And when these things are repetitive and you can't filter them out, over time, the emotion just grows and grows and grows until you can't stand it anymore. And then people get stuck with that reaction. So if they hear that thing again or see that repetitive movement again, then the emotion becomes explosive much faster.

I talked there to Andrea about people perhaps not understanding it. How do you know it's not just somebody who is short-tempered, grumpy, all of that, that you would anticipate as obvious responses?

Well, that's one of the really interesting things that most of the people that I've spoken to and worked with, with misophonia and misokinesia, say that that's part of the problem, is that they are not angry people. They're actually really kind, compassionate, understanding people. And this is a real conflict in their identity. It's just this one thing that makes them feel explosive anger or disgust or revulsion. And so one of the problems is that it actually creates this conflict in their identity because they are not that kind of person in general. And that's why it's so hard for them.

In terms of the amount of people that have this condition, do we have any sort of reliable numbers?

Well, there's been a little bit of research on it. So misokinesia, there was one study out of Canada that found that nearly one third of people say that they find it hard to filter out repetitive movements. But we know that for most people, it's not impacting on a day-to-day basis or causing a lot of distress. So the number of people who are severely affected by this is much smaller.
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EN-UA vocab:
fidgeting - непосидючість
innocuous - безневинний
sniffing - фиркання, обнюхування
tapping - постукування
thud - стук, гупання
twiddling - накручування, перебирання