Daily Muscle Relaxation Practice
Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) and Applied Relaxation are methods of managing and treating your misophonia. PMR consists of daily practice, taking ten to twenty minutes, in which you develop the skill to relax your muscles. To get the benefit from this technique, you need to do the PMR routine every day for several months. It is not quick, but the benefits can be enormous. In fact, it is possible to virtually cure misophonia using muscle relaxation. But muscle relaxation is a skill, and a skill can only be learned with practice.
This technique will help you manage your misophonia in two ways. First, practicing PMR every day will improve your overall level of health and well-being, which will reduce your misophonia. This benefit can occur very quickly, especially if you have trouble sleeping. Second, practicing muscle relaxation will develop a skill that you can use immediately after you are triggered to greatly reduce the anger response that is typical of misophonia. Third, relaxing before and during a trigger situation can greatly reduce the physical and emotional response to the triggers. Muscle relaxation is a powerful treatment for misophonia, which we will be discussed in the next chapter, but first we will consider muscle relaxation as a management technique to reduce the misophonic emotions.
