I suffered from extreme noise sensitivity for years. My family would walk on egg shells around me because I couldn't handle a laugh from someone near by, and the ting of cutlery on a plate was intensely startling. Being in a group setting where sounds came from more than one source was hugely distressing. The filtering of sounds was a core problem. Poor stimulus filtering is a well studied phenomenon with schizophrenia and related disorders. Check out sensory gating studies for more on the subject.

I was put on a much stronger dose of risperidone recently, and my ability to cope with sounds, and filter out irrelevant stimuli have improved a lot.

Let's hope it stays that way.