Body

tailoring cognitive interventions to address self-blame, external attribution, and post-trigger rumination in misophonia

In a 2026 study, Woolley aimed to qualitatively characterize negative cognitions during and after misophonia triggers by analyzing open-ended interview responses from 60 treatment-seeking adults using inductive content analysis. They found that during triggers, participants reported self-criticism, appraisals of others as rude, intrusive aggressive thoughts, and escape-focused cognitions, while after triggers they described regret, guilt, and intrusive memories of prior sounds, though 20-40% denied experiencing cognitive processes. From this they concluded that negative cognitions extend misophonia-related distress beyond immediate sound exposure through post-event rumination and intrusive memories, but meaningful heterogeneity exists in cognitive involvement, suggesting interventions should be tailored to target specific patterns including self-blame, external attributions, and ruminative processing (Woolley et al., 2026a).