Sound Sensitivity

A spoon placed on a table. A chair scraping across the floor. The voice from the next room, the ticking of the clock, the refrigerator suddenly switching on. Things other people don't even notice hit you like needles. You flinch. You tense up. You want to crawl away, cover your ears, close the door, be alone. The world has become too loud — but it's not the world that has grown louder. It's you, hearing it differently.

The medical perspective knows hyperacusis — a real hypersensitivity of the auditory system, where the threshold for loudness is lowered. It knows tinnitus, middle ear problems, dysfunction in the auditory cortex. These are real phenomena, and they deserve medical evaluation. But what BodySignal additionally asks is: What if the sensitivity isn't a defect? What if it's a language — one your system is currently speaking because other forms of expression are closed off?