hartzofspace wrote:
I use foam earplugs when I find myself getting overwhelmed with too many sounds. I like the way they expand in my ears, and the sounds magically dwindle down, to a tolerable level. And, I can still hear conversation if directed at me, personally. Right this minute, the maintenance guy is using a power drill in my kitchen, and the outdoors staff are using noisy leaf blowers (this is annual maintenance time.) Thank God for earplugs!
This is a very helpful tip. I've never tried that. I didn't realize there were foam plugs. When I'm out and about on errands and such I often use an ipod to drown out all the irritating noises.
I will be going back to work within the next couple of months, after being off on stress leave since last summer and I'm dreading, absolutely dreading, the usual issues cropping up again in the workplace environment. One of them is my hyper sensitivity to noise and inability to block it out. Sometimes it's unbearable. We live in nightmarishly noisy time. On top of all of the non-human generated noise, there are some people who are so loud, not only in their voice, but in their movements, being around them is torture. It's like they have one volume setting -
LOUD!! !