Melissa Gilbert, known for her role as “Half Pint” Laura Ingalls in “Little House on the Prairie,” revealed to PEOPLE “a really dark and difficult part of my childhood.”
Gilbert was later diagnosed with the neurological disorder misophonia, in which sufferers react strongly and unpleasantly to sounds and sometimes also to visual stimuli.
“I cried when I found out it had a name and I wasn’t just a bad person,” Gilbert, 60, told PEOPLE.
Many noises, the report said, including clapping, chewing, gum chewing and fingernail clicking, “would make them angry.”
Gilbert said the disease affected her as a young child on the set of the popular show.
“When one of the kids was chewing gum, eating, or tapping their nails on the table, I wanted to run away,” Gilbert tells PEOPLE. “I would turn red like a tomato and my eyes would fill with tears. I would just sit there and feel absolutely miserable and horribly guilty because I felt so much hatred toward all these people – people I loved.”
Mark Heim is a reporter at The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_HeimHe can be heard daily from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile app.
