Can you describe your sensory overload and/or shutdowns?

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Just as the title says. What does it feel like to be sensory overloaded and shutdown? What causes it, and are there different degrees of either that you experience?
Do you just get tired, sleepy, or some other physical or mental/emotional side effect as well? How does it affect your communication or functioning? What do you do if someone pressures you to keep functioning or communicating normally while you are overloaded or shut down? Have you ever felt the need to fight past the effects of overload or shutdown to continue doing something, and how well did that work? Have you ever gotten physically sick, or near to it, after a severe overload or shutdown [Or even just psychosomatic symptoms]? Have you ever had someone not believe you when you told them you were getting overloaded or shutting down, and did that make it worse?

Sensory overload for me is physically painful. I sometimes find that too much light either makes me dizzy (only if I go from dark to light) or gives me migraine. The latter is more common when it's sunny outside. I have almost screamed a few times - usually involving camera flashes or when someone turns the light one,

I usually get sensory overload in loud, crowded places. A typical example would be walking beside a busy, loud road or in a big crowd. I usually feel the need to rush through the crowd or the noisy area until I find a place that's more peaceful. My mood also takes a big dip, I'll get really snappy around people and selfish. Sometimes if I get really frustrated and things don't go my way I'll just shut down and freeze and my mind will go blank. An example of this is when I was teaching a class of 3-4 year old's at a daycare and nobody was listening and the children were being really hyper, all of a sudden I just stopped trying to get them to listen, my mind went blank, the sounds drowned out of my head. I basically had to close my eyes, take a deep breath and count to 10. Usually if I'm in a sensory overload environment temperature makes a difference, the hotter it is, the more frustrated I seem to get.

After a sensory overload I usually feel very tired and as soon as I get home I want to relax and have a lot of me time. If it's hot, I usually sweat a lot and sometimes I get really dizzy and groggy. If I'm forced to stay into a crowd for longer than I can handle, I just get grumpier. My ex-boyfriend actually noticed that I get more nervous and anxious in crowds. One of my close friends knows that I can't do crowds as well and she's very understanding because she has anxiety problems as well.

Most of my sensory overloads do merge into shutdowns; I typically fall into a nearly catatonic state, usually curled up, sometimes with hands over ears, eyes closed or focused on one particular focus point...
Sometimes, I simply burst into fits of sobbing.
Both of these occurrences bring on extreme bouts of drowsiness.
I have also been known to bite my arms as a "mini-overload" at times.
As I am usually not in too clear of a state of mind during these overloads/shutdowns, it is difficult for me to accurately depict all of the minute details of the occurrences.
I do know, however, that most of my overloads are triggered by mental and emotional situations rather than physical situations.

For me, sensory overload tends to cause confusion and panic attacks. If someone else interjects emotion, or I get emotionally overloaded, then I shutdown.
which for me=Loos of voice & voluntary control of muscles. Pretty much, brief catatonia. Usually lasts 20 minutes to an hour, but followed by confusion, withdrawl from everyone, perhaps depression..

Sincerely,
Matthew

Dizzy, sore head, tense muscles, shaking, find it hard to speak, crying, flapping my hands, hitting my head, can't write or talk well, irritable, sore eyes, blurred/tunnel/spotty vision, hearing going on and off, lots of other things I can't think of right now.

I don't get sensory overload so I cannot describe it. I wonder what percent of people on the spectrum get it.

For me it starts to be difficult to process things. Its like my brain decides it cant handle anymore information.
I usually lose or find it hard to use the ability to think verbally which I find necessary to communicate, I may stop taking in new sensory input. I usally return to normal after getting away from whatever was causing the problems - I just need time and no/very little stimulation. How long it takes and how tired I feel afterwards depends on how overwhelmed I got.

My sensory overloads are caused by prolonged sunlight or noise exposure - the sunlight exposure is usually the cause of my shutdowns, but prolonged noise has caused it before. I react similarly to many people who have posted here. (It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who has these kinds of episodes!) My episodes happen in different stages and might end at any stage.
1) Confusion - I can't think clearly, my words slur a little bit, I feel somewhat tired, and it feels as if a thick fog has filled the top of my skull.
2) Mental shutdown - The fog is so thick that I have no capacity to speak more than a few coherent words at a time. I feel incredibly drowsy, drowsy to the point where my eyes have a hard time staying open and therefore the effort used to keep my eyes open is taken away from the effort it takes to see (at this point, it takes effort for me to focus my eyes and actually process what I am seeing). This isn't as bad with hearing, but someone might say something to me and it flies right over my head.
3) Emotional breakdown - This happens when someone tries to force me (or I try to force myself) to function during shutdown stage, especially in the midst of sunlight or prolonged sound. I start to cry, and this lasts for about ten minutes or so. I'm fine about five or ten minutes afterward, but if I'm put in any kind of situation that involves prolonged sound or sunlight, I cry again. This cycle keeps repeating until I am exposed to a low-sensory environment. The second relapse (not sure if that's the right word, but I'll go with it) is much easier to cause than the initial episode, but subsequent relapses aren't caused as easily.

It makes me feel like my head is buzzing or like it's pushing from the inside out/about to explode. I always feel it in my head. I feel like everything is whirling, buzzing and I have to get away. If it goes on too long (especially with a lot of loud noise, like in a store or at a party) I become limp and exhausted and I have to collapse and usually fall asleep.

However, my "squick" auditory stuff gives me a horrible tingly (not tingly in a good way) feeling way low down in my abdomen.

With both, light get brighter, sound gets noisier, I start feeling overwhelmed.

Shutdown: My mind becomes fuzzy and muddled, light and sound fade away, I go catatonic.

Meltdown: My senses are blazing and my mind is spinning out of control and I feel like a balloon being over inflated and I explode losing all control of myself going wild.

Basically when I have a sensory overload I feel very nervous I start to feel dizzy and possibly nauseous depending on the situation. I mean like when I went trick or treating with my sister I was just really dizzy and when that happens I tend to run my fingers through my hair and stick with my sister as well as keep moving / pacing stopping tends to make it worse.

I have problems with sounds more than anything else by far.

I begged my husband for a new car stereo for over a year and finally he said it was time, so we went to the car stereo place. The guy inside, rather than listening to the questions we were asking and showing us stuff the way I had expected, started off by turning on a radio VERY VERY LOUD with thumping rap/dance music, turned on an amplifier and the bass booster, and then yelled his answers at us over the noise. My husband saw me getting ready to meltdown and asked the guy to turn it down or off. The fellow turned it down minimally. The thumping in the bass made my heartbeat feel much faster and harder and louder inside me. I could feel a panic/fight/flight kind of feeling in my chest starting with the heavy fast loud thumping of my heart, which I soon heard inside my ears and made the voices sound muffled and far away. I wanted to ask them to turn it down but all I could do was look at my husband and shake my head and walk out of the store and get into the Jeep and turn it on with my own quiet music playing to sort of overwrite the experience and try to reboot myself. I knew it wasn't working when he came outside to check on me and I tried ot talk but only stuttering and syllables came out. I had to leave and go home. I waited over a month before we went back and I was DETERMINED to manage it this time. I barely barely was able to pick out a system and then go back outside and get in my husband's truck to wait for them to complete the sale, and pull my vehicle in there to get it installed. My ears are literally ringing as I'm typing this, just from the memory.

Another example - over the independence day holidays our neighbors decided to shoot off fireworks despite it being illegal in our state. BIG ones. Ones that sound like cannon blasts. And we cant see them from our home, only hear them, so they're always a complete shock to hear and you never know when it's coming. Well, I tried to ignore that stuff for as long as I could, and the little pop-pop firecracker sounds were something I was able to power through for over an hour but then the incredibly deep sounding KAPOW and BOOM ones began and my heart instantly started to beat louder and faster and harder in my chest, then I heard the beating in my eardrums, and I got tunnel hearing and voices got far away sounding and fuzzy and the next BOOM that went off, I shot up out of my seat without meaning to and looked over at my husband and next thing I knew I was sobbing, at 42 years old, and he looked at me and said "alright this is enough, I'm calling the cops" and when he did, he began by saying "yeah this is [his name] up at [our raddress] again - yep, more fireworks" because this happens every summer and it ruins my entire day every time. While he was on the phone I was driving away with my daughter, but every road we went down we could see smoke from fireworks, hear random bangs now and then, and see the colors in the sky once in awhile. There was no getting away from it. Much snot flowed that night to accompany the tears that I could not possibly have stopped much as I wanted to (I hate to cry because it makes my nose so stuffy and then I can't breathe which is a feeling that causes another panic attack on top of whatever the overload/meltdown trigger is, and then I REALLY begin to stammer and stutter and eventually just go mute, which is something that has only happened a few times in my life but it does happen, and only from sound overload or extreme emotional meltdown).

I'll describe two causes of shutdown or overload, one social, one sensory.

Social:
To give an example, this incident is one that happened a while ago and is typical of countless in my lifetime; I go to a park after my work, to try to get some alone-time, because sometimes my work situation overwhelms me due to interaction with the people there. I try to get through it meeting social expectations, but that taxes me enormously and I pay a price later in the form of mounting tension, stress, that may come out later as shutdown or meltdown, or sometimes burnout and depression, or all of them.

So I'm in this park feeling like I've done all I can do of "normal" social interaction, and now I need quiet time, I need animals, I need not to have any more conversations.

Two acquaintances of mine arrive in the park and come over to chat. They are nice people, super friendly, and their use of the park is a social one (it's a very social place with a cafe type area, etc). My use of the park is to just be by myself, but I've wound up being talked to by a lot of people (long story).

So, because I'm still not really coping with the reality of my diagnosis and that I really do need to start "taking care of myself" more -- by things like telling people I'm not in the mood to chat, or something -- I proceed to continue keeping up a "normal" conversation. I'm burned out already from my work, but I feel the social pressure to do more of the same because my friends are nice people who don't know I need more quiet time than this. It's still something I struggle to assert myself about to this very minute.

One of them is talking about something, and going on and on and on and on and on. I'm nodding politely and responding when a question is asked. But now I'm feeling myself start to not be able to "do normal" any more. It comes on both suddenly yet also slowly; I can't explain.

I'm now finding myself unable to get words out. Instead of being able to continue to respond "Yes," "Uhuh," "Yes I do," etc, I can't seem to form thoughts anymore, let alone speak them. I know that I'm started to look around without focusing. I'm staring into space and falling silent. I realized it was happening but I couldn't do anything to change it; I was just losing any ability to respond.

Then it got physical -- "the room started spinning" sensation. I was outdoors so it wasn't "a room" but you know what I mean. I felt dizzy, faint, and things felt like they were spinning around me. Probably oxygen wasn't getting to my brain or whatever causes that.

I finally broke away after having felt like a deer caught in headlights, and managed to say I had to go, see you later, and escaped. But when I got home I was like a zombie. I couldn't do anything, not even wash a dish. I just wanted to sit quietly on my couch. I felt irritable and when something small happened, like the remote not working properly, I raged out of proportion. I felt physically and mentally exhausted. I've even had to take the next day off from work sometimes if this kind of overload is really bad. This particular one wasn't of that magnitude, but it's an example of what can happen to me with social overload. If I've made an effort to cope and cope and keep on coping with presenting "normal" social interactive responses, even if I have enjoyed some of it to some extent, if there is too much of it I start to shutdown and can later meltdown at the least provocation because it feels like my ability to cope with anything has been all used up.

Sensory issues:
Now that I think about it, my reaction arc is pretty similar with overloads of noise or crowds. Too much noise, accumulately, without ability to get away and rest in quiet, too many crowds of people. Start to get the same arc building of shutdown followed by meltdown.

I'm still working on trying to allow myself fuller self-acknowledgement that I need to exert much, much more control and choice over what I'm exposed to. I haven't yet fully accepted that I have the right to do this.

BTW, my diagnosing psychiatrist said that one of the reasons I have Asperger's and not autism in his mind is because "people with autism can't articulate the mental and emotional processes like you just did when explaining your sensory overload issues".

I thought that was a very stupid thing for him to say.