The condition that makes people hate fidgeting | Global News Avenue

“If I see someone banging their fingers on the table, my first instinct is to chop their fingers off with a knife,” one anonymous patient told researchers.

Another netizen shared: “I get physically sick when I see people making very small repetitive movements, like when my husband flexes his toes. I hold it in, but I feel like throwing up.”

Sound familiar? If so, maybe you also suffer from a condition called dyskinesia—a distinctly annoying condition of fidgeting.

Scientists are working to learn more about this phenomenon, whose cause is currently unclear.

For the latest research, see PLoS One magazineExperts conducted in-depth interviews with 21 people who belonged to dyskinesia support groups.

Common triggers are movement of the legs, hands, or feet—thigh shaking, finger twitching, and shoe dragging.

Tapping pens and fiddling with hair are also triggers, although less frequently.

People often report overlap with another, more recognized disorder, called phonophobia – Dislikes other people’s noises, such as heavy breathing or loud eating.

It’s impossible to know exactly how many people may have a movement disorder.

A recent Canadian study This suggests that perhaps one in three of us may be negatively affected by other people fidgeting and experiencing intense emotions of anger, torture and disgust.

I spoke with Dr. Jane Gregory, a clinical psychologist at the University of Oxford in the UK who has been researching and treating dyskinesia and phonophobia.

“The two often go together. People often have both,” she told BBC News.

Although there is no reliable data, Dr. Gregory said the condition may be very common.

“Obviously, people have been going through this for a long time, but there just wasn’t a name.”

She told me that people have different levels of aversion to fidgeting.

“Some people may be very irritated by fidgeting or repetitive movements, but it won’t have much of an impact on daily life,” she says.

Others, however, may “have very strong emotional reactions—anger, panic, or pain—but be unable to filter them out.”

Through Dr. Gregory’s work, she often encounters people with more extreme symptoms. Many people are adults and have suffered from dyskinesia for years, but some are in their teens and experience the condition for the first time.

Andrea, 62, from the UK, said she suffered from phonophobia and akinophobia when she was 13, but it was not recognized at the time.

One of her earliest memories of the condition was of a girl at school who was cutting her nails and causing her pain.

“Most dyskinesias tend to focus on people’s hands — what they’re doing with their hands and what they’re touching,” she said.

Another trigger for her is when people cover part of their mouth with their hands while talking – it’s ugly to her, and she feels like her mouth is becoming painful when she does it.

Andrea said the anger she experienced was explosive and instantaneous.

“There’s no thought process in it. There’s no justification. It just explodes inside you, and that’s why it’s so painful.”

She told me that she had tried different strategies to manage her condition but could not stop it.

Now she shields herself from society, lives alone, works from home, and says her entire life is geared toward avoiding things that might cause her pain.

Andrea said she has many supportive friends who understand she sometimes needs to change the way she interacts with them.

“It’s easier to quit. Try and survive. You can’t keep asking people not to do things.”

She explained that she doesn’t blame people for their fidgeting and understands that most people’s behavior is unconscious and out of habit.

Andrea says sharing her experience with a Facebook support group has been really helpful.

Gill, 53, from Kent, is another member of the group.

She said her dyskinesia makes her heart race.

“Anything triggers me, from bouncing in the leg to the way someone looks and holds a fork.

“I’m angry, very angry.

“My heart was beating so fast. It was like fighting to escape.”

Julie, 54, from Hull, said her main feeling with dyskinesia was anxiety.

“I was on the bus one day and a woman walked by and her arms were swinging. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I felt really anxious about it, not angry.

“It’s something silly, like someone makes me a cup of tea and they take the tea bag and bounce it up and down, up and down. Why?

“Or if someone is sitting there shaking their leg. I can’t take my eyes off it. Or if I do look away, I have to look back and see if they’re still doing it.”

She told the BBC that the unpleasant feeling afterward would haunt her for hours.

“I’m not an angry person. It just made me feel like I had a ball in my stomach that wanted to explode. It wasn’t anger, it was just feeling really anxious inside.”

Julie says she’s not afraid to ask people to stop doing things she finds painful, but often walks away.

She told me that her dyspraxia made her unhappy.

“It made me internalize it. I didn’t like that I felt like this.”

Dr. Gregory said the condition can be extremely debilitating and prevent people from concentrating and doing normal things.

“Part of their brain is constantly thinking about this action,” she explains.

“Violent images may appear in their minds. They want to grab that person and force them to stop…even if they’re not angry in their normal lives.”

As for why some people get triggered, Dr. Gregory said it could be a heightened basic survival instinct — like a meerkat looking for danger.

She likened the feeling to seeing “someone rushing in the distance” or “tuning to the sound of footsteps behind you.”

“For some people, you don’t tune it out anymore. Your brain is constantly monitoring it.”

She says it’s not very useful in the noisy, busy world of modern life.

If you are constantly triggered, frustration and anger will increase.

For some, it’s the habits of strangers that are most annoying, for others, it’s the habits of loved ones.

Dr. Gregory said a common way people try to manage the condition is to avoid seeing the fidgeting person or distract themselves.

Others may try to avoid people altogether if possible.

If there’s just an isolated visual trigger — like hair twirling — experts say it’s sometimes possible to Reconstructive Therapy Help people see situations in a more positive way.

“You might look at it intentionally and create a new backstory for why someone would do this sport.”

This helps reduce anger and anxiety, she says.

Dr Gregory added: “Many people feel very embarrassed or ashamed that they have received such a strong reaction.”

“This in itself can be a problem, because suppressing your emotions can exacerbate them and make them worse.”