What is sensory overload and overstimulation?

Page 1 of 3 [ 36 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3  Next

deathchibi
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Age: 132
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,994
Location: earth

12 Apr 2008, 9:22 am

high pitch noise make me paralized and hurt me more than the time i sprained my hand from jumping out of a tree :cry:



teflon_woman
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 8 Apr 2008
Age: 51
Gender: Female
Posts: 57

12 Apr 2008, 11:37 pm

I don't get it that bad. But if the tv is on I can't think at all. Same at parties. What's the point of being surrounded with interesting people if you can't think clearly enough to talk to any of them? When I was younger I would enjoy just retreating to a corner and watching everybody, but now I try to just avoid them.



Liverbird
Supporting Member
Supporting Member

User avatar

Joined: 13 Jun 2007
Age: 54
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,119
Location: My heart belongs to Anfield

13 Apr 2008, 5:51 pm

We were watching X-Files Season 6 yesterday. We were watching the "Biogenesis" episode. This is the one where Mulder and Scully end up underground being dissolved by yellowish-green snot stuff. In this episode, Mulder gets what he describes as a hollow feeling in his head. People start feeling far away and sounding far away. They also seem to dissolve in the snot stuff before his eyes. There was also a scene where Scully was attending Mulder's wake and it was just bizarre, but an accurate depiction of how social situations often seem to me.

I looked at my husband and I said, "See, that's how crowded places get for me." He said, "yeah, I"ve seen you do that. You get a really confused look on your face and then you look panicked and then you say, 'I gotta get outta here'."

It's nice to see confirmation, but also nice to see a good "movie" version of what we experience. If I'd had to put it into words, I never would have been able to do it!


_________________
"All those things that you taught me to fear
I've got them in my garden now
And you're not welcome here" ---Poe


EvilKimEvil
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Sep 2007
Age: 45
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,671

13 Apr 2008, 6:13 pm

For me, it has to do with the type of stimulation more than the amount. For example, I don't mind hearing loud music and people talking loudly in another room and random urban noises all at once as long as I don't have to interact with anyone at the same time.

I get overloaded by complex social situations (talking to more than one or two people at once) and specific sensations that I find bothersome.



JakeWilson
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 11 Jul 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 132

13 Apr 2008, 6:56 pm

EvilKimEvil wrote:
For me, it has to do with the type of stimulation more than the amount. For example, I don't mind hearing loud music and people talking loudly in another room and random urban noises all at once as long as I don't have to interact with anyone at the same time.

I get overloaded by complex social situations (talking to more than one or two people at once) and specific sensations that I find bothersome.



This is how it is with me. I don't actually do anything really noticeable when I am in a bright room full of talking people, but if I have run out of things to talk about with people then my brain shuts down and I sit down somewhere and think. It is not something everyone notices but it happens. When I am trying to interact with more than one or two people sometimes I do get overwhelmed and do wierd things.



Rainstorm5
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 19 Feb 2008
Age: 56
Gender: Female
Posts: 948

13 Apr 2008, 7:39 pm

DevonB wrote:

For some people it's auditory, visual or tactile. Some people even experience Synisthesia (sp?), where you experience colours from sound, or taste from a tactile sensation.

My son and I are Sensory Defensive. One thing we have in common is if, for example, our socks fit incorrectly...the tactile sensation will induce irritability, shaking, and perspiration. No matter how much we tell ourselves that we will get over it, we can't, and it'll drive us to become so agitated that we will begin shutting down. I have a tendency to rock, and indulge in stims, and my little one will start crying and hitting.



I don't think I've had anything like Synesthesia, and erratic lighting like from florescent bulbs doesn't really bother me. What does bother me is too much auditory input. If there are too many people trying talk to me at once, or loud music playing somewhere nearby, I lose it. Usually I begin to cry or else get a really nasty temper flare-up, in which I curse out loud and tell people to get the hell away from me. It happened once at work and immediately after I did it, I apologized and tried to explain. I could have sworn I was about to be fired over it (they are not aware of my 'issues'), but I guess they put it down to job stress. I can feel when it begins to be too much on me, though. My mind begins to get fuzzy and even if someone is trying to explain something to me slowly, I can't understand what they're saying (or if I do, I instantly forget it).


_________________
Terminal Outsider, rogue graphic designer & lunatic fringe.


anbuend
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 5 Jul 2004
Age: 43
Gender: Female
Posts: 5,039

13 Apr 2008, 9:57 pm

It means being overwhelmed by sensory input (and often by cognition itself), in any of a wide variety of ways. I don't like the overly mechanical nature of the way that most of us are taught about it -- the one that starts by dividing it up into each sense, then describes suspiciously similar-looking things that can happen to each sense. I have come to doubt that's actually the mechanism that overload happens by. Not that I know the precise ways it does happen, but that description really doesn't cover my experience of it as well as I once thought it did.

I'll try to fumble out a description of how it does seem to happen for me, though, because of my continuing bizarre desire to actually describe what happens instead of what I'm told must be happening.

So, the "overload" aspect of things can be taken sort of literally and turned into an analogy by doing that: "Over" "load" meaning, too much of something loaded onto something that can't hold it, or can't easily hold it.

So let's say that my brain absolutely cannot hold more than 50 pounds (a unit I'm just making up) of information in it at once. That's the limit, there's nothing past that, if it was a backpack the bottom would drop out of it or something.

But also keep in mind that there are several stages before that. It can only with absolute comfort hold 10 pounds, with small effort hold 20 pounds, with moderate effort hold 30 pounds, and with heavy effort hold 40 pounds. And its absolute limit is 50.

And so then your ability to function starts being compromised the more effort it takes, and you're trying to keep a load of (realistically) between 10 and 20 pounds in there at any given time.

Among the things that all have a "weight" are:

  • Any kind of sensory input at all, including input from inside the body
  • Any kind of mental process, such as processing information, thinking, remembering, connecting, abstraction, finding patterns, etc.
  • Actions
  • Effort
  • Emotions


There are things that will either increase or reduce the "weight" of various things that would otherwise all seem to "weigh" the same amount.

For instance, having a way to filter out most information that comes in, leaving only the information the filtering system deems relevant, is one major way that most people seem to avoid overload, it makes the "weight" of the information that gets through much lighter. This is something that autistic people are not always doing, and that's one reason that we're likely to experience overload: We're dealing with more information, which has more "weight".

(The most common cause of overload in most neurologically typical people seems to be strong emotions, which is why autistic people's reaction to overload gets misconstrued as an emotional problem by people who don't know better. By neurologically typical I mean neurologically typical, as in not just non-autistic but not especially prone to overload either.)

Experiencing input that is particularly noxious -- painful in some manner, or heavily disliked, or inducing ill health like headaches -- increases the "weight" of that input out of proportion to what it would seem like it should be. This seems to be most of what I see being described as overload, but at the same time it's really only one small component of it.

With some exceptions, the more familiar something is, the less overloading it tends to be. Because of this, taking in all the sensory input in a familiar room might "weigh" very little, but taking in an unfamiliar room will "weigh" several times more, even if they have the same amount of stuff in them. Because one is entirely new stuff to process, whereas another is familiar, and there's a big difference in "weight" there.

That principle also goes for things like actions -- typing normally "weighs" very little for me because it's ingrained into motor memory through sheer familiarity, but any relatively new action (or just one I don't perform very often), even a much less complex one than typing, is likely to "weigh" a lot more.

Anything that takes more effort, also takes more "weight". Things that are easy take less weight than things that are hard. This isn't by an objective measure, but depends on the person: An arithmetical savant will find arithmetic easier than just about anyone else, but may find even "easy" forms of reading or understanding and using spoken words extremely difficult.

Doing more things at once, or (usually) more complex things, adds "weight".

Stress (whether emotional or physical) translates to "weight" as well.

And so does strong emotion, including positive emotion too.

Sleeping will generally reduce the "weight" of things overall.

So will avoiding "heavy" things for a certain period of time -- longer the more "weight" is in your head.

So do assorted movements that autistic people's bodies seem to "know how to do" naturally (but that are generally discouraged by others, especially by people who don't understand that overload is far worse than looking weird).

So does, for people who find this easy anyway, thinking about one's interests (for some of us that just adds more "weight" even if it's enjoyable -- but it still might add less "weight" than thinking about other things).

So does absorbing oneself in a familiar object.

So does involuntary shutdown (more on that later).

Etc.

One important thing to note is that we don't really know entirely how sensory overload works in autistic people. A lot of autistic people say that we can only do one thing at once. But it could just as well be (and there's some evidence for this being more likely the case) that what most people process as "one thing," is more like "several things" when we process it.

That even if everyone has the same "50-pound weight tolerance", that a piece of input that for one person is 1 pound, could be 10 pounds for another person or 20 pounds for another and still yet 50 pounds or more for another, depending on how much the brain is or is not filtering out at the time.

Think of it like color depth and [url=graphical resolution on a computer. I can remember our family having a computer that had 8 colors (3-bit color) (we ran it with a black and white TV so they were just different shades of grey, but same idea) and 176 by 184 pixels. The images on it were a lot less complicated (and because of that, "weighed" less) than the computer I am writing this on now, which has 800 by 600 pixels and 65,536 colors (16-bit color), which in turn "weighs" less than the colors on my computer at home. Some of the brain's ordinary filtering processes do something equivalent to reducing detail and "weight" by reducing resolution and color depth (only on all the senses, not just vision) -- they give a vaguer picture but requiring less processing. (This is why there are tradeoffs for each way of functioning -- advantages and disadvantages.)

Also, when a person is under severe enough stress, there's some evidence that this increases the amount of information they take in and the rate they take it in -- to watch out for danger and to make reaction time better (this also makes things seem to slow down if the stress is severe enough). Which increases the "weight" of things in more than one way -- not only the stress itself, but the increased information processing on top of that.

Many things work the way stress does -- in a complex way that isn't as simple as just adding and subtracting certain amounts.

***

Then there are the effects of different levels of overload.

The more overloaded a person is, generally...

...there will be more stress.

...there will be a reduction in ability to do things. Things will be more difficult (and thus more overloading to do in the first place).

...entire abilities or perceptions may drop completely out of usability.

(These last two are two of many forms of involuntary shutdown.)

...if they have some sort of pain-causing condition, pain levels will seem to increase, at least to a point (unless they become incapable of perceiving pain).

...ability to control emotions may decrease (as well as possibly the ability to monitor emotions: figure that for anything, the ability to perceive it might not be there, that for anything that can become more intense, it can also at least seem less intense).

...perceptions may seem slowed down or speeded up, or otherwise distorted or fragmented.

...perceptions might also seem more intense or less intense.

Etc.

So overload makes even more overload more likely by increasing the "weight" of just about everything.

Also, some "weights" vanish the moment you stop "doing" them, others vanish much more slowly.

If this all sounds incredibly messy, complex, and not-simple, it's because it is. It's nowhere near as simple and elegant as a "disorder of sensory integration" that makes a person have a fixed number of over- or under- or mis-reactions in a fixed number of senses in a nice tidy way and that's that. And the reality is also far more messy and complex than my analogy makes it.

And while there are various sorts of partial shutdowns (including seemingly permanent ones, where a person sacrifices an ability in a long-term manner for the sake of making others work better, something that I suspect to be behind some things that are common for autistic people to seem unable to do, when really it's a matter of, as discussed in another thread, being able to understand, say, language or nonverbal cues, but not both at once), there are also more global sorts of shutdowns, such as the ones described in Shutdowns and Stress in Autism.

Also, sometimes overload happens more to one ability than overall, and then that means that that ability might get burned out, but sacrificing another ability temporarily or permanently might get the first ability back some more again. It's sort of like being able to exchange one currency for another.

And when recovering from shutdown (more partial or more global), something can be more sensitive than usual, and thus provoking overload and shutdown more easily for awhile.

I personally get overloaded very easily, which means that the more of this I have written, the more overloaded I am getting and consequently the more lost I am getting trying to keep writing it. I am having more trouble reading (which will hopefully even out a bit as soon as I stop writing it). Which reminds me that even holding an ability in "idle mode" (so that it doesn't have to start up from scratch) generates "weight", too.

My experience of a more global-level shutdown isn't just getting tired and going to sleep like that other site mentions though.

It's eventually being completely or near-completely cut off from all of my senses (including tracking my body), thought being reduced to just little pieces if anything at all, volitional motion being impossible or nearly so, etc.

When beginning to recover from that, bits of thought, sensory information, etc., will all intrude painfully and throw me back into that level of shutdown if I don't watch out. Just lying in one spot "doing nothing" at that point will be incredibly "heavy". Even looking at a supposedly-"blank" wall in a supposedly-"quiet" room is too overloading at that point. I won't be able to conceptualize, at all, things like "room," "wall," etc. anyway, those will have gone from effortful to impossible.

And it just takes a lot of time to get over that.

I'm basically always the equivalent of using a credit card to add more "weight", and then having to pay it off, and this is on doing far fewer things than most people are doing without ever getting to 20 pounds let alone 50.

So to me overload is pervasive, constant, and related to every single little bit of information I process. It's never "not there", nor does it only show up around particular sensations I happen to dislike, nor does it stick only to external information -- any information adds to it. And the descriptions I've seen of so-called "sensory integration disorder" or "sensory processing disorder" (despite being a diagnosis I have had for educational purposes) don't even scratch the surface, and seem ordered in such a way as to seem logical rather than ordered in such a way as to actually represent in any meaningful way the way I function around this stuff.

"Sensory integration disorder" as it relates to autistic experiences of overload, frankly reminds me of epicycles as they relate to astronomy: It makes some of the right predictions, but it's based on a flawed premise. (Epicycles were a complex system of circular orbits around circular orbits around circular orbits, in astronomy, of explaining the movements of the planets, while keeping the earth at the center of the universe and keeping all movements perfectly circular.) I doubt that I have explained all of this perfectly myself, but what I have described fits my experience, even if in a flawed way, better than literature on "sensory integration dysfunction" does, and I think eventually SID will go the way of epicycles to be replaced with something more neurologically accurate than either their model or my clumsy descriptions.


_________________
"In my world it's a place of patterns and feel. In my world it's a haven for what is real. It's my world, nobody can steal it, but people like me, we live in the shadows." -Donna Williams


Niamh
Toucan
Toucan

User avatar

Joined: 10 Jul 2010
Age: 33
Gender: Female
Posts: 263

11 Jul 2010, 2:51 pm

I get overloaded when I'm in crowded noisy places for too long, when someone around me is being unreasonably noisy or being a bit dramatic with their emotions, or when I'm in a car. I think I'm most sensitive to hearing and smell but am a bit too reactive to my senses overall. I get upset very quickly when there's too much noise and I feel nauseous very quickly when there are too many clashing smells or just one bad/odd smell. When I feel overwhelmed in public places and I can't leave, I run to the toilets to hide and get some temporary relief.

I find that too much noise or sudden sharp noises really cut through me, like a knife squeaking on a plate... My boyfriend burst a balloon in front of me once and I was still shaking and upset half an hour later. I find it really hard to distinguish what one person is saying to me from all the background noises around me. It's like I can't filter out what I don't want to hear and it takes massive effort to focus on what one person is saying especially if I'm in a pub where other conversations surround me. I don't like seeing loads of people passing in front of me because my eyes can't decide which person to follow and they'll flick from one to another to another really quickly... I think I have a visual processing problem because I find it really hard to look at something as a whole and my eyes jump from one detail to another instead. I don't like traveling in cars because they are the ultimate over-stimulator for me. I always feel carsick. The only thing that stops me now is that I breathe through my mouth instead of my nose so that cuts out one of my senses completely. I hate the smells of funny materials and chemicals and dust and cars always have lots of those odd smells. I'm very sensitive to hot/cold and I have a ridiculous amount of different types of clothes to help me cope with that. I'm not a particularly picky eater but I'm incredibly slow to eat as the impact of tasting food in my mouth is so big.

I get meltdowns from sensory overload. It can accumulate over a sequence of days or it can happen very quickly by shoving me into a situation that has too much sensory input. I'm not very outwardly expressive with any of my problems apart from rocking, rubbing my palms together or fidgeting with a small piece of my clothes. I start to feel sick and get a feeling of dizziness or a headache and get nervous and upset all at once. People will know that there is something wrong with me because they tell me at these moments that I look really sick. I'll start to think more slowly because the input is all taking up my thinking space - everything seems to be screaming for my attention at once like an annoying crowd and I feel like my brain is getting slower and slower. I feel urges to rock and flail my arms and sometimes to hit myself but not hard enough to hurt at all, just to feel it. I need to do this stuff to stimulate my own senses so that it's sensory input from within myself and it's in my control.



takemitsu
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 29 Jun 2010
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 601

11 Jul 2010, 6:50 pm

I get sensory overload. It typically happens at crowded places that are loud. It's hard for me to differentiate between people speaking and the noise, I say "What?" a lot, to the point that I thought I was going deaf. I get people to repeat themselves a few times before, and if I can't understand them after the third time, I tell them that I can't understand them. I can't even tell what level I should be speaking at in this kind of environment, so I wind up repeating myself. I even lose track of my words and mix them up. My work is a noisy place with many fans and conveyor belts running at the same time and it happens there too. It's embarrassing to say the least.



StuartN
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Jan 2010
Age: 60
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,569

12 Jul 2010, 7:09 am

Niamh wrote:
I get meltdowns from sensory overload. It can accumulate over a sequence of days or it can happen very quickly by shoving me into a situation that has too much sensory input.


This is the real problem for me, that it is (sometimes) unpredictable. I can cope with the shopping and school run most days, and I know that shopping at peak times is terrible, because it will be so busy, so I can arrange my timetable to suit. But sometimes I have a really low tolerance and just snap, and once that snap or overflow has occurred, there is nothing that I can do to salvage the situation and just have to escape somewhere safe. Some individual people have an intense, "in-your-face" manner, or a tendency to touch while talking, and just the anticipation of meeting one of them lowers my tolerance for the actual event.

It is not noise per se that hurts, it is when things are busy. I get quite intense sensations from somewhere like a powerplant, or computer room, or farmyard, but the noise alone is not enough - there is always a busy human element. I don't have synaesthesia, but one sense is often triggered in relation to another (e.g. I smell horse when I see a picture of a horse) and busy places often have really intense sound, smell, noise and bodily sensations that are part mental, which is fine in a quiet restaurant where the meal is an intense 5-senses experience, but absolute hell in a crowded shop.

The reaction sometimes seems out of all proportion to the event.



violetchild
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 5 Jul 2010
Age: 53
Gender: Female
Posts: 140
Location: Australia

12 Jul 2010, 8:25 am

Its hard for me to say when ive gone into overload if its the Asperger's or the CFIDS i have.

My slower overloads are for me its when things are building up inside, they build and build (this can actually happen over days if im under pressure where my brain cant sort my thoughts out properly), till i feel like im going to explode and cant cope, its like weights on me.. everything seems to get faster and faster about me and my brain cant keep up, Any noise about me then will intensify and if many noises are about me (eg in a public place) they will all merge together so i can understand nothing and they make a noise like a load roar (sometimes if not as bad its a hum). My brain then shuts completely down and i cant think so Im then hardly functional or non functional.
......

one of my situational overloads.. Ive been busy so are tired but mum and her partner wanted me to go out with them. So i end up in the back of the car going somewhere... they are talking as well as there is music on. I wish the music was off as im needing quiet, im needing rest.. pressure starts building inside my head. They open the window and the wind hits my face, bringing a sudden shock to my whole system. My system couldnt handle the added sensation of the wind so my whole head starts to swing violently rapidly side to side involuntary and i start jerking and twitching about in back seat (till they remove the wind)

............

Horrific overload i had...this one was with hearing

I forget i have toast in the toaster and it burns sending my smoke detector off. The noise is intense, it's screaming, going right throu my body piercing it and shattering me, noise is everywhere, in me, outside of me and i dont even know what it is. I instantly put my hands over my ears in extreme ear and head pain, trying to block it out and paralysed, fall to the floor crying. The noise is the only thing which is existing and i stop being aware of who i am, time stops existing, existance is just horrific painful noise.

After a while i regain awareness of myself and that im on the floor... i realise need to get away from this "thing" (i didnt know still what the noise was as i couldnt think). i start crawling trying to get away but dont know where i are nor which way to go.. i just crawl while crying and in pain while the noise is still screaming...


i then realise im in my house, but my brain is still shutdown too much that i dont know how to get out, i cant remember where the door is or what way to go. In a panic now I start to crawl move faster, (didnt think to stand and walk) as i have to find the way out and hopefully that will get me away from the noise. I see a door and realise suddenly where i are and that iim almost out of the house. I get out.

I crawl till im on the ground in the middle of my front lawn.. while my brain bit by bit starts to work a bit more and like put itself together again. I remember properly who i are and also realise its the smoke dectector which is making the noise.

(for this reason i now dont have working smoke detector.. as it just leaves me paralysed and with no brain i can use)



katzefrau
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Apr 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,835
Location: emerald city

12 Jul 2010, 10:17 pm

i think there are a lot of different types of overload. (and i also get very dramatic physical reactions to people-based anxiety situations: uncontrollable shaking, sweating, rapid heartbeat, etc. - i guess typical panic attack type response.) i don't get anything like violetchild's wind overload or fire alarm overload (i have never fallen to the ground with my hands over my ears, for example), but i have experienced these sorts of things:

loss of some speaking ability / verbal comprehension
loss of vision
loss of hearing in one ear
loss of sense of taste
nausea
tunnel vision
rigid movement
partial loss of feeling in (parts of) my body
anxiety / anger (very sudden, senseless)
and sort of a brain pressure that's hard to describe - like a tightening / buzzing of thoughts? not a headache, but like brain is a balloon which has been overfilled and is set to pop
beeping / piercing sounds seem to get louder, or "continue" after stopped
contrasting objects or lights seem to blink or pulse, i see afterimages of patterns & lights everywhere

and sometimes it is like a small dose of LSD. things get especially fuzzy & bright, can't make sense of anything, can just look at it. this happens when i walk into a store like Best Buy, someone's house i haven't been in before, and sometimes when watching a movie or a video game (i give up watching it for content, can only look at it). i had many theories over the years: stress-induced hallucinations; temporal lobe epilepsy; absence seizures; acid flashbacks; someone slipped something in my drink; etc.

when unstressed, my sensory perceptions (especially vision) are still at the forefront of everything, virtually never recede into background or become purely informational. but i am an artist, and on good days, i like it fine that way.


_________________
Now a penguin may look very strange in a living room, but a living room looks very strange to a penguin.


Meow101
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 16 Feb 2010
Age: 61
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,699
Location: USA

13 Jul 2010, 12:24 am

With me it's either too many ppl talking to me at the same time, or being in too big a crowd (hate Christmas shopping for this reason...do it online now) and getting bumped and elbowed and touched, etc... when something like that happens, I can't focus, I start hearing this rather quiet but rapid clicking in my ears and I can't understand what people are saying and my mind kind of "fogs" over, which makes me super-irritable. It irritates the hell out of my husband, but interestingly my son picks up on it and says 'you're getting sensory overloaded' (he's 17).

~Kate


_________________
Ce e amorul? E un lung
Prilej pentru durere,
Caci mii de lacrimi nu-i ajung
Si tot mai multe cere.
--Mihai Eminescu


Deidara
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 26 Jun 2010
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 138

13 Jul 2010, 1:32 am

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1n1oK-EiOo[/youtube]

This pretty much sums it up.



Exclavius
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 May 2010
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Posts: 632
Location: Ontario, Canada

13 Jul 2010, 1:51 am

To me, senses and emotions are two sides of the same coin.

If too much sensory input is received by me, then the blocks I've built against emotion overpowering me, and causing me to lose my self-control start to be insufficient to prevent it.

Some senses take less than others to break through it. And some types of input induce emotion faster than others.
Unlike many here, noises and lights don't do it to me... though in truth for extended periods I can get agitated, but I have other mechanisms that allow me to block things like that out. I can ignore loud sounds, and I can unfocus my eyes so nothing comes in in detail.

Multiple people talking at once, especially if i'm trying to pay attention to both/all is bad.

Too much touching... Especially when I don't actually WANT it (and, that's not that often, usually I do) Or when even if I don't mind the touching, if i feel there is a reason why I can't (or socially SHOULDN'T) stop it, at any point... a trapped kinda feeling... puts me into a semi-claustrophobic state, at which time all touch sense is magnified astronomically.

Smell... Perfume does it. heavy smells do it. Yet I can spray lacquer in a closed room.
Association might have something to do with it.

Taste.. blah, not a chance, nothin' better than suicide wings. Bland is disgusting... well, not disgusting... it's still food, and food is food, whatever it is.. I like food, and I'm practical.

I get two types of overload. Short term and long term. continual exposure to smaller amounts put me in a kinda overload just like intense exposure to large amounts do. And large amounts when i'm getting close to over-exposure on a long term basis... that's dangerous.

When i'm in overload. I have little control, especially over emotional outbursts.
I can usually catch myself BEFORE i hit overload though. When i do, and... right now, i'm close... things are hectic right now, and I'm needing to distance myself.... But when i'm close like this, it can be a couple days i need. If my work wasn't so social, it wouldn't likely take so long, but it is, and until it changes... it has to be this way, for my sanity... And maybe even other people's safety and/or sensibility.

If it's just a momentary thing, even going to the bathroom can be enough to shake it... A good cigarette and a bowel movement can go a long ways. :lol:

There have been times when i let it build, on the long term level, so much than i needed weeks or months to clear myself up.

It's bad enough when you fear others... even others you love. But it's worse when you fear yourself. Worse yet, when you have to cut yourself off from the ones you love, because you fear yourself.

Overall if i have to find a single word to be a synonym for what overload means to me... it's "Frustration"



fervidrose
Emu Egg
Emu Egg

User avatar

Joined: 17 Apr 2011
Gender: Female
Posts: 1

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.