Is Sensory overload similar to a sugar shock?

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I don't think that I have had a sensory overload so I don't know how it is. So I wonder if it is like a sugar shock ?
(a sugar shock is what you get when you get to much sugar in your system and the body responds with an even bigger dose of insulin causing you to have to little sugar in your body.)

Sensory overload is simaliar to a eppileptic seziure

Or a stroke

Last edited by PunkyKat on 22 Apr 2010, 12:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

For me it is like you don't wanna touch or be bothered while in shock.

Plus I get very dizzy feeling.

Depending on the sense or multiple senses that are being overloaded, the way it feels, can take different forms. It's difficult to describe precisely qualitatively, but here's a few ways I can think of to say it feels:

motion sickness/nauseau

Complete over-stimulation from multiple sensory sources can make me feel claustrophobic. I suddenly get tunnel vision; can't breathe and than panicky flight response. I need to get the heck out as soon as possible.

Visual over-stimulation can feel like a painful assault on my eyes. I feel painful pressure on them and can't keep them open. It's like if someone shone a flashlight straight into your eyes.

Over-stimulation from smell makes me immediately nauseated and can trigger the feeling of a million pins poking my brain and really bad artificial odors can within seconds cause strobes in front of my eyes and a migraine and almost make me vomit.

Over-stimulation from sound makes me severely anxious and jumpy and almost itchy - like an uber annoying wool sweater against my skin that I want to rip off of my body.

^My experiences are pretty much identical to these^

Ok, thanks.

i don't experience the sort of thing Crocus and Willard do.

I get more of a shutdown, and it's pretty infrequent. some fluorescent lighting will do it, or if i walk into a place that's unfamiliar and there are bright or flickering lights (candles or a fire) and incense burning. ceiling fans will sometimes do it (the flickering). i feel like i've been drugged, like a weird physical dizziness / high, and my speaking ability, verbal comprehension and reading comprehension go out the window. i don't know if that would really qualify as sensory overload, but it seems to be my version of it.

some music does it to me too. but in this case it can be pleasant, if i'm alone and don't have to think.

strobe lights are the worst (they also make me anxious - i feel like i'm going to have a seizure, even though i don't get seizures). actually strobes do something similar to me as Crocus was saying. like a little headache in the eyeballs, and i can't keep looking. but then there's also the imminent seizure feeling.

another thing:

today i was eating at a cafe in a sort of enclosed alcove area that amplified sound. the clanging of the dishes in the bus tub behind me was terrible!

and i couldn't taste my food. it was like trying to eat a pile of soggy newsprint.

so for me it's like this: there's a jury-rigged fuse box inside my head that my senses are wired into, and all the wires are crossed. when one fuse gets overloaded, another one blows.

The crowd around me blurs into an amorphous, colorful mass, and the sounds degrade into a dull buzz, as my brain gives up on trying to pick out words from 20 different conversations going on around me at once.

I look at my hands, which come into focus. Am I here now? I feel disconnected. Is all this noise and movement around me still happening? Are these people real? Or am I already at home, and this is just an annoying, pervasive dream?

The world unmutes itself again, and I hear someone talking.

It is me.

God help me.

I've passed out from sensory overload before. If I hear a sudden loud sound or someone or something touches me suddenly, my whole body will just lock up and it will be impossible for me to move. It was simaliar to those fainting goats. I can't use a bell alarm clock and someone banging pans together or a whistle would just make my body lock up and it would be impossible to move.

Perhaps I have never had a sugar shock. O_o

When I experience sensory overload I usually feel sick to my stomach but not quite like I need to vomit, like I really need to cry but can't, as if I am on the verge of a migraine that never happens, and like I am going to pass out, but thuse far, I never have.

Durring those times, I do not like being touched, yet sometimes I have a need to touch things. If someone does touch me I am likely to feel worse and yell. If people talk to me I hear sound but I can't make out the words, and my sense of time seems to disappear.

Me too. I feel that way under blinking lights. I probably have strobe light anxiety now. When I go to a concert and I see the strobe light (turned off) I feel anxious and try looking away when it's on.
It's like I'm in a box with repetitive blinking lights that I can't get away from. They hurt my head but not as in a headache and one of the worst times I've had is I hit my head against a speaker repetitively, got pulled on stage and had to leave by a side door. I was crying, shaky and stubborn (I wouldn't listen to the road manager - I just want to sit on the stairs). Two days later the same thing happened, with much more crying because I was fed up with it. My senses were really high too.

I feel something similar to Crocus too. I usually feel drugged, unable to talk and despite usually people yelling at me I show no emotion. I just stare off into space. Other times I have the same symptoms of a migraine, just no headache, but a heaviness around the front of my head.

I looked up sugar shock and found this excellent sensationalist blog:

Vision: Sore eyes, spasm shut, tearing up

Too many inputs at once: can't think, go unresponsive, more rarely aggression

Alarm clocks are bloody horrendous inventions. It's the worst way in the world to wake up. Someone may as well be shooting a bazooka in my room, that's the way an alarm clock feels to me. Practically jumping out of your skin and feeling like your heart is going to explode - yeah, not the best way to start the day I use a very low chirp sound on my cell phone to wake up. I also can't just roll out of bed the minute I wake up. I need to adjust my equilibrium for at least 10 minutes.

People who wake up and go straight from sleeping to a noisy, bundle of energy set me on edge. I can't even be properly verbal for a good hour after waking up.