What does it feel like when noises bother you?

Post Reply New Topic

I cannot tolerate or continue to have a conversation if there is a lot of background noise. Noisy restaurants, pubs/bars, cafes, parties, or even just talking to one person in a room but there is a radio or TV on. I canNOT cope with it.

The reaction I have is one of mounting irritation, anxiety, agitation, distress, and an inability to hear what the person is saying because their voice blends into the rest of the noise, inability to "hear myself think" too, like that old saying "It's so noisy in here I can't hear myself think!"

I can't focus on what the other person is saying and I can't focus on my own thoughts and form my responses. I feel distracted like I'm listnening to EVERYTHING at once and I can't filter the bits I don't need to listen to. I gather that other people can and do filter out the bits they don't need to hear in an environment. I can't.

If I stay in the situation, on extreme occasions I have had shutdowns -- withdrawn completely and become very quiet -- and also meltdowns -- an outburst of being upset and either yelling I can't stand it or storming out. Those have happened few and far between and only when the situation seemed inescapable for some reason. Most of the time I just "swallow" the irritation to be socially acceptable, but the stress builds up in me.

I find it very hard to bring myself to admit to someone that I need a quieter environment or that I would like them to turn off the radio. I'm having problems doing that.

I also react badly to repetitive speech. When a TV commercial has an actor repeat the same phrase over and over again. Or, there was a documentary I was watching and one of the people interviewed kept saying the same phrase over and over again just to be cutesy -- for example when someone keeps using a phrase that can be dropped, like saying "I like the this, I like the that, I like that other thing, I like the next thing" etc. For some reason the persistent repetition starts to agitate me. I feel like the sound is jack-hammering into my head even if it's not loud. Again, stress, irritation and a feeling of overloaded senses.

I can't stand when a car alarm goes off and keeps on going, same reaction.

Sometimes I can't stand hammering and banging and drilling sounds of one of the other apartments in my building having work done -- yet at other times if there's a muffled sound of this work, it actually soothes me.

i feel like it's forcing its way inside my brain, or that my head is imploding.
depending on the noise i'll either start to feel nauseated, anxious, or enraged.

BirdInFlight, exactly! I'm the same way. If I hear a sound repeatedly, even if it's a soft sound, it begins to irritate me. Recently, I had a kid in my street playing basketball and the repeated sound of the ball bouncing drove me to distraction. Also, like you, I find sometimes that mechanical noises, if they are deep, uniform and resonating - like certain woodshop machines - can be incredibly soothing.

As for everything else though: motorbikes, lawn-mowers, chainsaws and pretty much all man-made machines except vacuum cleaners: brain rape. (Like: Why don't I hate the sound of thunder but passing trucks can force swear words out of me?)

I'm not too crazy about noisy neighbours and spoiled kids either. I'm just glad I don't live in the Middle Ages or I'd be burned at some stake for withdrawing from such people (they'd think I'm the antisocial one).

Let's be positive here though, what about noises that soothe? I like painting and mopping sounds, they're like massage for the brain. I'm sure I'm not alone in this pleasure.

Being subjected to audible information - such as overheard conversations - having no bearing on a given task I'm working on feels like thinking through static.

The sound of pieces of styrofoam being rubbed together - or even thinking about that sound - elicits in me a sensation remarkably similar to the "brain zaps" caused by SSRI withdrawal.

I'm extremely bothered by noises that are too loud or two quiet. When my wife watches television, even if I'm not paying attention, I hold the remote and make continual adjustments. If the sound is quiet enough that it sounds remotely like mumbling--if I have to strain even a little bit to make out a word here and there--I start feeling pressure in my shoulders and head, as if they're going to explode. Same if the volume is too loud. There's this narrow margin that feels okay to me, and I have to keep changing the volume to keep it within that margin.

Bad noise (too quiet or too loud) feels unbearable really fast. If my wife pauses for ten seconds on a channel with a too loud (or too quiet) commercial, it's too much for me. I can feel my heart racing and the pressure building. The same thing happens when two recorded sounds play at the same time, like when someone has the TV on in the background and watches a youtube video at the same time. That's agony, even if it's just a 30-second video.

I would not describe it as painful, but loud noises give me a very strange feeling that I cannot really compare to anything I know. It is uncomfortable enough to make me cringe and, over a long enough time, it makes me progressively angrier (although never angry enough that people can see just by looking at me, I think).

For some reason, the noise that bothers me the most is the sound of people talking next to me.

It feels like too many, not too loud.

It makes me cringe and sweat.

Loud stuff is like a knife through my head. Stuff like a leaf blower off somewhere is like slow torture.

It's not usually volume for me, but specific noises that I usually refer to as my 'fingernails on a chalkboard' noises (which, incidentally, seems to be a good explanation for people that wouldn't otherwise understand).

In most cases, it makes my whole head feel like it's vibrating, or itchy. Not just my skin, but my teeth and brain and eyes and everything else too. Particularly bad ones make the sensation spread down my spine. The feeling usually lasts long after the sound has ended, and even thinking about the sound can make the feeling start up again (getting the feeling right now, though not very potent).

My usual response to the feeling is to either suck my cheeks in, or fold my lower lip over my bottom teeth and click the inside of my lip with my tongue (best I can explain...).

We get antlers for my dog to chew on, and there's a certain way that his teeth grate against the bone sometimes... like a shot right through my brain. I can almost feel the path that the feeling travels, from somewhere just behind and below my nose, diagonally up and back until it gets near the top of my skull (I've always thought of things like this when trying to describe the feeling). It spreads out from that path, until my whole head feels like it's vibrating.

It feels like My heads going to explode or I'm going to faint. Also loud noices are scary and also at times make me jump. It's also very distracting.

It feels like a pressure building in my head, turning into pain and I become irritable, anxious and short tempered. I have to leave or make the noise stop.

It depends on what the noise, IS----it can just be grating, causing terrible anxiety and / or, anger----or, it can have a physical manifestation, and make me feel like I want to scream, or cry, or throw-up----and, sometimes, I have. I even had a phone, once, that, because of the tone of the ring, when it rang, it made me have a seizure----needless-to-say, I got rid of that sucker, REAL fast!!