Sensory overload theory

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Used to experience sensory overload several times a month without realizing what it was thought i get extremely uncomfortable and shy about myself.

After learning about ASD not long ago i experienced it again today in grocery store and it was clear that it was sensory overload from seeing too many things at once and i could not focus at all.

My main issue was i did not want to being in center of attention i wanted to do my things quickly and get out of the store, but as i walk people were on my way and i almost bumped into them several times.

When i got to register i keep seeing all many small things happening around in details like stuff falling down, people every sound i head, people move around etc.

Could not turn it off, it was like anxiety or panic attack mixed with sensory overload.

Usually this happens to me very rarely maybe two times a month only when there's prerequisites like when i felt felt sad, stressed and inconfident about myself.

At least in my case sensory overload seems to be experienced by a nervous breakdown when i unable to control flow of information coming into my head due to being distracted by some constant thought e.g. social anxiety.

What sensory overload seems to be, physically, according to science, is the information not reaching where it should when it is supposed to in your brain, so it gets jumbled and the brain gives up on trying to sort it.

There's the intense world theory, the magical world theory.
But I'm not sure how it includes the underwhelmed and insensitive, except for perceiving things in a very fragmented way -- little to do with intensity, but more to do with sensing too many things at once by not perceiving 'wholes'. I guess that part falls to central coherence theory.

Then a theory I call of my own that involves processing speed and capacity -- and if someone has enough of this, it'll be capable enough keeping up with the stimuli that are otherwise overwhelmingly too many to take and too intense to handle.
There's a time, that I got so much processing speed and capacity, that not only I could sense by body very well, the fabrics touching my skin, the sounds of every vehicle, the air and humidity and wind, the various scent around me from the greens of the vegetable stall to the smoke from the exhaust pipes of a vehicle. Too many things, and I was able to catch them all while knowing the fastest and safetest route to go there and still have my mental list of things to do without checking a written list, while end up memorizing every detail unintentionally.
... And I could barely recall it after a week or so. It's like able to take chaos and not just about riding and handling it. I could barely reconstruct the memory itself, but all I know is that I wasn't overwhelmed and I process most of the stimuli I was usually receiving.

Then my own terms between tolerance and threshold. The threshold may tell how much is too much or not enough, but tolerance keeps it together whether if it's not enough or too much.
I can be in a safe room for all I know, only to end up in intolerance by losing it due to something insignificant such as a lump on a chair.
Or have all my sensory defences and threshold gone, which makes everything I perceive painful and too fast and very exhausting. But can function better than the former scenario because I have the tolerance for the lack of threshold.

I know too little of the technical terms. But I know what I experienced.




Yes, I have my own experience myself with the similar scenario.
While I may be prone to anxiety at such state if I let myself slip or that if I forgot how to 'take' the overload, the first thing is confusion and overwhelm but I don't usually lose it.
I have to 'let it go' somehow, like a leap of faith.

Everything is still chaotic. It's usually is, but I'm not on a verge of losing myself because of that. I can't explain it, but nothing much changed in my sensory system except about how I may react or felt about it. Something rised and fell. It doesn't make me calm or blank, or even more or less aware, but it certainly made me more stable no matter how confusing it gets. I'm my own anchor, that's for sure.
It's not dissociation either, otherwise I wouldn't know what I felt or even acknowledge it, or 'know' that I was just blocking everything instead of taking it in. If that's the case, I'd admit it, but I would only do that in a more serious situation.
I never had a nervous breakdown myself though. Anxiety is rare to me (rare like, trice a year or less). And I happen to go to crowded, busy, and noisy places more often than on daily basis.

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I tend to adhere to the Intense World Theory of autism, or Sensory Processing Disorder. That's how I experience my autism, anyway. I can't filter out visual stimuli normally, so I take it all in at once

Same with other stimuli

The overall effect is that there is no filter, so absolutely everything is more intense and has to be processed by me cognitively in a more conscious way. Or I shut down