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Melissa Gilbert struggled with misophonia on Little House on the Prairie set

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Melissa Gilbert struggled with misophonia on Little House on the Prairie set

“I’d just sit there feeling absolutely miserable and horribly guilty,” the actress said.

Before a medical condition gets officially diagnosed and understood, many people can suffer in silence without understanding what’s wrong with them. That, it turns out, was Melissa Gilbert‘s experience as a child on Little House on the Prairie. The actress told PEOPLE in a new interview that she has the neurological disorder known as misophonia, and she wants to share her experience with the public.

Misophonia is a condition that causes people to suffer strong, unpleasant emotional responses to certain sound and visual triggers. Common examples of such triggers include the sounds of people nearby chewing, swallowing, and/or smacking their lips. As a child on the set of Little House on the Prairie, Gilbert was often in close proximity to such sounds from other children.

“If any of the kids chewed gum or ate or tapped their fingernails on the table, 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.”

Melissa Gilbert.
Melissa Gilbert.

Gilbert is now teaming up with the Duke Center for Misophonia and Emotional Regulation, part of Duke University’s School of Medicine, to spread awareness about the condition. Though it’s been recognized by some experts for years, misophonia is still not included in databases like the  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Gilbert herself didn’t even know she had it until she reached out to the Duke Center last year.

“I sobbed when I found out that it had a name and I wasn’t just a bad person,” she said.

Though misophonia is a neurological condition, its symptoms are often emotional — like snapping at loved ones and family members for making natural sounds. Gilbert underwent weeks of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in order to understand her triggers and learn to withstand them.

RELATED: The untold story of ‘Sylvia,’ the most WTF episode of Little House on the Prairie ever

“This is an emotional issue. It’s about self-regulation and self-control,” Gilbert said.

Adapted from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books, Little House on the Prairie ran on NBC from 1974-1983. Gilbert played the character based on Wilder herself. She continued the role in multiple made-for-TV movie specials after the original show ended.

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