Sickness after hyper-focus

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I have a problem with one kidney which is considered kidney disease. I wonder if that leads to issues with dehydration as well. I'm always super dry and can use skin lotion / lip balm maybe about 20 times a day. I love ice water and I drink as much of it as I can, but it never quite feels like enough. I'm sure when I zone out into oblivion with hyperfocus, any possible dehydration is more pronounced.

It's a lot like waking up from sleep for me. I'm disoriented and a little cranky at first, then after a minute or so I'll notice physical needs. If I've been going for more than 2-3 hours, I'll need sleep and maybe even a few hours to myself after waking up before I feel I'm back to baseline.
The sensory experience of coming out of hyperfocus reminds me of coming out of a cave after several hours underground. Suddenly there's LIGHT and SMELLS and SOUND coming at me so strongly that it can somewhat overwhelm me. That's probably most of the disorientation, with the rest of it coming from "re-inhabiting my body" and noticing internal sensations for the first time in however long it was.

After hyperfocus I also tend to feel a bit out of it. I think it's partly dehydration and not having looked after myself but also just pure mental exhaustion. It can take several hours to get back to normal.
Symptoms are: lack of ability to focus on anything, dizzy/low blood pressure, struggling to find the right word, not able to read.etc.

I have set my work laptop to automatically shut down at 11:50 and 6:00 (I work 10 to 6). I had to - my inability to break hyperfocus too frequently kept me from eating lunch or going home on time. I have learned some "thought stopping" techniques from the internet - originally developed for anxiety or PTSD. One is to close my eyes for one second. The two seconds. Then four, eight, 16, 32, 64. Usually around 64 I can break out of hyperfocus - but it takes a strong force of will just to start using the thought-stopping. Sometimes I open my eyes and fall back into the gravity well, and have to start again. Sometimes I don't start again. It is weird - normals don't really get it. Sometimes my shrink doesn't even get it. DBT TIPP can be used after the thought stopping, like intense physical activity - climbing up and down stairs or going for a walk, or washing my hands with very cold water, or holding a piece of ice as tight as I can. Sometimes doing a "Easy" or "Medium" Sudoku puzzle can help to break the spell and let me look at things with new eyes. I have talked about similarities between ADHD hyper-focus and ASD special interest / persevering / hyper-sensitivity and PTSD hyper-vigilance or flash-backs. In my mind ASD hyper-sensitivity to emotions can look a lot like PTSD or CPTSD hyper-sensitivity - but with different causes.

Sometimes once I am "in the zone" I don't dare get out - it might have been the first good focus in hours or days. But it might be bad hyper-focus too. The goal in my life now is "balance".

Yes - I get that too. Some meds I took for ADHD made that MUCH worse.

I was taught these techniques as well. I also use a Wilbarger brush, do joint compressions, yoga, or any proprioceptive activity to ground me back into my body. It helps me reintegrate and remember that my body exists. Sometimes I'm too woozy from hyper-focus and I can't find the strength to do any of it, but it does help as a day to day preventative measure. I'm assuming your interoception is quite poor like mine? That's why the ice cube and other strong sensations help.




Where did you discuss this? Do you have a thread? That's something I'd be very interested in. I've often wondered about these connections, and also the connection between CPTSD flashbacks or triggers / Sensory Processing Disorder.

I want to know more about our hyper-focus as compared to NTs. I'm sure NTs can hyper-focus or have passionate interests and hobbies but is it really the same level of focus? Has any research been done using brain scans to compare which parts of our brain / nervous system are engaged, and which are shut off? Most NTs I know complain of feeling sleepy after a long period of intense focus, but it doesn't seem to have the same physiological impact that it does for us.

I also neglect a lot of my needs when I am hyperfocused on something, and can go all day without eating, drinking, etc. if I don't force myself out of hyperfocus. The only thing that "naturally" gets me out of it is getting tired and needing to sleep.

I still don't really feel "ill" afterwards, but after thinking about it more I think I do get somewhat disoriented. I'll often just sit there for awhile, and try to figure out what else I want to do and what I need to do. I usually still want to get back to what I was hyperfocusing on until I can get out of that disorientation, which I think is because it'd just be easier to do that than deal with the physical needs I neglected all day and trying to figure out what else I need to do. lol

I hate the feeling after prolonged hyper-focus. Headache from dehydration, slightly depressed and anxious mood due to inability/lack of energy to manage thoughts and emotions ... Nowadays I've made it more or less of a rule to not enter hyper-mode at all, to avoid the crash afterwards. It has helped a lot in bringing my physical and mental condition into balance. There's definitely an aging component as well, I tend to crash harder these days if I mismanage than 10-15 years ago.

I have a tendency to repeat myself and I think I have mentioned this idea in other threads. I'd have to search my previous posts to see which ones. If you look at the literature on DBT it was originally designed for people with "intense feelings" - this clearly can be applied to both ASD and PTSD - and if you look at articles on DBT you see it has been used for both. I think the original author was including herself and her patients with Borderline Personality Disorder and also found that it works well for PTSD - and PTSD is hard to treat so this was news. DBT also works for ADHD. This pattern of these DSM diagnosis overlapping in symptoms and treatment seems to be a common theme in a lot of studies - it shows up in articles on differential diagnosis, it shows up in genetic studies, it shows up in treatment profiles, it shows up in studies of neurotransmitters. It is like there is a cluster of symptoms and causes that are so closely interrelated that they are all minor variations of the same thing, or all close cousins. Perhaps I should create a thread to discuss but I don't want to ruffle feathers and I am just an armchair psychiatrist / neurologist.

My field is computer science and I do root-cause-analysis as a big part of my job. I often have to study complicated systems of interconnected parts and try to see connections and patterns. Between myself and my two sons (one diagnosed ADHD and the other diagnosed ADHD and ASD) I have done a lot of reading over the last 20 to 30 years - trying to debug us all.

Search engine technology is one of my specialties to I am pretty good at finding something when I want to - and more and more peer reviewed journal articles are on the web these days. Sometimes I will special order journal articles from the library.

My shrink has special training in PTSD and a son on the spectrum. I have discussed these ideas with him too.

I have sometimes joked that my head is like a jar of paperclips - it is hard to get out just one thing. Because of this you will see ideas repeated in my various posts. I sometimes loose track what ideas I have shared with whom and how much.

Thanks! I totally agree with you and I wasn't doubting the connection of ASD / ADHD / CPTSD etc. I am diagnosed with all three and I've done DBT therapy. I just hadn't noticed you speak about it before. I love the topic of connections or overlap in part, because my brain works at rapid speed and I make connections among thoughts or concepts very easily. I have multiple forms of synaesthesia so this makes it even more complicated. For example I can see the colour blue which causes me to think of the letter e (connection), and then the e will take me to a person's name or even a sound (synaesthesia), which takes me to a place or a flashback, and another unrelated thought which elicits more and more thoughts or feelings, and affects my emotions. This is all in the blink of an eye. When I talk to people verbally they're frustrated because they can ask me about something simple and within two sentences I'm off on a bizarre tangent because of all these connections. It affects my ability to multitask but more importantly it piques my interest in all things "connected".

I do a lot of research about trauma, autism, and ADHD and the ways they overlap. My therapists tell me not to label every experience but I'm a details / connection person, which makes me want to identify separate parts so I can see the whole. I'm able to recognise my conditions individually for the most part but it's the interplay that I find really fascinating.

Thanks again! I'd love to read more!

Maybe I will start a thread in the STEM area when I have more time. I need to be careful and take brakes from WP as I overdo it sometimes. If I do I will post a link here - I don't want to take over your thread.

I find synaesthesia very interesting - you might enjoy the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" which is available in paperback and audio book. It is like a novel-length Discover article and a good bit of story telling thrown in with good non-fiction science writing - both well mixed. It deals with memory - and synaesthesia is one of related the topic it covers.

I learned this trick for getting a grip on your mindfulness when you tend to get wrapped up in things, whether it's getting locked in to your hyper-focus, when you fall into downward spirals of negative thoughts, or anything else that gets you distracted from what you should be doing and find it difficult to break the pattern.

Set a reccuring alarm.

Nothing too alarming of course (pun unintented). I got the idea from those old electronic watches (not sure if the new ones still have it) that give you gentle chime or quiet beep for every hour of the clock.

Every time you hear the hourly chime, remind yourself to get up, interrupt what you're doing, and check on your state of health as needed. So long as you don't get into the habit of ignoring the chime, it should help you keep things under control a little better. Over time, it may even get your subconscious into the habit of giving your self-awareness an hourly wake-up. It did for me, after awhile.

Of course, you don't have to set it to an hourly alarm, or a beep sound. Set it to whatever frequency or sound you like, like every 2 hours you hear a little chorus of bird chirp at you for 5 seconds.

If you're not sure what to use to do this, you can use your smartphone's calendar schedule app. Just set some reoccuring daily tasks, one for every alarm during a day.

Thanks, Cinderash. I think I may have heard of that idea before, but I don't take the time to do it. Maybe I should give it a try. It's definitely like a spell comes over me and I can't snap out of it. Afterward I feel like I'm coming out of a coma! My head feels weird like it's full of cotton and the whole world seems surreal.

The problem is that I don't always know when I'm going into a hyper-focus. It's not like I always think "Here I go!" at the beginning. Some of them start innocently or without intention, but before I know it 3 48 hours have passed and I have no control of my nervous system. Maybe I'll try your idea the next time I know for sure I'm going into something intense, like doing taxes or writing my book.

Thanks to everyone who is contributing. I really appreciate all the responses!