Sensory overload = partial seizures.

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When I get severe sensory overload, I get what may be partial seizures (I haven't gone to a neurologist, yet).

I had one on the bus today due to a screaming baby right near me. My vision became very distorted, my eyes and eyelids were jerking, I couldn't use my hands properly and the world was going up and down. I managed to sit down and eventually the baby stopped and the seizure-like episode calmed down enough for me to get off the bus three stops early. However I could only walk very slowly, my feet kept tripping up and I felt very weak.

Now I am at home and even daylight is unbearable. I've shut all the curtains and made sure all the windows are shut. I'm lying on my bed trying to relax but my body is tingling and I feel an uncomfortable weakness/fatigue.

Does anyone else get severe reactions to sensory overload?

My sensory problems are bad. Even leaving my front door can be challenging at times, and I have industrial grade ear defenders at home. I wear my tinted glasses often.

Oh, may I steal your avatar, Ms. Steel Maiden? I really find that that one amusing because it's easy to miss if you aren't paying attention.
Yes, I have really struggled with sensory overload over the years, and I can't imagine London is the best place to be living with it. That would be far too much noise and chaos for me and I'd probably be living in sunglasses and earplugs despite the lovely weather.

You are braver than I am to get on a bus full of people with sensory overload, and coping with such an odd episode in an environment full of strangers? Ugh...sounds scary! But that's why I went nearly a year with my driver's license suspended for probable seizures due to sensory overwhelm myself, and never once got on a public bus or train here in southern California. I simply couldn't handle it.

I think it would be wise to go to a Neurologist as soon as possible and get those symptoms looked into, so you can avoid more of the same thing in the future.
Are you staying up too late focused on studying? I've learned the hard way that lack of sleep makes it harder for me to cope with sensory overload, and it can make a person more seizure prone too. Getting me on the right meds was difficult but well worth the effort involved. Take the time to find the right doctor though. A bad one can turn your life upside down, and a great one is priceless.

Yes you may steal my avatar.

It is very hard in London. I live in the suburbs (technically Greater London/Surrey), so I live in a relatively quiet area with lots of green areas. But when I go out, even the dual carriageway near my house deafens me and I live in sunglasses and earplugs myself.

I haven't got much choice but to use public transport as I am medically not able to drive (so I get free public transport travel in the whole of London instead) and I don't have anyone to take me out places by car (taxis are expensive and I'm on benefits). I do get a government-funded taxi to and from university though, as travelling on public transport at busy times is simply not possible.

Today when I went on the bus, it was pretty empty, except for that baby, it's mum and a couple of other people.

I'm sorry to hear you struggle too, I can understand how hard it is. I would love to be able to drive and have the money to afford a car so that I could drive places, shut the windows and be in relative quietness.

I will talk to my psychiatrist (when she comes back from holiday) about seeing a neurologist. Although NHS referrals take weeks to months, so the time between psychiatrist and neurologist would be long. I can't afford private treatment.

I get around 8 hours of sleep a night because my medication sedates me. Actually talking of medication, antipsychotics (what I am on) lower the seizure threshold! This could be part of the problem.

I won't have much choice over what doctor I get, it will be whoever the NHS gives me, but I can make a complaint if the doctor is really stupid. Although I have a good medical and an excellent pharmacological knowledge, so I will definitely give the doctor hell if he makes a mistake!

Those symptoms will be propably just part of the overload.
I also had sometimes very strange overload symptoms in combination with way too much stress and so on.
This can happen.

My advice:
Get checked that it's nothing else and talk with your psychiatrist/therapist about it, if you have one.

True. What strange overload symptoms have you had?
I'll talk to my Occupational Therapist and my autism support worker about it. My psychiatrist is on holiday unfortunately.

This sounds like a severe sensory overload. I have had some of those, usually on public transportation. I had one on the Boston subway. It was so farked up. It was like I was a walking zombie. I got off at the wrong stop three times in a row. After I got off, I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. The lights turned eggstremely bright, all of them. They were each like a miniature Sun totally blinding me. Physically, I felt OK, but mentally, I was so discombobulated. Which way is up? Which way is down? Who knows what up and down are? Earlier that day, I had already been overloaded from talking to people before getting on the subway. I was supposed to go into a house, but I walked right past it several times without seeing it. It was like the place had disappeared from the street. I just couldn't see or recognize the place where I was supposed to be going. Eventually, I made it to the airport to fly the fark out of there.

It felt very severe indeed. It took two hours to recover afterwards. That sounds severe what you went through too.

When I get these attacks of sensory overload, I cannot communicate or understand what is around me. Although I am fully conscious and I can recollect the whole experience, when I am "in it", I feel like I'm sinking into a hole.

I had a very simmilar situation.
It was short after my trauma two years ago, this occourt being locked away in the closed section in a psychiatry.
I was totally overloadet, even afterwards.
I was also by a trainstation after I came out of the hospital. I couldn't figure out witch side of the station I had to go, I had memory loss, couldn't remember things, was very overloadet, could hardy figure out how to return home.


Very short after that I got a spasm in my face because of an antipsychotic and I was messed up because of the closed section and everything for around 1 1/2 years and it's just resently getting better since a fiew months.

But I stayed afterwards ambulant in this hospital until recently.
And they couldn't figure out, why I was "normal" autistic not being there and totally freaked out there in the hospital, even ambulant.

Now that I think moar about it, maybe these severe sensory overloads are some kind of seizure. I don't know enough about seizures to know. I have read that some people have seizures in which the environment distorts for them, like the lights did for me, but they can still walk around in a zombie-like way, and other people don't know that they are having a seizure unless they try to interact with them. During these severe sensory overloads, I don't think that my brain is even functional enough for me to have a meltdown. From the subway incident, I also remember that I couldn't read the words on the signs pointing to different tracks in the station. I just saw them as pictures and didn't interpret further meanings anymoar. Noises were sort of heard from inside a bubble, like there were many noises that I could hear, but they were all clanging off a metal bubble around me. Lots of things in my field of view blurred, but the lights were the worstest. Of all the senses, I am most hypersensitive to light. Also, I used to have nocturnal convulsing head-banging seizures in my sleep in my late teens and early twenties, but I have never been tested for seizure disorders.

Of course there are simmilarities between sensory overload and seizures, but there are still something different.

It would be like comparing tics with dicossiative symptoms, just because they CAN look simmilar. They are still something different.

I have a friend with epilepsy and exept a fiew simmilarities there are also huge differences. She never gets overloadet, she just has epilepsy and that's it and afterwards it's okay again and get be treated with antiepilepticas.

I've had two probable seizures where I've lost consciousness and convulsed.

Although my medications lower the seizure threshold.

During yesterday's (it's 3.15am now in the UK) episode, I remember not being able to produce English on my phone. I didn't try to read anything on signs etc though at the time but I am quite sure that would have been garbled too.

And you had these two probable seizures when?

My sister has some kind of migraine that sounds somewhat like what you are describing. I think she said they called it a "complex migraine" or a "complex neurological migraine"? She has visual changes and sometimes paralysis in her arm. Sometimes it goes on for days. Although I do not have this kind of migraine, I do have migraines and sometimes stress can bring them on.

At any rate, I think you are wise to see a neurologist. That sounds scary.

I have migraines that are on the borderland between migraines and seizures that they call "migralepsy" and I have a friend and a neighbor who have a severe seizure disorders. I thought I knew a little bit about it nursing and then this happened and I found out they didn't teach me nearly enough. It sucks learning things the hard way.

It's better to be safe than sorry...if you've probably had a seizure with a loss of consciousness and that's a new thing for you, you really should be seen about it *immediately*. Most people like to think it's only going to be an isolated incident and it's probably not going to happen again, but I've heard a few docs say "seizures tend to breed more seizures", kind of like hiccups, unless you get them under control quickly with meds.
My neighbor is a shining example of the biggest risk with uncontrolled seizures. He had a seizure with loss of consciousness walking down a flight of stairs and repeatedly hit his head on stones at the bottom and has a permanent brain injury to show for it. They could've done something more for the seizures but they can't do much for the TBI now. He's really nice but it's sad that happened and every time somebody says they think they might be having seizures but they are putting off being seen about it, I think of him. I don't want that to happen to anybody else, but I don't want to go off on a rant either, ya know?

Ha, we have the same avatars now.

I will tell my GP when I see her for an appointment about something else.

Thanks for the advice.

Neither of you have avatars on my screen FWIW