Do you ever have such a bad sensory overload..........

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.....you can't sleep, and you have to literally beat the crap out of yourself, including headbang against every hard object until you literally either knock yourself out or wear yourself out, also punch and bite open every part of the body you can until you have no more energy left ?

I'm wonderng this because this happens to me quite often, and i feel like my whole body and brain, is about to explode and unless i do beat myself and headbang, bite, etc i cant sleep or relax at all . Afterwards i dont feel pain or upset, instead i sleep very well in fact. Anybody else have to beat the crap out of yourself to sleep sometimes due to how bad your sensory overload is

Well, since your a classic autistic person (HFA), it's to believed that your more sensitive than the other people on the spectrum. But, I have experienced a bad sensory year without sleeping in which I wanted to hit my head to sleep. My tongue and body were numb, but I had horrible misgraines.

Nowhere near that extent, but I occasionally beat myself, bite, shake, flail, etc., when too overloaded to sleep. One person who slept beside me would try to restrain me and urge me to do it to them instead.

i never can fall asleep on my own I take Melatonin supplements to help me fall asleep

I tend to get that sort of reaction from emotional overload rather than sensory. (with sensory overload I tend to cry and want to hide curled in a ball and fall asleep plus I find talking very hard to do until I've had time to 'reset' so I go uncommunicative)

When emotion gets the better of me and becomes so strong I don't know what to do, I smack my head off the wall, or scratch at myself, or grab a stick and beat up the bed until I get it out of me, fortunately as I'm getting older that happens less and less as I do my best to avoid stressful emotional scenarios and that has worked...

I've never had any problem falling asleep though as I said that seems to be a natural reset for me when I'm overloaded it's very easy to sleep.

When either happens though, I just want to be left alone. I don't want others near me at all, that would make things worse.

Age, yes!

I fall asleep at night by headbanging and chewing on my hands, every night. It's like all the sensory stuff from all day has to come out at night, or something.

i can relate to headbang stuff mostly doing this when i meltdown for what ever reason "headbang against every hard object until you literally either knock yourself out or wear yourself out" but usually i get restrained before that

I recently found a great video that kinda shows what sensory overload is like to those who never experienced it.

Thank you much-sent the link to my bf, now maybe he'll get why it's not necessarily such a good idea to keep asking over and over "what's wrong?"... because either my mind is just blank when he's asking from it all, or there is just too much to even know where to start-or too much and I cannot pinpoint what exactly it is sending me over the top out of everything I could list.

Things don't look the same way as in the vid, but the chaotic feeling... is definitely there.

Age-lol, we used to talk a LOT, glad to see you coming back around. I used to be Nobodyzdream before I took my break. Also have a new e-mail address, as my hard drive fried and I couldn't remember any of my passwords for anything, lol.

I used to hurt myself-scratch my hands up pretty good when overwhelmed by things, including just information overload when I came to a halt in comprehension when the info still kept coming. I still get the halt, but don't hurt myself anymore... now I just "blank out" and get mad at whoever keeps on talking after a while.

At night... before bed-well, I do have a TON of trouble getting to sleep. In fact, I've kind of gotten back into a bad habit of not getting to sleep until 4 or so, and waking up around 11 or noon (except for having to get my son up in the morning). Going to talk to the doc about it today-I've tried melatonin but all it does is relax me a lot, it doesn't help with me actually getting to sleep though, because my mind is still recooperating from everything and my body is really relaxed so I'm even more uncomfortable. Need to tell him I just really need something to knock me out once in a while.

It's not the same thing... or maybe it sort of is in a weird way. I have restless leg syndrome, so often don't have time to "beat myself up" in the way you do, but I kick my legs for HOURS sometimes, so that definitely gets some energy out of me in some way shape or form. I'm not sure what I would do if I didn't have that keeping my attention.... but it definitely doesn't help with sensory overload, lol, because it's just more discomfort to work out before sleep. It's not every night, but I get it in periods of weeks at a time... it'll go on for 2 weeks, sometimes a month straight, then be gone for a month or so, and back again.

hehehe, im going to take a video of my room and post it on youtube, itll show my holes in my sheets from eating through them, show my biting pillow which i must have or ill eat through my bed lol, and itll show only some of the holes i did wiht my head, most of them are patched, because our weirdo cat likes to jump up and try to peel the wall paper lol so yea.

omgosh i was wondering where u went hehehe, how r u?

lol, I'm here and still going Going to participate in a walk for autism this Saturday! Not a huge fan of Autism Speaks, but... the group I'm walking with seems to have ideas very similar to my own... not so much pro-cure or anything like that, but advocacy and acceptance, which I like. It's still a bit awkward to be doing something that has their name on it, lol, but in our community there is so little out there, and the lady involved has been trained to be a "mentor" to help us out with things. Doh, no one wants to read all of this-will PM here shortly!

I'm a bit like this, too. A sensory overload is pretty difficult for me to manage. and it will happen pretty easily.

it has made me feel ever more that maybe a womb like manner of life might suit me ... making sure i'm really protected. That will normally make me relax. Anxiety dwindling away ...

I have this occasionally, but usually my self-harm is not that bad even when I'm overloaded.