Noisy crowded places! Aaarrgghh!! !

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Too much noise, too many people, too much motion, too much going on... it hurts. It overwhelms, confuses, and hurts me. It's like electric shocks to the head. I get stunned and dazed and such. I can hang on for about ten to fifteen minutes before I start to shut down. I just cannot be out in places like that. It can take a week to recover properly.

*shutter* I have a huge phobia of crowds and sometimes even have panic attacks just on crowded buses. I hate parties, concerts and even the halls at my school because of the crowds/so many different noises!

My ears don't hurt at noises. It's just the way my brain interprets them. Most noises annoy me, others make me jump, and the noise of screaming toddlers seems to worry or agitate me. And knowing that most people in my family now know that these noises startle me, they always look at me and expect a reaction from me, and if they don't get a reaction they start asking if I've gone deaf. I hate it when people do that because me and my hatred of loud noise (especially screaming kids) isn't funny. Well, most NTs don't like screaming kids, but they can hold back their frustration better than I can. I really don't know why nature made toddlers to be able to scream like that. A small child crying is understandable and tolerable, but screaming goes way over the top, and more often than not it's over nothing, and you wouldn't think that something so small like that would make such a din enough to startle adults.

People annoy me in restaurants when they scrape the chairs along the floor, or when they're stacking the chairs and bang them together.

Also, does anyone else get that horrible feeling, where when you're talking and then there's a loud noise what occurs what's louder than your voice, and you feel like your voice gets lost inside your mouth, because the loud sudden noise has suddenly ''took over'' your quiet little voice and your brain has become confused? I don't know if I've explained it well, but does anyone know what I mean? It's like your own voice hurts inside your head, because of this loud noise what has suddenly come. I can't really explain it.

Buses are actually my special interest/obsession, especially the village bus I get every day, but I still get anxious when it gets really busy. I don't like people sitting next to me (unless, of course, if I'm with them).

But I do try to look on the bright side of crowds - if there weren't so many crowds and all the streets went like a ghost town, then all businesses would close down, which wouldn't be good either. If the bus didn't get crowded, they would cut the service, and if that goes, I go! (Only joking there, but that is how I feel about the thought of my favourite bus service being cut). But it still doesn't stop me from becoming anxious in crowds.

As for the noise.....sometimes I don't see the necessity for some loud noise. Take cars bibbing for example. If I see an accident about to happen but didn't happen, and a driver got so frightened and angry and bibs his horn, it will make me jump but wouldn't make me cross, because there was a good reason as to why he bibbed. But when there's a car what bibs for no reason except because he wants to be seen and heard, I think it's really annoying and makes me angry (especially when they bib the minute they go past me). If you're bibbing to a person you know in the street, there's no need to give a big blast on the horn, making the whole street jump. Once I was waiting at the bus stop in the middle of nowhere, where no people were walking about and not many cars, and one van roared by and gave about 7 loud blasts on his horn as he passed me, and he wasn't doing it at anyone else because there was definitely no-one else about, and I didn't know him. It didn't sound like a friendly bib anyway - it sounded like a deliberate bib just to get my attention or something. It made me cross, because there was no need for that. If he liked the look of me or something, why don't he just leer at me, instead of making me jump out of my skin? Lucky for him I didn't have a pace-maker or anything. Then he would have looked stupid!

Don't you hate it when you're walking in a street and an ambulance or a police car or a fire engine is coming towards you with his lights flashing, and you just know that when the lights are flashing it means that the loud siren will suddenly turn on any minute. That is fear for me! Complete fear! I even literally stop breathing, and my mouth goes dry, and I imagine the sudden noise in my head and I just know that it might go off any minute. If the siren is already on (although I don't like it too much) it doesn't worry me that much because it obviously won't make me jump if it's already on, and you hear it coming and you know it's going to go, so there's not too much to worry about.

I may be mostly Neurotypical, but I really feel like going nuts when I hear so many people talking and shouting. What is the point in constantly having a need to always shout and scream? I think it's down to the fact most people aren't considerate to other peoples thoughts on loud noises but then again most people can cope and they try to shout as well so they can be heard above the others, it all gets gradually louder and louder 'till I can't cope anymore and go someplace quiet like a library.
And for the record, everyone absolutely HATES the sound of squealing children, and believe me when I say everyone just wants to shout "SHUT UP!" when they hear one, so if you ever think that you're coping worse with it than everyone else, you're not alone
But of course, normal people (mainly teens) shouting over eachother seems perfectly normal and okay. Though sometimes I do compare it to squealing children

scraping and dragging chairs sucks - why do they do it

I hate kids yelling at the top of their lungs in the hallway at my high school. It happens a lot.

I went to a busy shopping centre today, and the crowds were diabolical! Everywhere you stood you got in someone's way. Everywhere you needed to go other people were in your way. People walked into you. People stopped dead in front of you. There were immense queues and queues everywhere. You couldn't stand anywhere without another person being more than 2 centimeters away from you. Nearly every other person had a toddler with them bawling for no reason. People were shouting instead of just talking. I started to get really angry inside. I was with my friend, and she's good at blocking all the crowds and crowds of people out. She can look for hours in a shop, but I can't. I can't bear all the people. And the way people kept on looking at me! Every person I passed looked at me, so I ended up being so afraid to look up at people that I walked straight past people I know, and then looked unfriendly, and so when they called me I had to keep explaining myself. The looks I get from people really put me off shopping. I could see their gaze in the corner of my eye. It's horrible. I really wish people would stop looking at me. I'm scared I'm going to lash out one day at someone who looks at me, and scream, ''WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE LOOKING AT, YOU f*****g DICKHEAD!! !'' and then punching them one. OK, people will look then - but at least they'd then be looking at me for a reason. But when I'm just one normal-looking person out of a million, you wouldn't think I will be noticable. Well, there is nothing to notice on me, because I was mostly chatting to my friend, also using a social expression on my face, like smiling and chatting and looking normal and relaxed, and I was dressed up nicely.

Hey, y'all are saying so much of what I've only been thinking. ...There's another noise that's getting more prominent in public: the 'clunk' of the phone being smashed down when a store clerk's finished his/her intercom page. It wasn't that many years ago an employee would get 'written up' for disturbing shoppers with such unnecessary 'crashing'...now it's just commonplace.

There's little I can add that hasn't already been said. It's common for me to be in a store and get overwhelmed by the sounds around me, and it makes me nauseated and I just want to flee.

I hate it when workers in shops throw down boxes onto the floor - it doesn't make me jump nor hurt my ears, but it's just bloody irritating!

It's almost as if the noisemakers are determined to 'take over'. Maybe the figuring is if one can't 'conquer' via rationality, then one will overwhelm by creating din and chaos -- most especially with 'yapping' by 'talkie-talkers'. Not even libraries are 'sacred' nowadays. Where do y'all go for peace and quiet? jcq126...I really think an ipod is a great idea. I hope to get one myself... Can just create your own environment with one of those.

I'm not much of a fan of crowds either. Being able to hear every single conversation in the room at once is very overwhelming. It's very distracting, and I have difficulties concentrating when in large crowds.

I can't stand those high pitch sounds babies and toddlers make.

I also can't stand sport fans cheering and shouting at the TV. That's why I can't stand sport bars and I need ear plugs which I never go to anyway.

Sudden loud noises upset me and they bother me. I have always hated when things are quiet and then all of a sudden it gets loud.

Sometimes people talking at the table gets me overwhelmed but yet if I have something with me, I am fine.

I'm neurotypical, but even I have had times where I really don't want to be somewhere noisy and crowded. Noise and too many people can spoil it sometimes.
When me and my friends went out last Saturday night, we decided to go to somewhere else further away so we caught a taxi to this night club but when we went in there there were so many people it was unbelievable and it was impossible to dance or do anything. We went in and had a drink but we didn't enjoy it much so we ended up going in a nearby pub which was more quiter.