Authored by Shane Irwin . . .

As a lifetime churchgoer, now 56 years old, I’ve had to leave the traditional (institutional) church. That’s because of my ever-worsening intolerance to certain sounds. They have taken me away from that major part of my life. It’s not that I dislike the children at church, but they are little torturers to me. Every little squawk they make during the sermon causes me to wince in pain, and to have to stop up my ears with my hands oftentimes. Then there’s the fellowship time in the foyer after the service—hard floors, lots of reverb, and a few children getting excited and even being egged on by their parents or each other, having fun. Those things have forced me to make a beeline for the door. It’s the high-pitched voices that get me. They sound so loud and cause me shooting stabbing sensations in my ears. And sometimes even an adult woman with a higher voice can cause these awful symptoms. This now feels like the beginning of isolation for me.

I’m Shane, and I have pain hyperacusis and loudness hyperacusis (but no tinnitus). They’re worsening by the year, and had really come on strong once I hit about 53. I’ve had them all my life, to a small degree, at least . I’ve always hated the sound of liquid poured into a glass, which the TV and movie producers seem to love to enhance for effect. But now, watching TV at home with my wife can be almost impossible at times. I cannot watch anything with kids who speak loudly, especially when they yell or scream, which is what they do almost always on TV and movies. Most kids are loud by nature. The TV and movie producers love to cut to a new scene with a crying baby. No warning for me. Just BAM! in my ears, screaming, and it’s torture. Then in the same movie, someone hails a cab with a whistle on the street. That whistle seems 50 times louder to me than anything else. Then the sirens on TV or in real life. It’s mostly the high pitches for me, but also loud mufflers on a Harley or a teenager’s jacked up truck. They think it’s great! To me, it’s PAINFUL and DEAFENING. Here in Nashville, Tennessee, there are a large amount of these loud pickup trucks. The Harleys, too, and throw in a few GT Mustangs with aggressive muffler sounds.

Thankfully, right about the same exact time I had to leave the traditional churches, I became more aware of the fact that home churches are more biblical anyway, so that’s the route we are going now. I cannot forbid children, but those adults who join us will know of my situation, and it will be an unspoken rule that children need not be here unless they are silent.

As for the TV noises and the street noises, I’m at the mercy of what my surroundings are. Before I left my last church, I tried sitting in the back by the audio booth. I ran a headphone cord for myself and got a direct feed of the sermon into my ears, while attempting to block out the little squawks from the children. After about a month of this, I realized it wasn’t going to work out. So we regretfully left on good terms. I was the keyboard player in the small church band. I also have a cover band here in Nashville. We play top 40 music from artists like the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis, Paul McCartney, etc. People always ask me how on Earth I can be in a band with my hyperacusis, and it seems to me that some of them think of it as a type of “gotcha” question. I usually just tell them we don’t have any crying babies in the band. It’s not loud sounds in general that hurt me. It’s almost always just the high pitches.

Interestingly, I’m also half-deaf, especially in my right ear. I now wear two hearing aids. I don’t hear high pitches very well at all, my ears and my brain are always trying to amplify the highs as they enter my ear, so it’s a struggle to make out words. Then as I’m straining to hear, a baby cries, and my ears that were struggling to hear those high-pitched noises are suddenly blasted with it. It’s a shooting pain that’s crippling. I often liken this affect to something we see in movies where the well-armed home invaders have night vision goggles on. The goggles enhance what little light there is. Then the resident hero pops out and shines a flashlight in their eyes and BAM!, their eyes are blasted with too much light and they are blinded temporarily. And just to be clear, whether or not I wear my hearing aids matters not. The high pitches blast me either way. In addition to loudness and pain hyperacusis, I think I could have auditory recruitment, because my symptoms of deafness tangled in my sound intolerance of piercing higher pitches seem to match that hearing disorder.

It also seems to me that hyperacusis can be hereditary. My mother has it. Growing up we always thought she was just being stupid or weird, complaining about the kids who were having fun when they were playing and yelling outside on the streets near home. She couldn’t tolerate it. She can’t stand people chewing gum around her, as she hears the cracking very amplified in her ears. Her father had it as well. My sister also has it to some degree, but with tinnitus being her main hearing issue.

Although I’ve never been overly social, I am now becoming more of a homebody than ever. My wife is okay with that, as she stays home much of the time also. We do go out to eat, and it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that we will end up with noisy children in the next booth over. It doesn’t matter where we go. Even to a nice and pricey place. As soon as we sit down, the next booth over will have a kid or a few kids, being loud and causing me horrific pain, ruining my evening. I feel horrible that my wife has to endure this issue with me, but she’s very understanding and accommodating. I’m so thankful for that. We’ve been married only eight years, and I know she didn’t sign up for this.

I don’t know what my future looks like, whether I will become even more isolated or instead learn ways to deal with what I have. Perhaps constant earmuffs are in my future. Life is becoming a series of torture sessions wherever I go. These conditions are affecting my career as well. I haven’t even gone into that yet, but I’ll just leave that for another day. I fully understand now that my mother wasn’t just being stupid or weird about her intolerance for kids playing outdoors. Although for her it was more of an annoyance to her ears. For me, it’s also painful.