'Little House on the Prairie' star Melissa Gilbert’s neurological disorder caused ‘difficult’ childhood
Melissa Gilbert is looking back on the difficult moments she experienced as a child.
During a recent interview with People magazine, Gilbert called living with her neurological disorder "a really dark and difficult part of my childhood," especially while on set of "Little House on the Prairie."
"If any of the kids chewed gum or ate or tapped their fingernails on the table, [in the on-set schoolroom] I would want to run away so badly," Gilbert told People. "I would turn beet red, and my eyes would fill up with tears, and I'd just sit there feeling absolutely miserable and horribly guilty for feeling so hateful towards all these people—people I loved."
It was not until she became an adult that Gilbert learned there was a name for what she was experiencing. She found out she was suffering from a neurological disorder called misophonia, which causes the sufferer to experience emotional and physiological reactions to certain sounds and visuals.
Gilbert recalled "sobbing" when she found out there was a reason behind what she was feeling and that she "wasn't just a bad person." She now works with the Duke Center for Misophonia and Emotional Regulation at Duke University's School of Medicine to help raise awareness about the disease.
"I really just thought that I was rude. And I felt really bad," she explained. "And guilty, which is an enormous component of misophonia, the guilt that you feel for these feelings of fight or flight. It's a really isolating disorder."
She explained her family thought of her as someone who "would just glare at" her loved ones "with eyes filled with hate."
Despite knowing her diagnosis, the "Little House on the Prairie" star still found it difficult to deal with the symptoms, noting her condition worsened the older she got. She recalled getting angrier as she went through menopause, saying "as the estrogen leaked out, the anger seeped in," and affected her day-to-day life.
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The toll her condition was taking on her family led Gilbert to reach out to Dr. Zach Rosenthal, the head of Duke's Center for Misophonia, and asked him for help. He wrote her back, telling her "you are not alone," after which she enrolled in 16 weeks of "intensive" cognitive behavioral therapy to treat her misophonia.
"This is an emotional issue. It's about self-regulation and self-control," said Gilbert. "I realized I could ride out these waves but that they're not going to go away. They never go away. But now I have all these tools to enable me to be more comfortable and less triggered. It made me feel in control."
Gilbert happily told People her loved ones no longer "have to walk on eggshells" around her and that she gave all her children a pack of gum for Christmas, letting them know it was safe to chew it in front of her without worrying about making her angry.
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While at therapy, Gilbert was able to identify the different ways misophonia manifests in her body, explaining one of the first signs she is starting to feel anxious is that her feet begin to clench.
"So as soon as I start to feel it coming, I relax my feet," she explained. "And once I have control over my feet for some reason, I can do everything else….it changed my whole life."