That is a very interesting constellation of symptoms. Thank you for sharing, and I feel for you. I have much acute sensitive hearing response than the rest of my family and friends and it’s a hard thing to explain with no one else notices.
For me however it’s a largely positive experience. I am hugely grateful for things like the sounds of frogs, birds, voices I like, movie soundtracks, and for cleanly processed digital music.
On the other hand, musicians playing or singing out of tune, gives me a visceral response, and I have been down to leave clubs when a musician is having a slightly off night.
do you also suffer from ( sometimes socially compromising) misophonia as well? I also have what I consider to be above average hearing sensitivity, although not to the point where artifacts from music compression bother me that much. I don't have an official testing result to prove or define this in quantifiable terms, only that I seem to notice things in the ambient sound environment that most others either don't notice or tune out, and this has at least as many downsides as benefits.
If someone is a loud chewer, or drink slurper, it's as if I can hear every single bit of muscle and conjunctiva flexing and saliva sloshing around inside their jaw, and the glorp glorp sound of their swallows, if we're both in an otherwise quiet room. Or if there is a car alarm going off or dog barking three blocks away, sounds other people appear to be completely unaware of or passively filter out can sometimes drive me into quiet boiling stress that is completely irrational yet impossible to reason myself out of, and i just have to leave.
Unrelated to SCDS, I have misophonia* and hyperacusis#.
* Certain external sounds (mostly by other people) raise a limbic rage or anger, such as chewing, raking silverware with teeth, crunching, or rustling food packets. People who don't chew with their mouths closed are painful.
# Painful to hear certain intensities of certain frequencies. I believe the SCDS is also causing vestibular problems. For example, deep subsonic bass cause my eyes to slew up and to the side with the beat involuntarily, with momentary nausea (almost vertigo). It's beyond simple nystagmus. (It's not vertigo, but I've had that and bought the silly vertigo bubble level hat.)
SCDS maybe caused and worsened by the gradual thinning of my already paper-thin superior canal plate with age.
Exactly as you describe. Agonizing but it sounds insane to people so you can’t say anything. I excuse myself from social situations more than once a week.
Oh, this is a fun (deep-fried sarcasm here) thing to have, ask me how I know.
It's not well researched, but apparently what you (or actually we) are feeling is a fight-or-flight response.
I started using it to gauge whether I'm upset with a particular person over something, because it would intensify in such cases, and reflect on that.
Also helped my friend manually remove breath and lip sounds from a recording he was doing for an indie mod for a game because, well, with enough compression it was painful to listen to for me.
The only known condition for hearing one's eyeball move is a 3rd window somewhere in the inner ear, so there's no meaningful differential diagnosis. I received a formal diagnosis by an otolaryngologist (via high-resolution CT of the superior canal) and audiology but I already knew the conclusion.
I could get brain surgery and I'm "a good candidate" for it, but do I really want a surgeon cutting a large hole in the side of my head, jacking up my brain, and then packing my superior canal with my spare tissue*?
* I flatly refuse to have tissue implanted that isn't my own.
For me however it’s a largely positive experience. I am hugely grateful for things like the sounds of frogs, birds, voices I like, movie soundtracks, and for cleanly processed digital music.
On the other hand, musicians playing or singing out of tune, gives me a visceral response, and I have been down to leave clubs when a musician is having a slightly off night.