Brain freezing up

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I find in situations where there's a lot of people around, I cant adequately think. Yesterday, I was in a class lab and we were doing an a type of experiament that I had done quite routinely for the last few months in my research lab and my brain just started freezing and I was getting so nervous due to the volume of people around and everything going on. And due to the lab room structure, I cant hear the TA very well, the noise bounces off the wall and everything is echoy which makes things worse for me. I felt almost if my brain had dropped 30 IQ points in that enviorenment for me. The work itself, was not suppose to be hard. I was getting so lost because the instructions werent clear at all and I felt like such an idiot. If I was doing the same work in a quiet, calmer enviorenment, I would have done perfectly fine.

I found that when I used to work at the supermarket, the same thing used to happen. My job was extremely routine most of the time. Any time I had to put any thought into what I was doing, my brain was completely freezing up.

Last edited by Ai_Ling on 12 Sep 2012, 1:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's how I feel sometimes. As social interaction or sensory stimulation increases, I get stupider. I can feel IQ points drifting away, with their hands over their ears and an apologetic look on their faces, as if to say "Sorry, we'll be back later when things are quieter."

That has been pretty traumatic for me. I have learned to balance myself in such a way that those sitautions don't occur anymore. It's all about control and concentration as how I see it.

And I remember I always wanted privacy when I was in the situation you describe there. I haven't been in that kind of situation in a while, so I can't say if I am able to do something about that. Probably not.

Yes....this describes me as well.

Yes, I become eggstremely stooopid when I am sensory overloaded. I start walking into walls too. There is a big drop in all functioning.

I call it "brain-mutism".
The brain mutes and you are losing any ability.
I read studies, that a mammal's focus in stress narrows to a horizont of 20cm, the prey or as well the predator (both situations are stress for the nervous system.)
I think that it can also be translated to human beings, that in this stressful situations the "horizont" narrows and "looses" abilities in order to survive.

i don't know if its because i'm getting older, but i've noticed in the last few years i've started to forget words mid conversation.

It becomes really annoying because i might need to articulate something but the word im searching for eludes me.

lol that's funny, but describes it perfectly.

I really hate this feeling. Cos I know I'm not stupid. I do well in IQ tests and I can solve logic puzzles and brain teasers faster than anyone I know. But NTs always have a way of making me feel stupid because I don't understand their language sometimes therefore can't respond appropriately, and all I can do is stare dumbly back at them with rising panic.

Had the same problems back when i worked. IQ literally feel to ret*d level. the most simple stuff, brain totally closing down.

Funny thing happened when i was to the pre-evaluation test, that determins if you are going to go into 3 months of military service, by brain also completely shutdown, they had never seen the test done that bad. and thought i was actually doing it on purpose.

Luckily there was a doctors exam as well, where he could show them my medical file.

Would have been hell getting stuck in military where you never have time alone. would have been like torture.

Yeah its not fun having it like this, one of the many things it makes it so hard to function properly in the outside world.

It might be a mix of anxiety and possibly central auditory processing disorder. I get that all the time. I can't retain information without it being really quiet and me actively trying to process it. Go to your disabilities office at your university. They might be able to accommodate you with things like note takers, special software that records what the teacher says on a computer, ear pieces that intensifies the professor's voice or other things.

Yeah I am at the disabilities office. And while I don't have an official diagnosis of Auditory Processing Disorder but a specialist had looked at my diagnostic forms and thought I had it. So I had to explain the situation to the to the disability counseler at first because I got assigned to the back of the room. So she had to talk to the people to get my place switched to the front of the room. Now I can actually hear the TA but I still have problems processing the auditory information. Cause she'll talk from a distance with her voice bouncing all over the room. There's so much excess noise. The thing is, I always get stressed out and socially anxious to begin with in lab classes but the sound room acoustics are just making it worse.

Argh, I've started doing this too. It's so frustrating because the word is right there and I can't retrieve. Or worse, I'll say a completely wrong word in place of a word that I mean to say. It seems to have hit around the time I turned 40.