Misophonia

As my situation with the noisy neighbors with the bassy surroundsound system drags on, I've been working on methods of managing my reactions and changing my thoughts. I've also turned to the copious resources available online to see if they have any ideas that I had not come up with. What I've discovered is that I've actually thought of nearly everything already - which is rather unfortunate. However, I have found that I am not alone, which makes me feel better.

While digging into this issue, I've learned that there is a condition called misophonia and I seem to have it. I wasn't born with it, as some extremely unfortunate people have been, but I appear to be prone to developing it. Misophonia manifests as a hatred of certain sounds. In my case, it is deep, loud, bass noises which vibrate the floor. Even at low levels, it gets on my nerves, though I have to say that it didn't used to and that I've become hyper-vigilant about it as the neighbors have been ramped up the noise and been increasingly disrespectful of those of us living above them.

The site I linked to in the previous paragraph mentions a metaphor that I coincidentally used when talking about what this was wadding up my undies so tightly. This noise is like fingernails on a blackboard. It is nearly impossible to ignore no matter how hard I try. Of course, there is the added difficulty of how not thinking about something or attempting to ignore it tends to focus your attention on it all the more.

I should note that my earliest experience with misophonia was when I was a teenager. I remember my mother sitting on the sofa reading a book and continuously making an annoying little throat clearing noise. I tried to ignore it, but it just got more and more under my skin. I asked my mother why she did it and she said she wasn't making any noise. My father said that she certainly was and she denied it again, but both of us pointed out when she next made this noise. Eventually, I just left the room when she started making this irritating little sound. This early experience is what makes me believe that I'm constitutionally prone to misophonia. At that time, it was easy to get away. Unfortunately, in my present situation, it is far more complicated, so I compiled a list of coping strategies a little over a week ago and mailed it to myself to reference:

I instructed myself to read this list when it starts to ramp up:

1. Push the sound back (imagine physically putting it into the background while pulling focus onto something in the foreground). This is meant to counteract the subjective enlargements of stimuli that is so common.

2. Tell yourself that, while it is annoying, it is not that bad. It could be worse (could be loud rap music or something more frequent).

3. Tell yourself that you can, if necessary, escape it either in the short or long term. You are not trapped even though you may feel that way.

4. Understand that it is random and not personal. No one is trying to hurt you. You are collateral damage. 

5. Create positive stimuli to focus on - watch a video, listen to music, take a walk (if possible), jump on the trampoline

6. Focus on a task. Write. Clean. Read. It may be necessary to listen to a white noise or background sounds to help as these are quiet tasks. Multi-tasking may be most effective. 

7. Understand that you have allies to support you in dealing with this both logistically (property manager) and psychologically (husband).

8. Focus on your body's responses (stomach knotting, heart beating faster, tension filling your face and upper body) and try to relax them or stop these responses consciously. 

9. Sooth using sensations. Hold a debu neko (a stuffed toy cat from japan). Light a candle to create a pleasant scent and focus on the flame. Draw circles in one palm with the other. 

10. Remember that, even if you stay here for now, this situation is a transition, not permanent. Some day, you will move past this. You do not have to tolerate it forever. It is just a temporary experience. 

11. Remember that whatever coping techniques you build to deal with this now will be with you to employ in future difficult situations. Look at this as skill building instead of a test of your limited resolve.

12. Understand that your resolve is limited and it is okay to admit that it is sometimes going to be tapped out. Try to deal with this outcome, should it come to pass, as something that is understandable. It's okay to cry about it. It's okay to self-soothe in some (hopefully non-destructive) fashion.

13. Put the situation in perspective in regards to your entire life. This is a blip in the continuum. What is important is love and growth. What is important is building a life and a character that fits your ideal. Being activated by this is not part of that ideal. Being capable of managing your response is. 

14. Remember that you have survived and endured greater hardships than this for long periods of time. You are more than capable of managing this intrusive issue. 

15. To escape the floor vibrations, jump on the trampoline or lie on the bed (depending on whether you want to move or not). Put your feet up under the desk or rest them on a pillow. 

I have used some of the items on this list in the past week and it has helped, though it doesn't always help. I also downloaded a bunch of nature sounds (rain, waterfalls, rushing rivers, etc.) and spent the better part of a morning saturation listening to it. That was actually pretty exhausting because I had to have it up super loud and the truth is that I have been training myself up until now to deal better with silence than incessant noise. 

There was a time in the past when I was so unhappy with my own thoughts that being alone with them was unbearable. I'd constantly have T.V. on in the background or be doing something. I needed the "white noise" of banal words and thoughts to stop me from thinking negative thoughts or ruminating. I realized this was not a good thing (hence the "orderly mind" business) and trained myself to be okay in the silence and to deal with my thoughts. Now, I feel really resentful that someone else's rude behavior is pushing me back into needing to saturation bomb my senses so I don't hear obnoxious noises, but I'll have to deal with it and realize that this isn't about the same issue as before. 

At any rate, yesterday, I reached a new level in coping which should start some serious movement toward better coping and possible recovery. Up until then, I had to drown out or escape the noises. Now, I'm trying to work with being okay with their presence. The message now is that I can be "okay" when I hear them. I don't have to have an emotional reaction or get frustrated, angry, or upset. I tell myself that they are just sounds and they don't matter. They are part of the tapestry of life and no more or less a part of it than the street noise, birds, and other neighbors sounds that I routinely tune out. I'm not past my reactions, but I'm making progress. 

The only down side to this, and this is not my constructing worry webs or grandiose outcomes, is that I know that if I mellow completely, the neighbors are likely to do what they've been doing for the last nine months. That is, if my husband and I don't complain, they'll gradually start getting louder and then listening more loudly more often then later at night and earlier in the morning. Part of what created this loop of suffering and brought on this misophonia is the anxiety that was built around the patterns of their behavior. That is, the cycle of them being loud, us complaining to the manager, his telling them to cool it, their settling for a little while then getting louder then us complaining again and the cycle repeating. It doesn't help that they have gotten more bold and contemptuous toward us as time has gone by. Their whole attitude has become the equivalent of flipping us the bird.

It is this cycle that has put me where I am today, but I have to look at this from the viewpoint of knowing that they're on thinner ice now than they were before. The property manager has heard them blast it late at night when he comes home from work and he's been in our place and heard it clearly through our floor. While I wouldn't say he's on our side, he knows that our complaints are credible and will always do something about it, at least eventually. I'm going to use that belief to tamp down the part of me that feels out of control sufficiently to send me into a frustrated rage when I hear them playing the T.V. loudly on occasion. It's pretty much all I've got as a barrier against the anxiety when it comes down to this particular aspect of it. 

Incidentally, there is a misophonia scale here. I realize that I was at level 8 on this scale as I imagined doing things like vandalizing their garden or dumping garbage on their doorstep in retaliation. Fortunately, I have been able to walk myself back from that point and am hovering between 5-7 (closer to 5 now). I'm not a bad person, but this situation made me want to do things dramatically out of character for me. There were times when it drove me close to what would be madness for me.

How to build a bad obsession in just one week

The name of this blog is not a clever, off-the-cuff choice. It was very deliberately chosen to illustrate the way I tend to operate. I've worked over the years to be very disciplined in my thought processes and especially in my emotional reactivity. What that means in plain English is that I spend no small number of years being controlled by my temper and anxiety and that I've employed various techniques to corral my impulses and break those stallions.

At the root of the desire to do this was a need to end the suffering I endured as a result of my propensity for anxiety and anger. I don't know if I congenitally was like this, but I am certain that my upbringing created or exacerbated a lot of it. My mother's emotional abuse and my father's alcoholism and the chaos and uncertainty surrounding these problems made me prone to a lot of psychological issues including compulsive eating, depression, and anxiety. To varying degrees, I have managed to distance myself from all of these things. However, in times of stress and difficulty, they move closer to me and I am at risk of falling deep into these wells.

Recently, the issues with my noisy neighbors (detailed perhaps a bit too often in this blog's short life) have brought back an anxiety-based tendency that I experienced more in the distant past. One of the good things about having a disciplined mind and experience managing your thoughts and emotions is that you can change over time with great effort. One of the not so good things is that you can also change back to your destructive ways, often with less effort and more rapidly.

In the span of a week, I've grown nearly obsessed with the noise my neighbors are making. Any hint of overhearing their T.V., even at what I would have considered before to be reasonable background levels, sends me into a state of anger and tension. I'll sit around fearing this reaction. I've managed to whip myself into a frenzy about this and have been having intrusive thoughts about it and am ruminating on it. I have had to overtly and consciously derail myself from this destructive sequence time and again over the past week and it has been exhausting.

How did I manage to become so overwhelmed by this in a short span of time? There are a lot of possible reasons. One is that this situation is a microcosm for my entire experience in America since returning from 23 years of living in Japan. It has all of the elements that have frustrated me so deeply. The neighbors are rude, selfish, careless, entitled, and take it as their right to do what they want at my expense. What is more, they are actually breaking a rule of our rent contract - no noise that disturbs other tenants - and still refuse to stop. I think part of what I'm so wrapped up in this is that I'm fighting the bigger battle of my frustration and anger at everything about America that has let me down. If I were winning, it would probably not be something I'd get so worked up about. The best I can say at present is that we're at a stalemate and I have every expectation that I'll start "losing" again as they'll slowly return to form.

Another reason for this is that my life here is so much "smaller" than my life was in Japan. I spend a lot of time in my apartment pursuing my own interests and dealing with household responsibilities (all of which I take care of since my husband is working super hard as an intern at present). I've tried to branch out in many ways, but have found it difficult and frustrating for a variety of reasons, no small number of them linked to the aforementioned American character issues in the previous paragraph.

My sister-in-law once told me about an experience with my father-in-law that she had in which he saw a paint blister on the side of his RV and a variation in the color of the paint job after he removed a retractable awning from the side. He was worked up beyond reason about these matters and she just couldn't see what the big deal was since her father is hardly someone who is preoccupied with appearances. The way he keeps his house both internally and externally reflects his lax habits and overall laziness. I told her that the reason was likely that he didn't have enough to keep him busy and that he focused more on tiny things because his world was small. I think there is an element of that in my being so engrossed in the noise situation with my neighbors.

Into all of this mix, we can add the fact that one's state of being influences perception. In a study that I read recently, researchers found that thirsty people saw water glasses as being further away than people who were not thirsty. We more commonly experience this when we feel that the first mile is shorter than the last one when we walk a long, long way. How we feel at present affects how we perceive stimuli. That means that the more upset I am about the noise, the more likely it is that I feel it is louder.

It's also likely that the lifestyle my husband and I lead make this issue more remarkable for us. We live quietly. That is, it is rare for us to turn on the T.V. or music. There is no constantly babbling technological brook to obscure the booming bass sounds emanating from below us. If we were similarly trying to drown out the world, we could blot out some of their aural waterfall with a babbling brook of our own. Though I could choose to start listening to something to help with this, it is unfortunate that the very act of changing your lifestyle to not notice something will make you notice it more. You'll know you're only doing it because of a problem and not because you enjoy it. It only serves as a reminder of the problem you want to get away from.

I realize part of the problem with the neighbors is them. Their behavior has been inconsiderate and rude to the point of overt hostility; they once turned the T.V. up even louder after I asked them to turn it down. My sense of powerlessness in this situation is also playing a part. People who fear no consequences (which they apparently did not and may not still) and have no concern for others will not change their behavior. However, part of the problem is also me and what I'm making this into and I need to stop and readjust my thinking.

Unfortunately, part of the reason I'm so fast at building up a frenzy about this is that the time is ripe for it based on my experiences in the U.S., but also that I'm actually pretty damn good at training my mind. Since this was a slippery slope for me in terms of a propensity to be anxious or angry, it was a fast trip down there once I started wiring my brain for this sort of obsessiveness. Getting back up that mountain is a long, hard slog with slippery patches. I'm struggling to climb up and out, but I frequently slip back.

I have an entire list of cognitive techniques to help me work through this and it helps. I'm actually very good at structuring self-induced CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). I'm less good at follow-through and implementation, but I'm working at it. One thing that helped was that, for some time yesterday, I spent some time mentally where I want to be. That is, in a non-obsessed state in which I had the proper perspective on how out of character this all is for me (at least in my present state) and how out of proportion my reactions are getting. I spent some time "sane" as it were and I could use that as a reference point.

Yesterday, I told my husband that this was like I was in a space with two adjoining rooms. In one room, I was "Sane Orderly Mind" (SOM) and, in the other, I was "Crazy Orderly Mind" (COM). It felt like COM was constantly dragging SOM into that room and trying to keep her there. Every time I've felt the pull of obsession, it has helped me to visualize this and refuse to be pulled in. My list of coping strategies will be the weapons I use against COM in order to fight her and empower SOM.

My husband has also been instrumental in my coping with this. He couldn't stop me from rapidly weaving an anxiety web as I descended into a sort of madness, but he can hold my hand and encourage me while I try to climb back out again. I need this more than I can say because I've been through a lot emotionally since returning to America and my capacity to tolerate has been tapped out for years now. I'm constantly running on fumes in this regard and he's the difference between my giving up in a crying heap of feeling overwhelmed and continuing to fight back is his support and understanding.

It has also helped to blog about the process. I've found that it helps to have this outlet as a focus for the energy generated by these experiences as well as a focus. I banged out three posts in a row because I needed something to do other than obsess. That helped as well (and it's on my CBT list). Watch this space to see how successful I am. I'm sure it'll all play out here.

The Saga Continues

When my husband and I were living in Tokyo, we once had neighbors who seemed to be banging and crashing around in the apartment above us at all hours of the day and night. At 2:00 am, it sounded as if they were rearranging heavy furniture. After putting up with this for awhile, as we figured the initial situation may have been related to the sounds one makes when moving it, we complained to the landlord. He told them about the problem and it stopped.

In my ongoing saga with my noisy neighbors (born in the early Pleistocene age), the record to date has been:

1. Experience them loudly playing their T.V. after midnight on the evening of the Chinese New Year. Ask them to turn it down and be met with the response, "We're celebrating the Chinese New Year." I had to say that my husband had to work the next morning as it was not a holiday and could they turn it down. They did turn it down.
2. Experience them loudly playing their T.V. on multiple occasions and go down during the day to ask them to turn it down and be met with, "It's not us. Our T.V. is not that loud. It must be someone else." I called the manager and told him there was a noise issue, but the downstairs neighbor said it was not him. 
3.  The manager and we walk around the building at various times of day and night trying to work out who it is. Eventually, it turns out it is the people downstairs and they lied. The manager talks to them and asks them to cool it on the noise front. For a short time, they do.The loud T.V. starts coming back again. The manager asks them again to stop it. They stop for an even shorter time.
4. Increasingly louder T.V. starts to happen again and I get fed up and have the exchange detailed in this post. For those who do want to go back, I asked them to turn it down and they told me essentially that they could do what they wanted and I could go sodomize myself (in attitude and not words). I call the manager and say that this problem needs to be dealt with as, even if we moved, the next tenant would be unlikely to tolerate it either.

Yesterday, the property manager (Hector) came by to reassure me that the situation will be resolved. He told me some things which I did not know, but am not surprised about. First of all, he said they have a surround-sound system. That explains all of the booming and highly "mobile" sound (it seems to move from one side of our apartment to the other). He said the bass is likely set too high and that is causing the vibration. He told me that he would go to their apartment "tomorrow morning" (today) and adjust their bass and find a volume that he felt was reasonable and ask them to stick to it.

That all sounds good in practice, but it's nearly noon here and the "morning" is nearly done and I don't think he visited them. What is more, I think that they are actively avoiding him. Hector told me after my last call that he called them three times and left three messages at a time when we both knew they were home. They did not call him back at all and it is clear that they purposefully avoided talking to him because they knew he was going to ask them to cut it out again. He said that, in the past, the old man has always called him back immediately so this was clearly different behavior.

This morning, I'm pretty sure I saw those ancient creatures leave their apartment. It wouldn't shock me if they knew Hector may come by and left to avoid him or if he knocked on their door and they didn't answer and then took off because they knew he wanted to confront them.

All of this running away and avoiding the property manager in order not to face the inevitable may seem completely irrational and stupid to responsible adults, but it frankly does not surprise me. There are no small number of people, and especially elderly ones, who have behaved in this fashion since I returned to America. They are like children who think that they won't have to face the consequences if they ignore the problem. It's the type of thing that causes kids to skip school despite their awareness of the fact that the teacher will know, the school will require a note from the parent, and that they won't be able to produce said note.

Everything about this old man (and his nearly silent wife, who I believe isn't he major player in this) speaks to his wanting not to take responsibility or deal with this issue. He lies. He lies again. He denies. He avoids. He pretends it's not really happening and that I'm making things up. I have little doubt that he'd "manage" this issue by attempting not to deal with it at all, especially when he knows on some level of his cobwebbed brain that he is in the wrong. He just wants to avoid facing the inevitable - he can't play with his toy the way he wants to and someone is going to take it away from him in at least some capacity.

The situation is complicated by his age and Hector's sense of his fragility. Yesterday, he told me that the man is 85 (no shock) and has suffered a stroke and a few heart attacks (also no surprise as that would relate to the hearing issues). Hector said that the old man was very upset when asked yesterday to cool it on the noise so he wanted to wait until "tomorrow" (again, that's now today) to confront him because he was afraid of initiating some sort of health crisis. Yes, it has been many a person who has had a heart attack because he can't listen to T.V. at sky-high volumes on his surround-sound system. This old man is, essentially, having tantrums because he can't do what he wants and Hector is being tentative because of it. I wish he'd worry more about me getting an ulcer than that enormously old big baby having a tanty and sending himself into a seizure of some sort.

At any rate, I'm writing about this both for catharsis and as a marker on the evolution of this process. I also want to let it be known that, in Japan, where people have consideration for the feelings of others and care about how they get along with others, this would be a done deal after the first complaint. In America, rather than the offending party taking responsibility, he does his best to not change and avoids responsibility at all costs. The response here is entirely selfish and manipulative. Unfortunately, I don't think this is a rare case and it is a reflection of the "individuality" culture in America.

The Minority Narrative

My husband and I had a friend that he met through graduate school who once told a story about an experience she had in a parking lot. She was walking through the lot with a friend of hers who had a baby that she was pushing in a stroller. As they were making their way through the lot, a woman in a somewhat nice car honked in irritation at them.

Under these circumstances, what would your first conclusion be about the dynamic in play during this encounter? As someone who has been in a car and driving through various parking lots with no small number of pedestrians walking willy-nilly (rather than using crosswalks or speed bumps as crossover points) and often doing so in a very sluggish and seemingly disoriented fashion, my first conclusion was that the woman was damn tired of being blocked by people who felt it was fine to mosey through the lot in the path of vehicles without concern. In fact, when I was in Japan, I thought the pedestrians were bad, but I've found they are worse in the U.S. The sense of entitlement in a country which reinforces the rights of those on foot has created a situation where pedestrians routinely jaywalk, cross highly trafficked areas like parking lots without even looking for oncoming vehicles, and in general seem not to think that they have an obligation to stop, look both ways, and cross when there are no cars - which was what I learned growing up - not that I could meander around anywhere and expect cars to look out for me as seems to be the case in California at present.

The first paragraph is the sum of the actual interaction and the facts of the experience as related. There is no added information. The woman did not say anything else. However, I will add two other facts. The friend and her acquaintance with the child are of Chinese descent. The woman in the car was white.

When this friend told this story, she told so in an impassioned manner in accord with sharing an experience she had which reflected her status as a minority. She spoke emotionally about how the woman may have been jealous because she saw someone with a baby and she might not have been able to have one. She said that it could be the woman hated Asians and was a bigot. Nowhere in her narrative was the possibility that she and her friend were doing what so many pedestrians of every race, creed, and color do and that the woman was annoyed because they were taking up too much space on the way to getting in or out of the parking lot and moving at the pace of snails; the driver may simply have been increasingly impatient.

Why would this be a missing possibility from this friend's narrative? It is, after all, a highly likely explanation. The reason is that it is the only explanation which makes the two Asian women in the story responsible in any way for the unpleasantness that ensued. It would have meant that they would have to recognize that they behaved in a way which was inconsiderate at least, and oblivious at best.

Now, I will change the story to an experience that I had today with my ever aggravating ancient neighbors. I have never mentioned this before, but they are Chinese. My guess is that they were born in China roughly 500 years ago and came here at some point in order to annoy the crap out of me. They speak to each other in Chinese, dry cabbage and pickle vegetables outside of their home, and play extremely loud Chinese programs on their T.V. (programs with booming bass music). I know what they watch since they so carefully insure that I hear it as clearly as possible by pushing the volume up into the stratosphere.

Today, they were pushing the limits and I decided to go down and ask them to turn it down. This turned into a very unpleasant situation as, being as they are deaf and they have already been told twice by the manager to chill out on the noise, I had to shout to even be heard at all. Of course, the deafness wasn't the only reason I had to shout. They wouldn't open the door when I knocked and just tried to talk to me through it. I started out asking them to please turn it down. The male fossil of the couple, who finally opened the door, said that it was not that loud. I said that it was vibrating our floor and, yes, it was loud. He said that just was not happening. Um... OK, but, I said that, yes, it was happening and he couldn't hear how loud the T.V. was because he was deaf.

At this point, things degraded further. He said that I should complain to the manager. I said that I already had and I knew the manager had spoken to them about it. He then switched to saying that it wasn't late at night so they could do what they wanted and then slammed the door in my face after I said he was being very rude.

I'll admit that that was hardly my finest hour. I made mistakes. Part of the cause of those mistakes was based in the need to shout at all. Part of it was my amygdala was all hepped up on adrenaline due to the ongoing aggravation. The straw that snapped the camel's back and made me call him "deaf" (true) and "rude" (also true) was him asserting that I simply was not experiencing the noise as I was. Why on earth would I go down there and complain if nothing was happening? Why on earth would I call the manager repeatedly to try and get the situation dealt with? Well, that is where my story about my friend comes into play.

In this situation, there are several explanations for why I'd complain. No, strike that, I can only think of two. One is that I am actually experiencing the vibrations and noise. Two is that I have a need to harass my neighbors for imaginary problems for some reason. What would that reason be? Well, if my neighbor wants to find the most comfortable narrative, the one that relieves him of all responsibility for creating the issue, he can tell himself that I am prejudiced and therefore making things up to create problems for him. My best guess is that that narrative would either be about age or ethnicity and I'm wagering on the latter since, at 50, I'm hardly a spring chicken myself.

Minorities in America are indoctrinated into a mindset which I've seen with stunning frequency since my return from Japan. That is that they believe any action which they dislike is the result of bigotry. If they don't get a job, it's racism. If they don't get an apartment, it's racism. If they behave in ways that upset others and those folks have the audacity to complain or protest, it's racism. What is more, the white folks in the U.S. are not allowed to challenge their conclusions that everything bad that ever happens to them is the result of historical or present racial inequality. With the talk of "privilege" and the sensitive nature of any interaction between a white person and a person who is not of European descent, we are not allowed to question any conclusion made about the nature of an interaction, even when more cogent and likely explanations are sitting right out there for anyone with half a brain to see.

I know about this minority narrative because I lived as .2% of the Japanese population for 23 years. I also lived in a place which had none of the safeguards (legal, social, or otherwise) that America offers its minorities. I had zero power to challenge things like labor laws being broken at my expense, being questioned by the police without cause, being refused apartments, being turned away at restaurants, etc. (and all of these things happened to me there). After years of this, I constructed a minority narrative. Every time something bad happened to me, it was because I was white in a sea of Japanese people and they knew I was a powerless minority in their culture. I became incredibly hostile in public when I was gawked at, pointed at, laughed at, and people didn't sit next to me on the train (for fear of catching my cooties as a foreigner).

After spending years constructing and living with that narrative, I started to deconstruct it. I got tired of being mad omnidirectionally all of the time. I got tired of the stress. I felt bad about telling my husband that the people who treated me badly were little more than "animals" in their self-awareness and intellectual capacity. I am not a person who naturally belittles others, but my narrative had me doing it nearly every day as a way of coping with the hardships I was enduring.

As part of really looking at that minority narrative, I had to present myself with some cold hard possibilities and facts. One of them was that not everyone treated me badly because I was a foreigner. Sometimes bad stuff happened because bad stuff happened. People are jerks. People are rude. People don't care about anyone but themselves much of the time. Maybe I was the dog they chose to kick because of my whiteness, but if I hadn't been there, they'd have kicked someone else who they also felt was sufficiently lacking in status or power for them to abuse in their hatred and frustration with life. It wasn't about me. It was about them.

Further, I had to consider my responsibility in bringing on some of the actions I hated. I can't say right now what some of those might have been. Part of it may have been a defensive posture, a pushy, and sometimes malevolent look to try and intimidate people so they wouldn't stare, point, laugh, or talk about me. Part of it in terms of my work and interaction with students could also have been feeling that my "American" way of offering opinions as if they were facts may have been more than a little off-putting in their culture and my lack of understanding that they have a way of dealing with each other that is indirect which is in contradiction to American directness.

When I took things apart, I could see at least that some of it was about me and some of it was about them and some of it was, yes, about racism. However, I could not logically conclude that any time something went badly, it was because of my skin color. Being white, I was also constantly challenged in any assertion that I was experiencing racism (other white people in Japan don't hesitate to descend on you like pack of rabid dogs if you suggest the Japanese aren't anything but totally kind and helpful to the .2%).

In America though, I, however, cannot challenge anyone's perception that an interaction was racism and suggest that maybe, just maybe, the issue was that they did something jerk-like to provoke a response or, maybe, just maybe, sometimes you can't always get what you want because the pie in life doesn't have enough slices for everyone and you don't always get served first. I'm not allowed to say any of that because of my skin color. I am muzzled by the concept of "privilege" when such narratives are played for my consideration. That is not to say that sometimes it's not racism or the consequence of the feces pie that minorities have been force fed throughout history (especially African-Americans who have been shafted worst of all), but sometimes, hey, it's not racism!

At any rate, I don't know what will come of the situation with the prehistoric entities living beneath me, but I will never confront them directly again as it is clear that they will not take any responsibility for their actions. I did contact the manager once more (third time) about this and mentioned that, if we were to move, there's a high likelihood that any replacement may also be less than keen on the vibrating floors and bombastic T.V. This was my way of encouraging him to deal with them more aggressively because, if we go away, the problem won't go away. My guess is that he'll tell them, again, to use headphones to deal with their issue and that they, again, won't do anything differently other than cool it on turning it up to "11" for a short time then start limit-testing me again.

They feel entirely entitled to do whatever they want because they don't think they are doing anything wrong and the only reason I'm complaining is that I've got some sort of personal issue with them. The logical explanation that a person with a hearing problem can't tell how loud his T.V. is because he can't hear very well just is one they won't accept because then it's their fault and not mine.

It's not my fault. I am not against them because they are old or Chinese or lacking in basic self-awareness or whatever. I just don't want to feel the earth shaking under my feet while I'm sitting at my desk making whiny blog posts.

Making me into someone I don't want to be

I recently read an article about noise that bleeds through apartments in Japan. The story talked about how piano playing in particular is an enormous problem because of the vibratory sounds traveling through floors, ceilings, and walls and how disruptive they are to other tenants. You can not only hear these sounds, but you can feel them so doing things like using ear plugs or playing other sounds to mask them is not especially helpful. The story talked about how this sound pollution was so maddening that a man murdered a woman and her daughter who lived in the apartment below him because of the noise.

This is on my mind because I live above an old couple who apparently have hearing issues and need to listen to their television at bombastic levels in order to hear it. What is more, their sound system is incredibly "bassy". That means that the loud noises are sending not only sounds, but vibrations up through the floor. I can feel it when my feet rest on the floor. I can sometimes even feel it through the sofa/bed when I sit on it.

I had noisy neighbors in Japan, but I lived on the ground floor. Sometimes there would be stomping around or slamming of doors. Not infrequently, I would also hear people dropping heavy objects on the ground. It sounded like they were hefting concrete blocks and dumping them to the ground. I also had a couple of old people who lived about 10 feet from my living room window who would stand outside and have super loud conversations about nothing in particular for about a half hour quite frequently. None of that is as bad as what I'm dealing with now.

I didn't appreciate how tolerable the intermittent noisy experiences were until I started living above people who play their T.V. with a loud and heavy bass for extended periods of time. What is worse than their doing it in the daytime is that they also were doing it at night for some time. For months, we tolerated it because they'd eventually lay off around 11:15 to 11:45. When they started extending it to after midnight and nearly 1:00 am, we asked them nicely to stop doing it, but they said it was not them. They protested that their T.V. was not that loud so it must have been coming from another unit.

Initially, I believed them; when I complained to the property manager, I told him that they said it was not them so we'd have to track down the culprit with the loud, late television viewing. It became clear, however, that they were enormous liars and eventually the property manager walked by late at night and could hear their T.V. He told them to use headphones and to cut it out.

For awhile, they settled down, but in the past several weeks they've been ramping up the volume during the day and dragging the clock later into the night and earlier into the morning. In the past two weeks, they've had it on and loud before 8:00 am and after 11:00 pm. Our contract says that people are supposed to be quiet after 10:00 pm and I'd wager before 9:00 am (I haven't checked that end). These people seem to be limit-testing us and I hate it. In fact, I hate them. I hate them so much that I wish one of those ancient people would shuffle off the mortal coil each time I feel my floor vibrating and hear their bassy T.V. blaring. They're liars and they're selfish and rude. They know they're disturbing us with their behavior, but they do not care about anyone but themselves.

The thing is that I don't want to be the sort of person who hates others. I definitely don't want to wish that two useless wastes of oxygen who seem to exist to do little more than watch T.V. and potter around with plants in front of our building would just end my suffering by ending their useless existence to spare me from having to be a complainer and to suffer the physical and emotional difficulties their behavior imposes on me. These people, by showing a great lack of consideration and limit-testing my tolerance, are making me into a person that I don't want to be. They're making me petty, angry, and intolerant. And by lying about their behavior rather than asking for my understanding and reaching some sort of compromise (like allowing me to come down and adjust the sound on their set so it is loud, but not vibrating), they close the door on any sort of amicable arrangement.

One could say that I need to learn to be more tolerant, but my body has a say in this. Being exposed to loud sounds and unpleasant vibrations coursing through your body is like being in a room where someone is dragging fingernails on a blackboard. The nervous system of human beings was not designed to tolerate that on a regular basis. It's the reason that man in Japan murdered people who kept playing piano. It drives people crazy to be subjected to that. While I'm very, very far from flying into a murderous rage, I am often gritting my teeth and wondering what sort of small animal needs to die in order for God to step in and smite their deaf asses (or at least make their sound system lose its robust bass control).

I know that people often don't mean to upset others with their actions. In fact, most of the time, they are just being incredibly selfish, but it's not like these people can't pursue other options, especially late at night. Wearing headphones is not out of the question, though it isn't as convenient as blasting your T.V. and drooling while sitting unencumbered on the sofa. They just clearly do not want to do anything that mitigates the discomfort their behavior causes us and they have no problem with making my husband and I suffer for their convenience.

The thing that bothers me most is that I don't want to be the sort of person I'm turning into. I call and complain repeatedly to the property manager. I have complained to them directly which I also don't like to do. I feel myself filling with tension and eventually anger when I hear and feel their noise. I've been trying to manage my reactions using cognitive techniques (relaxing, reframing, mindfulness), but it is honestly exhausting me to tolerate this on a regular basis. This really isn't about my lack of patience or understanding. It's about their lack of consideration.

I want to be a good, kind, and tolerant person. I want to be the kind of person who understands that old people have issues that make them do things which are disruptive to others. There are all of these good things that I want to be, but I can't be because what I'm feeling in my body is like being subjected to Chinese water torture. I can't be as good a good person as I'd like to be when I live near people who are selfish, dishonest, and callous toward my feelings and interests. It's hard to respect people who clearly do not respect me.