Blocking off 'irrelevant' stimuli

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Whenever I'm not obsessed with something in the external world, I block it out.

To give you an example:
When I go to school, I block out all the information, including the environment around me except for the most essential parts, people talking, the lesson, etc. It's treated as a secondary stimuli, the same was as the NTs treat clock ticking or other 'annoying sounds which must be blocked out'.

I guess this is also why I had a speech delay, and why I very often didn't respond to my name when I was a child (I still don't very often, or at least, it sometimes needs to be said at least 10 times, while screaming) and ignored my parents.

This problem is far more severe than my 'social disability'. Many magnitudes more severe. It seems like it's also contributing to my social problems a lot.

Interesting. I'm just about the opposite of that. I can't filter anything out, or block anything out. I'll hear what others hear as background noise just as strongly as the stuff I'm supposed to focus on. I'll hear all the conversations in the room, and either parse them all or get sensory overload. I can't tune out the ticking of the clock.

I was like that as a child. I think it's caused by the same sensory wiring but with different results. For example on my inattentive ADHD days I have less sensory problems but on my more hyper days I'm the opposite. It's like my brain is trying two different methods to keep out the extra stimuli.

But as a child I was very incurious about the world. I wouldn't say I blocked it out but never noticed anything that wasn't in front of me. I wasn't very interested in people or their interests too so I had a very big social skills delay. A 20 year delay I'd say.

These days, though, I'm hypersensitive to most of my senses.

You are lucky to be able to block things out.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to be deaf.

Personally I essentially have a problem with the right ear. So I use an earplug for that ear, and so I'm not bothered by sound (well not too much).

I often hyperfocus so much that everything is gone. I often walk around like this, with stimuli coming in and presumably being processed but not reaching conscious awareness. When I walking around while "wide asleep", I always "wake up" before the intersection or the obstacle in my path, so nothing bad has ever happened to me in this state of altered consciousness.

When I am not hyperfocused though, I cannot block anything out and process excessively every little thing. I need to stim to survive in this state.

Yeah. At some point before I was five years old, I was able to learn how to block a lot of the background noise out. I can still hear it, it's just irrelevant. Does tick me off a lil that people will be in the same room, or the next room, talking about me like I can't hear them. I guess "normal" people really don't "get" that not everyone is as restricted as they are.

To those that struggle with not being able to block sounds, I wish I could teach it. I really do. But like I said, it's just something that I was able to learn at a very young age. (Interestingly, I think it was about the same time I learned to block out the sounds, that I started really talking.)

With me it's sort of all or nothing. I can either block out everything and become lost in my own little world, or else I am just bombarded with noises, smells, etc. I can't filter very well.

When I am busy doing something I get very absorbed in it and almost everything else sort of falls away. The only things that don't fall away are music and loud noises. I can't block out loud noise, and if music is playing at any volume, even very quietly, I can't keep myself from listening to it and sort of singing along with it in my mind even if I don't like the music.

Pretty much everything else I can block out. I am very singleminded about things so whatever I have on my mind is all I notice. I tend to be oblivious to other things. When I am really absorbed in something, I am still aware of other people being around me but it feels like they are very far away, and if they talk to me it's very hard to respond. Sometimes I "think" a response to them in my head but it's hard to get my mouth to actually say it.

I completely block out outside stimuli at times, and at other times, I am completely unable to focus on what I'm doing because I can't block anything out.

For instance, my friends find it incredible that I can sit in a room with 5-6 people talking and a TV on, and read a book. I do it all the time. They say they would never be able to focus on what they were reading, but I don't even notice what is going on around me. I think this is the case when I'm very intensely interested in something...I can just close everything else out. I, too, often failed to respond to people when they were talking, but that's typically because they would just start talking to me, and there was no verbal or visual cue for me to start listening. I always had to tell people to call my name first and make sure I turned around to acknowledge them, or I was most likely not listening.

On the other hand, if I'm only mildly interested in something, or worse, not interested at all, I'm flooded with all kinds of other distracting stimuli. When I do my online job, which I hate, it needs to be completely quiet...I need to put on my noise cancelling headphones and make sure that I'm not in a room with other people or with a TV on. My NT friend can do the same online job and watch TV at the same time. Also, if someone is talking to me about something in which I've no interest, I'll be distracted by the tiniest noise or image, like a piece of fuzz on their shirt or a noise outside.

It's like my brain categorizes things as 'vitally important' and 'not important', and depending on the category, I can totally hone in on what I'm doing, or not be able to focus at all.