What does sensory overload feel like to you?

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For me, it's like my stomach is a pile of rocks lying at the bottom of the ocean. Or as if my body is a heavy butter churner. There's this sense of almost paranoid stress. I feel like I'm in danger when I'm not and I need to escape. There's an uncomfortable sensation, a prickly coldness that spreads across my back and shoulders. If I were to draw / visualise this feeling, I'd likely draw someone with cold wet / sweaty hands holding my back and being uncomfortably close to my face with a distorted smirk.

Sometimes I become unresponsive and / or dissociative, but not always. There's a feeling of a false reality, as if I exist outside of time.

I think that there are two main types of sensory overload that I experience. The first type results in stress and feeling like I'm under pressure to maintain composure, usually ends with exhaustion and tears. If I try to socialise after this type of overload, then I am quite likely to have an outburst and say something I don't mean. Especially if I attempt a task that requires me to be fully mentally there, such as cooking. I need time to recover and to let the built up stress go down. These overloads can last for several hours, and I am likely to show predictable behaviour (sitting in dark rooms, slow to respond when asked a question, self hugging, strange noises, hand-flapping or rocking, irritable).

Then there's the second kind. Instead of being stalked around by someone with cold sweaty hands, this type feels more like someone with a hyperactive and philosophical streak. As if a small child is spinning me in circles, saying "Ooh! Look at this! How about that? Is anything even real? Everything's so bright, huh? What are they saying? Let's lie down on the floor. We're in a dream now. I can't tell what they're saying anymore, everything is just white noise, that's so weird", to which I reply "Ah, this again, hang on I got this".

I slowly list random objects in the room in my head until everything feels real again. There's no stress in this situation, just minor annoyance. I recover much more quickly from this type of being overwhelmed. I remember talking to an old therapist of mine about this, she told me that our brains can only process so much information and that at a certain threshold this happens to practically everyone but that my threshold seems to be lower than the average person. She also told me that I was one of the most normal people she'd ever met, but then again I've never met the rest of her clients.

Personally, I tend to get overwhelmed more when there are multiple types of strong stimuli involved. Especially smells, but sometimes something can be so strong on its own that it can lead to me being overwhelmed. I don't know for sure if what I experience is a sensory overload. Stimulus triggers it so that's the best way I can think to describe this, whatever it is that's going on with me.

Physical pain.

Most of mine is light sensitivity.

So it feels like my eyes are being stabbed or burnt. Whichever it is is either with needles or with matches from the inside of the eyes.

That sometimes leads to a migraine as well which is a really strong headache on either side of the head.

Things that don't help include mum rubbing my back.

That's tough cos when I have regular pain that helps - basically when I have cramps or toothache or something. And she's learnt it almost as a rule (if I'm hurting, rub my back) and even though she's NT, she finds it hard to unlearn that rule and leave me alone.

But when I have sensory overload the only thing that helps is reducing any sensory input at all. Going to a dark, quiet bedroom and being left alone in bed.

Overwhelming encumbrance making me tense and heavy, everything becomes fast and chaotic.
May descent into this fragmented, tunnel vision like focus. And then eventually, exhaustion comes.


I think... My most problematic sensory channels of sensitivities may not even lie in 5 basic senses.
If 5 basic senses are involved, I could always just lie somewhere alone in a dim, warm and quiet room to relax.

But somewhere more subtle, more whole body encompassing and likely impossible to accommodate except conspicuous whole body stimming.

This one never gives me a break or gave up on me yet, except when meditating successfully or sleep successfully. Both are uncommon.



Thankfully I excel wielding this type of sensitivity more often than not.
Even relying in it as a grounding point to cope with further present chaos and overwhelm.

Yet I end up neglecting other senses that may needed more immediate attention, or for further practical complex functioning...
It's a paradox.

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I feel like I'm always in overload mode. I got so used to it it's like somehow being functional despite being perpetually drunk.

"Death by a thousand needle pricks" describes it well on days it's difficult to cope.

It's hard to describe. At first it feels sped up. I get sped up. It gets disorientating. Then I start to lose ability to focus. Next I stop being able to think in full thoughts, eventually I can't think at all.

I go into a partial shutdown and I risk going into a shutdown.

To me, it's like being in pain without any particular part of the body aching.
"Normal" pain can overload me and it's much worse than the pain alone.

It's like a clenching pain in my chest and I feel like exploding. Feels like I need to scream and destroy, or ball up on the ground for muffled, non-destinct vocalizations.

Brain slows way down, so having a complete thought takes a long time. Mind freezes up like a video or video game played on a computer that doesn't have enough RAM.

Better than the best drug imaginable.



This, loud and through headphones makes my entire brain tingle.

I only get this sensory overload if I am in a crowded public place and with noisy energetic children. I feel like I want to swear and shout at people at push the brats over, but my kind nature and self-awareness prevents me from doing that (thank God), so instead I'm just grasping tightly on to my mask (metaphorical mask, not the COVID mask). My emotions start leaking out, like if I am too flustered I will give people dirty looks or sigh and mutter under my breath. Then when I finally get home I feel relieved but also feel like ranting to someone about how stressed I am.

Does this sound much like sensory overload?

It feels like every cell in my body is about to explode.

The urge to complain about everything, which evidentially NTs do not like.