This self-paced, video series provides caregivers with a comprehensive understanding of misophonia. Next, it educates caregivers about the common dynamics that play out around misophonia in families that can cause significant distress to both youth and caregivers. Caregivers will learn how the youth’s relationship to their misophonic distress causes suffering and concrete skills to model and support their youth in changing this. Finally, this program incorporates and adapts many components of Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE).

This adaptation is for two reasons! First, many youth with misophonia have co-occurring anxiety disorders, which SPACE is an evidence-based treatment of. Second, very similarly to youth anxiety, misophonia in youth can entangle caregivers in a challenging cycle of pushing youth to tolerate distress or helping them avoid it. While caregivers certainly don’t cause misophonia, they can play a big role in supporting youth to more effectively manage it. Treatment focuses on helping caregivers to a) respond supportively to their child’s misophonic distress with a combination of validation and confidence, and b) reduce accommodating their child’s avoidance. This process helps caregivers get out of the common traps of “protecting” their child, “demanding” they manage their distress, or feeling lost and overwhelmed with how to help navigate. Similar to SPACE, this program exclusively focuses on changing parental behavior instead of youth behavior, which reduces escalation and empowers parents to take action to support their youth.

To learn more about this program and it's developers, please visit: https://www.tapclinicnc.com/intune