Overstimulated, shutting down, vent:

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I work at Target, dealing with people on a regular basis. Some days are better than others, some are completely awful. Lately, work has been completely awful. I haven't been diagnosed with AS but I'm two hundred percent sure that I have it. I've shut down at work almost every day for the past month and I realize that certain things are so freggin' hard whenever I've shut down. Here's a list of things that happen to me, and I'm wondering if anyone has similar experiences?

I get a really bad headache. I can't pinpoint where my headache is, but I know that I have a headache. My headaches have always been really weird like that, I can't pinpoint where they are located but I know that my head hurts like no other. Once my headache comes, eye contact becomes nearly impossible. I feel like looking at someone in the eye burns something inside of me. I'm not sure what goes on, but it burns and hurts me so much. If I have to maintain eye contact with someone for an extended period of time, my brain will take a mini-vacation, without telling the rest of my body where it went. I can't focus on simple tasks and I often blink and realize that it's three hours later. Or, if I'm having a really bad day, I can feel every second passing. My eyeglasses start to weigh a ton and I really just want to take them off and sleep. My partner's really the only person that can reach me when I get this way, but sometimes she can't even reach me.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

I can't be in stores like wal-mart or target for too long or I start feeling really brain dead.....I could not imagine trying to work in a place like that. but yeah I kinda know what you mean about the headache thing, its like I know there is a headache but I can't locate my mind let alone where the headache is. Have you thought about maybe looking into a different job?

Numerous times. I just haven't actually gotten around to looking for a new job (I'm a horrible procrastinator).

I also work in a consumer service job and as you said it is really difficult. I have convinced myself that a lot of the people I see, I will never see again so I don't need to worry about what they think. But I understand how hard it is. I can't walk down Alise in a store with other people in them.

Lol! I look for aisles without people in them, just so I can walk down them. I refuse to walk down an aisle whenever there is someone there, sometimes it looks like I'm walking in a HUUUGE circle. I'm sure that my supervisors wonder what's wrong with me.... Oh, well.

Hey Shy, I'm not a doctor, nor a therapist, but it's quite you should describe it in such matching words. In the past few months I've sad panic attacks in stores, went to the doctor to rule out anything physical. I slowly realized that these attacks were self-generated whenever being in a store, because at one time I was in a store where the lighting was bad, and I panicked. Now I try to realize whenever I'm in a store, that nothing is wrong and I shouldn't worry. It's better now.

The second thing might be a bit more severe, but I find the similarities between what you wrote here and what my boyfriend tells me about having absences, striking. He has epilepsy. The 'mini vacation' especially, because that's what he calls them.

If I were you, I'd just discuss it with your doctor immediately. Just tell him your symptoms (and maybe not what you think it is immediately, because that might make him think you're already biased about it). But just get it check out, to be sure.

Ugh... my first job was at Subway and I only lasted a day and a half because of these types of issues. I had many other jobs at call centers, and could never keep any of them either... even though I wasn't having to see the public face to face, just dealing with them, having to answer unpredictable questions immediately, hearing their grating voices, and often putting up with extremely obnoxious attitudes was absolute hell. I tried very hard to get by with these jobs but all the sensory overload kept me completely flustered and it always got to the point of being very painful, both mentally and physically. Sensory overload is something that effects me at all times, making me very clumsy, so jobs involving manual labor are virtually impossible (and dangerous) for me too.

In other words... yeah, I feel ya.

Your shutting down might be a shutdown. It's common in AS and HFA. What it is for me is everything become too much. The headache for me is the same feeling of an approaching meltdown but when I hold it in it sort of turns me off to the world. Senses numb and I can't make eye contact or look straight ahead. There's more hand flapping or really slow speech or none at all.

I've actually had a shutdown in Target. I wandered off flapping like when I was a little child. Everything stopped bothering me and I felt like I was under water or at least completely separate from the rest of the world.

You would need to have a lot of stress to have a seizure. Absence seizures are barely noticeable. Today I had one that seemed longer but was accompanied by a bigger one.
Shutdowns are similar to seizures but I don't think as severe.

Actually just the lighting in the store could bring one on for some people.

But I was thinking more like migraine. Like the word seizure, migraine is a very complex word covering a lot of neurological phenomena besides headaches. But the presence of a nasty headache and visual sensitivity made me wonder.

Because of my poor body awareness I frequently get migraines where I don't feel the pain in my head directly, I just know it's there or act like it's there and that's the only thing that tells me to take something for it.

(I also have a hard time believing it's that easy to "rule out anything physical". Migraines, especially atypical migraines, can be notoriously hard to detect and treat. So can some kinds of seizures. And lots of other things that have no objective test or where the test doesn't catch 100% of cases. It would seriously surprise me if you could truly rule out all physical causes of something that easily although some doctors would claim you could.

Shutdown is a neurological thing as well and it's another possibility. I don't think it's always inherently less severe than a seizure though. During my most severe shutdowns, I experience some combination of inability to move, inability to think, inability to see/hear/feel/taste/smell, and at the very worst I get periods of time I feel as if I've disappeared and can't remember what happened (whereas in absence seizures I don't notice them at all, I do notice "disappearing" but just don't remember a chunk of time). I've spent long periods with no use of my senses and no thoughts in my head and just awareness, nothing else. I don't know what is going on there except perhaps a large backlog of sensation just can't get through anymore. Sometimes when I lie down after an experience like that, and am in a dark quiet room, all the sensations come flooding back. As in I actually feel and see etc. as if they were happening right then. After the flood is over I find that I'm in bed and have done an extreme amount of drooling. Anyway that's all different from my seizures but I'd say the same intensity, sometimes more so. I think shutdowns and seizures can both range from mild to severe. They're certainly both equally incapacitating for me and feel like just as much crap afterwards. The difference is that with shutdown I get afterwards all the pain and confusion of overload. After a seizure it feels like someone has chopped my brain in pieces and reinserted them wrong. Then both of them make me want to sleep after.

I wonder if the doctor will question air quality, mall design and location, your constitutional health or happiness with work life feelings. Oh wait, he'll probably have a pill for that

This is a stab in the "dark," Shy, but...

Do you smoke cigarettes?

If so, how much? How many per day, and how many of them do you smoke at work? How long is your work day normally?

Do you smoke normally more (or a lot more) when you aren't at work then when you are?

Yes. Too much sensory input. I have to go someplace quiet or dark or isolated, quickly, or I risk losing it.

Nope, I definitely do not smoke! I have asthma and smoke irritates me to no end.