Hyperacusis

A plate clatters in the kitchen. Someone pushes a chair. The child laughs, the faucet rushes, the refrigerator hums. Everyday life. Barely perceptible to others. For you: a sting, a pressure, a pain that shoots through your skull. Your auditory system reacts to normal sounds as if someone were attacking you. And sometimes a conversation in the next room is enough that you have to withdraw — into a quiet room, into earplugs, into a solitude that is not free choice but self-defence.

Medically speaking, hyperacusis is a disorder of sound processing. Often after acoustic trauma, after a middle ear infection, after periods of intense stress, sometimes without any identifiable trigger. The filtering system that protects healthy people from experiencing every sound at full intensity is damaged or overloaded. That is real. That is physical. That is not imagined.