Anyone else have difficulty processing speech while stressed

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I thought I just had difficulty with speech in crowded situation with a lot of background noise an people talking, but I recently had a panic attack, and even with just one person talking...I couldn't understand anything. It was just white noise with a kind of loud hum. Anyone else experience this? It was frightening and actually made my anxiety/panic worse.

There are some people this way. It's not my problem but may be I can explain it. Anxiety causes you to concentrate on listening for faster recognizing anything that is possibly dangerous and happens around you. While concentrate on listening you stop to concentrate on the things that you are just talking about. Whithout concentrating on your opposite and thinking about the things that you want to talk about you become unable to speak. That's all.

When any organism perceives overwhelming mortal danger with little or no chance for escape, the biological response is a global one of paralysis and shutdown. Ethologists call this innate response tonic immobility. Humans experience this frozen state as helpless terror and panic.

One of the things that Bessel van der Kolk showed when he first started to do trauma research with functional MRIs is that when people are in the trauma state, they actually shut down the frontal parts of their brain and particularly the area on the left cortex called Broca's area, which is responsible for speech. When the person is in the traumatic state, those brain regions are literally shut down; they're taken offline.

So I guess that it just makes sense that in a deep panic attack, not only does the person lose their ability to speak but also their ability to hear.

I think that the person keeps the abilty to hear but may stop any kind of noise filtering and language processing just for recognizing possibly dangerous things faster for reaction. It's something that some people have reported.
In films the focussing on hearing in dangerous situations is even used. Once the protagonist is in danger the sound is reduced for causing the people even more listening. Then the situation suddenly changes with a loud noise to scare the people.

When stressed and when not stressed, I have difficulty processing speechand other sensory input

Yep, happens a lot.

I Just wanted to thank everyone who's posted so far. I'm glad to know its not just me.

Btw: I just learned it's called 'selective mutism' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_mutism .
Wikipedia calls it an anxiety disorder just as I guessed before. Hope you get over this.
You need to learn to calm down and to concentrate on talking to your opposite and the things that you are talking about again. Fears are often the biggest enemy and really hard to fight.

I pretty much have difficulty with everything social when stressed or overwhelmed. It gets worse because the person talking starts to get aggressive and pushy and I end up shutting down completely. To them I look like I have a learning disability or attention issue, but in reality time slows down and I try to process the bright red of their turtleneck, the numbers on their tag, the smell of their aroma, characteristic details of their face, flies that are about to land on someone's meal, the weird canyon-shape in the lamp shade, the wood grainy texture of the chair I'm sitting on, that weird piece of hair sticking up, that really ugly shape on the wall paper, how the location of the microwave has moved a foot from last week, where it was last under the portrait of my boss and to the right of a filing cabinet which is no longer there, why tiles are white and black on the floor, etc. etc. I end up memorizing lots of that information like a photograph unfortunately, and later when I come back I remember everything that happened before like I'm reliving it. I also get negative feelings associated with places where I'm stuck and can't leave while being overwhelmed.

It takes lots of energy to control my hyper-sensitivity, and even though I can do it, I don't have infinite energy and tend to run out only after one or two hours of working or being in a public place, when I'm usually supposed to be there for 10. Very useful for solving puzzles and doing good at a majority of professions not in the service industry but not helpful through daily life. At the moment I have no choice.

Yes. I tend not to meltdown, but shutdown. The higher the stress, the more circuit-breakers flip off.

TIME SLOWS DOWN. I can relate to that. In reality it is really that my mind is spinning up in speed and the world is slowing down. You are remembering all the negative visual content associated with the current melt-down so that you can avoid the reoccurrence in the future.

There is a way to overcome meltdowns. Once you learn it you will never have a meltdown again. When you are in a meltdown, your brain components begin to shut down. They go offline. At this exact moment, it is possible for you to shut down the emotional side of your brain. You shut down all feelings: FEAR, HATE, ANGER, RAGE. But you don't allow your analytical side of your brain to shut down. Instead you spin it up and review all the possible solutions to your current threatening situation. In a split second you look at all the possible choices that you have (there are millions) and pick one. Now this is really important. Once you pick the best choice, you perform the exact action to remove yourself from or end the threatening situation. By implementing the action, you release the stored stress energy and end the panic attack. You are no longer trapped in a cage and as a result you end the trauma.


Disclaimer: All actions have consequences. One should try and avoid breaking laws and workplace regulations. For example some of these potential actions can have negative consequences (for example you might be fired from your job). This will need to be factored in your final analysis prior to implementation.

Last edited by jimmy m on 19 Feb 2019, 9:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

I agree with this, my therapist doesn't. I find emotions to be de-stabilizing. My therapist is always saying I need to feel my feelings and "process them" . But I'm not sure what that means.

Follow your gut on this one.

The only practical thing you can do is to take steps to reduce your stress.
Yesterday was a holiday, so I took the opportunity to take a mid day nap after shoveling snow in the morning!

Getting enough sleep is a good way to reduce stress.

Yes.

I have trouble processing everything when stressed.