Sickness after hyper-focus

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Does anyone else feel physically ill after a long period of intense mental hyperfocus on a special interest?

Usually when I've been focussed on a special interest for several hours, tuning out the world, it makes me feel sick to reintegrate back into the real world. I feel seasick and off balance. I bump into walls (more than normal lol), I can get bedspins or shake, and I need to curl in a ball for several hours to regulate my senses. I think perhaps my senses are shut down via tunnel vision and then all the sensory input comes back and overwhelms me. Maybe it's adrenaline. I really don't know.

Two nights ago I finished a week of intense obsession on a task. I was physically fine until I stopped, but then it felt like I was coming off an amusement park spin ride. I could barely stand up. This lasted about 12 hours and I've been in a sensory shutdown ever since.

Does anyone else experience this?

I don't really feel ill, but I can get very tired afterwards and sometimes can't focus on anything else.

What you describe, 'Bella, is how I feel after an intense effort to get something done at the deadline due to someone else's stupidity.  Coming down from the adrenaline rush makes me feel physically ill, and I have to rest in solitude for at least a full day.

Occasionally. It's usually because on those occasions I ignore my body's needs, like eating, drinking, going to the washroom or resting. Vast majority of the time it doesn't happen, though. Usually my mental health isn't doing so good, precipitating a bad decision while my brain is occupied with latching onto a not-bad feeling. Its not quite as bad as yours sounds, though. Have had bedspins a few times but I usually just go to sleep right away out of exhaustion.

Hmm, although, there certainly is a short period of reintegrating with my senses after zoning into something, usually. It's very mild and takes a few minutes at most. It's most apparent when I immediately have to take on moderate physical and social tasks right away, like transfering from one public transit to the next after having heavily zoned in to my mind.

I remember it happening the first time I did a long-distance drive. I guess I was concentrating on the road and staring forward for a long time, even though I enjoy driving. When I got out of the car I fell on the ground and couldn't stop shaking, not from anxiety but from adrenaline or whatever it is.

I think a lot of it must be sensory. Chances are my awareness of surroundings gets muted or shut off, so all my focus can go onto the task. Then all of a sudden I have to adapt back to reality.

I tried some google searches. These were the best I could find:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/ ... feel_sick/

https://autistrhi.com/2016/11/10/hyper-focus/

I don't get sick whenever laser like focus is involved, no matter the amount of time.


Only as far as neglecting my basic needs and ignoring a lot of comfort.

Or if I were at certain physical positions and suddenly move, my blood pressure is low enough to trigger dizziness and temporary blindness.

Nearly no different from sitting for a few minutes and then standing up. Which can happen a several times a day.

But it's not the same with getting sick. I'm just a bit anemic.

The transition between focusing at something for an amount of time and letting it go seem to get easier for me.



My only issue is that I'm losing my ability to be time sensitive.
But for reasons nothing to do with my ability to focus until something is done.

More like I'm losing the ability to do things quickly no matter the level of focus, lack of discomfort and distraction in the environment.
Somewhere, I'm sick. Or getting sicker. Maybe something accumulative, maybe not.
It's something I just notice as I age.

Just not acute in every time I have to focus and then get out of that.

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Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

I’m pretty dazed for a while as I “come back to reality,” something akin to coming out of a shutdown.

There is a sense of disorientation, not too different than waking up, as my short-term memory drops the special interest and catches up on current events. There may also be some catch-up needed on drinking, eating, and sleeping. Ignoring those needs is good for focus, but it can cost a lot of recovery time. Dehydration is particularly insidious. Before I started recording my water intake, I'd often lose one or two days just feeling depressed, and not smart enough to figure out why.
Hyper-focus is also associated with bi-polar conditions.

Like some others have mentioned - I sometimes skip meals when I hyperfocus - sometimes this the only way I can come out of it - so it is like a limiter on a steam engine.

I once read a non-fiction book in college about someone who did genetic research on corn. Unlike micro-organisms which have life-cycles of minutes or hours corn has a life-cycle of one year. If you are hybridizing corn and cross-breeding - it each new experimental cycle takes a year. She described her research phase - poring over the data from the last cycle - like climbing into the corn kernels. I could kind of relate. The more I focus my mind on mathematically or geometrically modeling a computer problem the more my other senses seem to shut off and become taken up with the mental image - like my inner eye is taking up mental work-space from my outer eyes - or something. I once did some intense analyses followed by a status meeting. I couldn't operate my phone - which had my notes in it. I couldn't write on the whiteboard. It also (sometimes) feels like my hands are on backwards, like I put the left glove on the right hand and the right glove on the left hand - but only it is really just the hands. It is like I have to reintegrate my sensory circuits into the "understanding" circuits or something like that.

Asimov, in his Foundation Trilogy, had a character called "the Mule" who was both unable to reproduce (hence his nickname) and able to use his (fictional) scientific/psychic powers to control emotions in others, such as having enemies in battles surrender out of fear and hopelessness - even if the battle wasn't going all that bad. All of this was kind of typical scifi stuff. The interesting twist was he could also cause someone to have the emotion of "inspiration" which would cause a scientist work for hours or days on end non-stop until he had both invented something brilliant (like a new weapon) and also "burned out" like a light bulb that had been made to burn too hot and too brightly will burn out (literally the filament will decompose or snap because of the heat). The scientist who has been the victim of this mental power would just waste away and die, all the time working hard on this new brilliant invention.

Reading the author's autobiographical information in other books I think there was something of a personal nature in this fictional description.

I also, personally, think that ADHD and bi-polar are closer than most people think.

Uncontroversial they both have to do with the brain's use of dopamine.

“She burned too brightly for this world.” Emily Brontë ^

Thanks for the interesting anecodotes especially about The Mule causing the scientist to burn out.

I didn't know that about dopamine either. Hmmm. The one time I tried an SNRI with a dopamine agent, I became suicidal. To the best of my knowledge my SSRI meds (Zoloft in particular, and now Trintellix) haven't worked on Dopamine receptors - whether that's a good thing or bad?

Some physical symptoms I get from dehydration are shortness of breath after light exertion, and dryness around my nose and lips. I don't feel thirsty, and it may even be hard to drink at first. The first pint seems to rush right through, staying clear, before the kidneys get back to work, but I know to drink quarts (litres.)