Why do you feel overwhelmed?

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I am diagnosed PDD, not AS, so maybe that's why I have this question~
When you are in a crowded or noisy place, why does it overwhelm you? I mean, I get overwhelmed too, but it's only when I feel all the pressure on ME, and feel that I have responsibility to do something or that something is happening which I must pay attention to. When it is not on me, just around me, I don't really think about it.. I just let it sort of do its thing, and ignore it. Even if I get blinded by a bright light, I usually just find it easiest to ignore being blind for a few seconds. Can you not ignore it? Do you always feel that the pressure is all on you, or that you have to think about and deal with all the things happening around you? Why?
Thank you in advance. :3

Last edited by wigglyspider on 05 Jan 2010, 7:10 am, edited 2 times in total.

I never had issues with stores or malls. Okay when I was little I did but I got used to it as I got older. My parents kept exposing me to the noise and I gradually got used to it. It was better if I was having fun, then the noise was not a problem for me.

I sometimes get overwhelmed when everyone is talking at the table but when I have a book to read or a game to play or something, I am okay.

I sometimes want to get away from the noise when everyone in the room is loud so I leave and sit out. I was at my aunt and uncles house for the holidays and after being there three days in a row, it finally got too much for me so I went in the bedroom where it was quiet.

I do fine with noisy places just as long as I am expecting it. Weird isn't it?

When I go to amusement parks, water parks, arcades, malls, stores, I am expecting noise. I usually tune everything out and am in my own little world. I see people but I am oblivious. If I have in mind what I want to do, I go right for it. When I go to stores, I go for what I need ignoring everyone. I might not even know I have walked right in front of someone or rammed my cart into someone's cart. My family or my husband has have to tell me someone is trying to take a picture. At least I respond to my name no matter how much in my world I am in. I wonder if tuning the world out is a sensoy thing? I know it's something that autistics do.

I really wish I did know why. I'll illustrate with my most hated of inventions: strobelights. At first I find them annoying, I ignore them but the more frequently they happen the more overwhelmed I get. My head doesn't physically hurt that much but there's this pressure on it and I must escape and I feel like I'm about to throw up. Then when I finally get away I burst into tears.

Now with crowds I get dizzy and the longer I'm around them the more ill I feel.

Lately I've been find sounds irritating, so much that I can't ignore them. I really don't know to explain it anymore than I'm just hypersensitive to pretty much everything.

I'm not sure if that description helps.

I don't know why but I certainly do get thrown by external sounds and lights. Some years ago (before I heard about AS), I tried to train myself to screen out noise by putting the radio on while attempting to work, with some limited success. I can cope with noise slightly better if I'm the one creating the noise - even if it's just by turning on the radio, I have control over the volume and the station, and I can turn it off if I want to, so in some ways it's more predictable, but the noise other people make tends to be a lot more sporadic, and that can still easily cut through my thoughts and throw them into disarray. I'd love to have absolute silence but the world just gets noisier as the years go by, so creating my own noise to drown it out is often as close as I can get to silence.

It doesn't give me any problems if the work I'm doing doesn't require careful thought, or if I'm completely fascinated by what I'm doing.

I'm like that - not just with confusing backgrounds but with strong emotions generally. If I'm expecting to feel upset in the event that x happens, then when the time comes I won't feel upset at all.

Maybe the only answer to why confusing backgrounds overwhelm my focus is that it's a brain-wiring thing......the part of the brain responsible for filtering out the background interference just doesn't work.

It’s not always equally bad; if I’m occupied with something I like, I’m way less sensitive to it, and it always helps to be prepared.

But to answer your question, OP, for me at least it’s about
- having people close to me all around me (I’m somewhat claustrophobic in some circumstances + my sense of personal space is way larger than the norm, leaving me very stressed having strangers “violating” me this way. I don’t mean actually doing anything to me, I just mean what it feels like for me)
- the noise (lots of people talking, some yelling, cars blaring their motor horn, kids squealing or crying etc)
- the smells (from unwashed bodies to way too strong-smelling perfumes or after-shave lotion)
- the heat of the crowd (only applicable when in confined spaces like a subway or a shop)

I hope this was helpful.

I am undiagnosed, so I don't exactly know whether I presicely have Aspergers, but I get overwhelmed when I'm in crowds. I feel as if there's too many people to deal with at one time - even if it's only stuff like trying to work out whether they're going to bump into me and how to get round them. It can make me quite stressed. I don't like loud noises either, especially screaming children. Crowds in general just make me want to get outside and be alone. Shopping near Xmas is really not fun, and I ran out of food in the house because I didn't want to go to a supermarket and deal with it.

Why does being in crowded or noisy places overwhelm me? I don't know (unless it's because I have sensory over-sensitivities due to AS.)

I do know that it doesn't happen instantly - I have to be in the environment for some time before it becomes overwhelming. If I'm there for shorter periods, I just get fatigued.

Also, I've found that if the conditions never rise to the level of being overwhelming, I can still become fatigued if I'm in the environment for too long. Sometimes, I will feel sleepy for a day afterward.

My best guess is that I experience sensations such as sounds, visual stimuli, tactile stimuli - maybe even air pressure - at a slightly lower threshold than is the norm. Too much stimulation and/or stimulation that continues for too long tends to "overheat" my neural circuitry.

I don't feel overwhelmed so much as I feel tense and on-edge. I also feel my mental processing slowing down and an inability to focus or think clearly. Over an extended time this might lead to fatigue and exhaustion which morphs into that sense of being overwhelmed. It'll feel like the whole world is moving at an accelerated pace while I'm stuck in slow motion.

If we could, then it wouldn't be an issue. :-p

I just get overwhelmed with all of the sounds/lights/people moving around. They don't pay attention to where they are going, bump into you, walk slow and don't move to the side when you say 'excuse me'. It's drowning in sensory input, and no, many people with ASD cannot 'simply' ignore it -- the research suggests that people with ASD cannot separate individual elements in their environment and prioritize their perception. It's everything, all at once. IT's why I can't ignore certain sounds, even though other people don't seem to care.


So my question is, how on earth /can/ you ignore it?

This, though sometimes I can have mild anxiety or outright attacks.

I'm not diagnosed with anything, but seem to at least have some AS traits (?). My problem with shopping malls is sensory. I hardly ever go to one, but when I do, my husband and I generally pick a weekday morning, without the kids, so there aren't too many people. Even so, I find it visually confusing. The floors are too shiny, and the ceilings are too high. The mall we go to has a big open space where the floor is a black and white checkerboard, and my NT-ish husband and I both get a vertigo feeling when walking over it.

There's also a noise. Even if the place is nearly empty, there's an echo-y noise. With a lot of people, it becomes a low-pitched rumble that can be disorienting.

I actually handle malls pretty well unless it's crowded. The disoriented feeling isn't something that causes meltdowns or anything like that, but it does make it difficult for me to focus on what I'm there for. If there is a crowd, and especially if I need to keep an eye on my kids (who are well-behaved, but AS), then every ounce of my energy and attention goes to just walking through the crowd. It's like I have to narrow my field of vision, but then I don't know where I'm going.

Last year, we went to a mall before Christmas, on a Saturday. I had to walk, with my son, through a thick crowd. We were on the upper level, and right below us, a live band was playing. The noise was loud enough to feel uncomfortably thumpy in my chest and filled the air, along with the rumble of the crowd. Too much vibration. That plus the shininess of all the glass and window-displays, and the movement of people every which way, was just really overwhelming. As far as I'm aware, I don't "stim" in public, but that time I was aware that I had started flapping my hands.

I can't actually do any meaningful shopping in a mall, either, because it's so hard to tune out all the shiny, pretty nonsense to find the one item in the mall that I actually need. Giant pictures of Calvin Klein models, and colorful, gleaming displays of handbags, ipods, and all that stuff, is all very artsy and pretty, but it's just too much. I end up leaving without accomplishing anything. Even if I bring a list, I can't follow it unless it's really simple. Then I get home and go, "Well, gee, that was a waste of time."

I'm PDD also and I'm pretty much the same. I don't care much about crowds except that I get really bored in them and kind of shut down. I don't mind bright lights any more than a NT. I wouldn't be able to go on stage if I did. I actually used to stare into the sun a lot when I was little. So much so, my dad would have to yell at me. When several people are talking to me at once, I do get overwhelmed quite easily. I have to tell them all to slow down and talk one at a time, especially at work. The only external things that overwhelm me and put me to point that I want to cry are: smoke detectors, losing at video games (why I have to avoid them, which I haven't been doing) and certain high pitched screeching sounds, like metal scraping metal.

my feeling about this lately is it is all radiant energy. And sometimes there is just too much. Most of the time, really, there is too much. Those are just my settings, and I have to respect it. I don't really think it's changeable.

Thanks for the detailed replies. :3 This is helping me understand the whole overload thing better. I can't think of much to say in reply, but I am reading all of it.

dustintorch: I used to stare at the sun too.

Last edited by wigglyspider on 06 Jan 2010, 5:32 am, edited 2 times in total.

I get overwhelmed because there is a lot of sensory input coming in, and my brain doesn't filter it- it notices everything.
It was only recently, due to purchasing noise-cancelling headphones that I understood "background noise" as more than just a concept.
In public, with my brain noticing and reacting to everything, I also have to find enough processing power to be able to move, and to be able to interact when necessary.

My only problem with crowds is how dumb people are in them. They seem totally unaware about how slow they move or make no effort to move around you when you're walking straight into them. It's like they are oblivious to everything around them.