Car Sickness Mystery

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I have always gotten car sick as a child. I can get car sickness now but it has changed somewhat. Even if I dont get sick at all I almost always feel like I need to shut down after a long car trip. My brain will shut my body down and I will sleep for a long period of time. I am also confused and very cold. Could this be do to too much visual stimulation? Do other individuals experience this?

I don't get it myself. It could be or the movement which could be dissorienting you. What are you like on a train?

I had something similar after my first stroke because I wasn't allowed to drive for four years, and I had to be a passenger. As a passenger I got very overstimulated by motion sickness, the sound and motion of wiper blades in the rain, and I couldn't tolerate anyone putting the radio on. Human voices on the news, traffic, or weather reports made me dizzy and feel misophonia. Night drives were especially bad with the bright lights in my face.

After one long journey as a passenger I was so overwhelmed I opened the door and literally fell onto the ground. I was too shaky and stressed to stand up properly. I had been crying the whole ride because it was raining and the wiper blades drove me mad. I was in shutdown for a long time after that trip.

Now that I'm finally driving again and I'm in control, I feel better.

I can get car sick just from watching dash cam video, or shaky hand-held camera footage. In a car, I'm fine as a front-seat passenger provided I don't try much map-reading or otherwise take my eyes off the road. The ride quality matters a lot, too. Good dampers with a fairly firm ride are fine. Soft springs and wallowing produce seasickness. A good vehicle will have nearly the same frequency in bounce, pitch and roll, and minimise them fairly well.

I get the brain's visual vs body's sense of movement thing.


I may or may not be prone to car sickness or something similar.
Yet my first reaction to even a bit of nausea was to will myself into equilibrium and not vomit. Unless I'm sick enough to unable to.
Yet it doesn't scare nor deter me.

I usually have this weird thing about motion and subtle movements.
Partially it is autism, and partially because my sinuses messed something up with my ears.
Overall, it was likely just another form of sensory overstimulation.

I do not mind fast, wild, bumpy and extreme rides. Heck, I don't even mind that one time when my sense of balance went out of whack.

Yet I get a bit off when it's subtle, micro movement like vibrations.
Even if it's not even on a moving vehicle, like, say, a shaking table or chair.


Also relevant yet weird; for some weird reason, I cannot play minecraft without feeling sick after 5-10 minutes of playing.
Yet I have no issues watching others play.
I also had less issues playing other first person camera games -- at least not as bad as minecraft.

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Good point, Edna. I love rollercoasters and can tolerate them at high speed or even upside down. For me I think it's because cars have sounds and you see the motion of travel more than in a rollercoaster. It's also overwhelming seeing so many other cars going in many directions, potentially hitting you, and having to multitask by talking to people while having the sensory bombardment. I'm OK when I drive the car (the rule is, "If I drive, I get to pick the music") and most of the time I drive alone. I'm more in control than when I'm a passenger.

Dear_one, I also agree about being in the back seat of a car. That's a good distinction. That's the absolute worst.

I always had car sickness when I was a child, I used to try and read in the car and it made me ill.

I used to get car sick all the time. Then we figured out that I did not get car sick in the dark. I started wearing dark glasses and the problem went away. It seems my visual processing is only 25th percentile( I did not learn this until recent neurological testing with diagnosis) and that I simply can not process things I see in motion, especially not the fast motion of a car (or things like rides at a fair, etc... urp!). By wearing dark glasses I seem to be blocking a lot of the peripheral flashing and images that go too fast for me. I look straight ahead now at the center of the road, even when I am a passenger and always wear my sunglasses. I still get car sick/ motion sick, but not nearly as often. I am worse in cars, trains, planes, bus, etc etc where I am unfamiliar with the motion. The family car is better over time, as if some "setting" inside me eventually adjusts itself. Of course hill country or lots of fast turns and stops are still pretty difficult. I never travel in a vehicle for "fun". There is just no fun in it!! !

PS I can not watch videos or movies that change perspective and view frequently, or rapid changes of scene... youtube videos almost always make me motion sick within the first minute... I have pretty much given up any sort of "active motion" viewing... my sensory processing for that stuff is useless so why waste my time, effort, and get sick on top of it all anyways???