What is sensory overload and overstimulation?

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fervidrose
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18 Apr 2011, 10:02 am

foxman wrote:
I think kclark explained it really well, or at least in an very understandable fashion. I usually try to explain it something like this...

My brain doesn't automatically filter out sensory background noise. Where most people's brains will ignore less important/relevant information (clocks ticking, ceiling fans moving, background conversations) my brain doesn't. In an environment where there are too many stimuli (for me this usually means lots of people, many conversations, fluorescent lights, sudden movements, repetitive but arrhythmic motions or sounds, etc) my brain will simply give up trying to integrate them all, and will start shutting them out. At least for me, my vision starts shutting down first...it's not like I can't see, but more like nothing I see makes sense, and I can't really react to it. If things get too bad, I pass out, and if things are really bad, I seize. The more stressed or tired I am, the less my brain is able to integrate all of the extra stimuli received.

Most of the time, I'm able to cope...my friends all know not to touch me without asking, or without giving me lots of visual warning first (i.e. never giving me a hug from behind). Even if I'm a little overstimulated, my brain doesn't usually shut down...I just get really cranky and snap at people for chewing too loudly^.^

I've heard that sensory overload is like an acid trip...I don't really have any way to confirm this, since I don't do drugs (good lord can you imagine?). Besides, my perspective seems perfectly normal to me, so I have no way to judge.


For starters, I'm not diagnosed, but am researching into autism spectrum (I am ADHD anyway).
But some of my reactions sound more like aspie to me than ADHD.

This description is almost my clone. Except I'm still trying to get people to not touch me without asking, and I don't pass out or seize. A hug from behind, or any extra touch I don't welcome, and I'm as stiff as a board.
When people pop their gum in class or chew with their mouth open, I can hear EVERYTHING. Forget hearing the instructor . And I want to punch them, very hard. Scratching sounds, like nails on jeans, nylons, even dry skin, bugs me too. Between that and the texture thing, I basically refuse to wear nylons.One girl who sits next to me chips and picks at her nails constantly. My mom used to as well. Drives me nuts!! ! I want to ...agghh...! !! ! And sometimes it's just the anticipation of the sounds. If I even SEE the movement for that it distracts me, so I go into all sorts of contortions in my chair to avoid looking at them!!
For these little noises, I will not punch anyone, but I am scared that I will turn around and scream at them one day. When I hear it, my heart speeds up, and breathing goes shorter. Sometimes I feel like crying and going into the fetal position and covering my ears, which doesn't work because I still hear it in my head. I feel so neurotic asking someone to stop doing something so seemingly...normal...

When I go shopping for more than 1.5-2 hours at a time, I can get very confused, completely indecisive, and don't want to look at anything anymore. And I mean anything. Sometimes I avoid eye contact. It's too noisy, and the colors are way too bright that I can't..something...
Sleepy, YES. Busy days at school, I get home at 2pm, and I want a nap!

One thing that has helped me with grocery shopping is my MP3 player and music. Even just wearing the ear buds is enough sometimes.

Can you tell I don't go to parties? Lol.
Sometimes driving at night is exhausting. Once it was dark and SNOWING in big flakes. The roads themselves, if you could see them, were fine. But The big flakes were coming at me! Big bright moving ones. I could hardly see the road, every nanosecond my attention was on those flakes.



bumble
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18 Apr 2011, 10:31 am

For me it can be a combination of things like everyone talking at once in a room, clinking, footsteps on the floor, banging, beeping, air conditioning humming and so on combined with too much visual stimuli coming at me and problems with the lighting if it is a bright sunny day or I am in a Supermarket (supermarket lights make me feel queasy for some reason). It all seems to build up and swamp me...at which point all I want to do is flee to somewhere dim and quiet!

My clothes may also be irritating me and sometimes solitary things can set me off such as a clothes tag irritating me for 3 hours straight or the sound of a piece of electronic equipment constantly buzzing (I have a lamp that does that unless I wiggle it every so often and it's really quite lucky that it has not been thrown out of a window! It only survives because at this time I need it for my art work). The bathroom fan constantly going off at night will also set me off if it keeps going and going and going and going...Fortunately I have the found the off switch for that (although it is supposed to turn off when you switch the light off..after a few minutes anyway but sometimes does not).

People just usually see me as highly strung and impatient as when in a supermarket for example, if I start to get overwhelmed with everything going on I will usually just huff and puff, sigh, tut, say 'oh for gods sake' and drop the shopping where I am standing before walking off lol.

I shop on the internet mostly these days though lol.



katzefrau
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24 Apr 2011, 12:59 am

foxman wrote:
I've heard that sensory overload is like an acid trip...


for me it is, or that's the closest thing to describe it. i've not seen anyone else on the board describe it as such that i recall, but i do recall anbuend writing (maybe on her blog) that an autistic friend said something like "as long as there are shopping malls, i'll never need LSD"

a well placed ceiling fan will do it.

sound overload just makes me angry, but i'm learning to better sort it out so i don't yell at people around me.

i've written more explicitly earlier in this thread.

funny how understanding it now doesn't make it go away.


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pensieve
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24 Apr 2011, 7:05 am

When I stay in a noisy environment for too long my sense of hearing gets jumbled and can't make out individual sounds then everything gets muffled. I feel like I'm under water and can barely move and at times, speak. My mind just feels so slow and it takes removing myself from the environment to recover.

katzefrau wrote:
foxman wrote:
I've heard that sensory overload is like an acid trip...


for me it is, or that's the closest thing to describe it. i've not seen anyone else on the board describe it as such that i recall, but i do recall anbuend writing (maybe on her blog) that an autistic friend said something like "as long as there are shopping malls, i'll never need LSD"

a well placed ceiling fan will do it.

sound overload just makes me angry, but i'm learning to better sort it out so i don't yell at people around me.

i've written more explicitly earlier in this thread.

funny how understanding it now doesn't make it go away.

I've never been on acid but I think I may experience something similar. Sometimes if I just go with it (exercise will do it sometimes) I can enjoy it. Well that does involve actually hallucinating so I don't know if it's the same thing.


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katzefrau
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24 Apr 2011, 2:04 pm

pensieve wrote:
I've never been on acid but I think I may experience something similar. Sometimes if I just go with it (exercise will do it sometimes) I can enjoy it.


.. if i give in to it sometimes i'm ok, just really confused and inarticulate (but then it can be difficult to remove myself from the situation). i will look at an object over and over again and by the time i have determined what it is, something else is demanding my attention and i'm confused again. but oddly it's a tolerable state for a short time. it's when i have to function that i start getting aggressive or panicky.

for the record i don't recommend LSD use to people on the spectrum. it induces overload, and can send you into a panic if you lose track of anything going on in your immediate environment. as this scenario may be familiar to some of us even while sober, it should be approached with intense caution.


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01 Sep 2016, 3:55 pm

I did an informal survey on sensory overstimulation here at WrongPlanet.net several years ago, and the responses (about 40 of them) were collected and categorised, and included in their cut-sliced-and-diced form in a research proposal which an autistic friend of mine put together for an interdisciplinary study on sensory overload, once she had begun to uncover the pathologenesis of the condition.

The basic (simplified) physiology of sensory overload is explained in a video based on her work, and this also explains the background to the treatment which eventually took away my sensory overload completely. (I haven't had it for years now.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw1dEj6A4ro

Since that video was made, though, she has studied a lot more, and other factors not mentioned in the video have also emerged (e.g. overexpression of iNOS/eNOS). She is writing a book about it now, to be given to doctors who need to treat autistic patients who suffer from sensory overstimulation.


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