Does this sound familiar? (Sensory issues)

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This is what my perception is like on a bad day. They don't come around very often now, but things are often a bit like this for me. So here goes:

I'd gone out to buy a wallpaper brush at a pound shop. The shop's basically one long corridor with everything stacked down the sides. I walk into the shop and find I can't see anything on the shelves. I can see everything, but I can't recognise anything specific. I look at something and that's all I can see, I can't perceive anything around it. So, to find the brush I have to go about it like this: I look at something near me - batteries, move my head - flashlights. Probably won't find wallpaper brushes near these so I walk along a bit. Look at something - it's bin liners. Move my head...

...and so on, all the way down the shop. (I found it in the end by the way) It's like I can only look through either end of a telescope. I either see everything, but it's small and undifferentiated, or I can see one thing, isolated and looming large at me. I'm pretty sure this was how things were for me all the time as a child and I only notice that it's strange now because my perception's usually alright these days.

Can anyone relate to this?

Sounds very familiar. I hate wandering around stores, getting increasingly anxious because I should've found the item I'm looking for by now, and starting to wonder about the people who see this weird dude wandering back and forth between the aisles...

Often I find that I've overlooked the thing I'm looking for several times already.

Yes, I am quite familiar with that exact sort of tunnel-vision. It often happens when I'm in open public areas, especially if the area is unfamiliar or if something unexpected happens - it can completely throw off my sensory perception - including the passage of time.

Agreed with all previous. This however is my standard experience whenever I go shopping. Unless I know exactly what I'm looking for and know exactly where to find it, without fail, shopping=eventual meltdown for me.

Anyone ever have the "right handed" vs. "left handed" Wal-Mart experience? I HATE Wal-Mart enough as it is, but once in a while I end up going to one. I have noticed that they are all more or less laid out the same way....EXCEPTT.....once in a while you will encounter one that is a mirror image of the others! You walk in the front door and everything is completely opposite of the last Wal-Mart you were in. Thus the "right handed" vs. "left handed" Wal-Mart comment.

At any rate, this gets me so upset that I will actually leave the "left handed" Wal-Mart and travel across town to the "right handed" Wal-Mart because it just hurts my head too much to think about flipping everything around in my head AND having to deal with the other subtle difference that you find from one Wal-Mart to the next.

I would like to mention.... I have moved to a rural part of Canada in the past two years and there is NO Wal-Mart in my town. The nearest "collection" of Wal-Marts is an hour and fifteen minutes away. I try very hard to always go to the same Wal-Mart when I go into the city because traveling to the city is stressful enough as it is!!

We don't have Wal-marts here, but boy that sounds surreal!

Oh yes. Usually my visual perception seems pretty reliable, but when there's too much stuff then I just see an undifferentiated mass, and I have to look slowly and purposefully to identify objects and find what I want.

I notice this a lot in drugstores (pharmacies/chemists) - there's a long shelf completely filled with bottles and boxes that all look alike, and I have to really concentrate and read the packaging to make sure I'm getting the right thing.

Sometimes when there's a lot of stuff, especially if it's moving or flashing, I'll put on my mental blinders and just not see it. I don't even realize that I'm not seeing it. Which is good, because if I did see it then I would surely overload and have a meltdown.

What?! A place with no Wal-marts?! Oh dear! We need to fix that!! ! What do you have, then? Independently-owned shops that are each, [gasp] unique? Oh the horrors!

Seriously, though. I hate Wal-mart. They are the spawn of satan. I'm proud to say that I have NEVER set foot in one! And we do have them here, pretty much all over the place, which is why all of my favorite independently owned shops have disappeared, one by one. Still, I refuse to ever shop in a Wal-mart, on principle.

Back to the original topic....I get that same experience when shopping, particularly in stores where there is too much visual clutter. Another thing that makes it worse is loud or obnoxious music or lighting that is too bright. Last month I went into a Borders, which is one of these giant book stores, if you didn't know that. As soon as I walk in, it always takes me a while to kind of get my bearings, because there are all these display (of books that have people's faces on them, and candies, and ipod holders, and all kinds of crap. Plus, there's a big, shiny escalator right in your face.) It takes me a moment to tune all that stuff out and think about the type of book I want to find, and where to go. Well, on this particular day, the music was turned up REALLY loud and it was hip hop. Sorry all you hip hop fans, but nothing makes me feel more alien and uncomfortable than loud hip hop music.

This lady came and asked if she could help me find something, and, since I was otherwise feeling great, I was able to say, "No thanks. I just get a little disoriented when the music is really loud. It takes me a few minutes to get my bearings and remember what I came for." She seemed to thing that was fine, and she left me alone. Several minutes later I noticed that the music was replaced by a quieter Beethoven, or something like that. That made a big difference, so I'm glad I said something.

YES! It is lke an atigmatism of the brain.

It's so hard to explain. DOes it make you stare heavy? I can get locked on it.

I've encountered the same problem with our local Best Buy - great place to shop for DvDs, but they let the teenagers who run the automotive stereo section blast that stuff so loud you can feel it vibrating through the concrete floor and rattling the fixtures. I got no problem with music being loud in the right environment, but c'mon, fer chrissakes - I can't register what I'm reading on a label while somebody's launching a space shuttle on the next aisle!

Why when I was a kid, we had to walk twenty miles to hear music, and it was it was so quiet it wouldn't rustle a butterfly's wings - and if you asked somebody to turn it up, why you'd you'd get your ears boxed till you couldn't hear anything but the dull thump of your own blood pulsing in your burning temples, and that's the way it was and we liked it!

It's funny you say that, I used to have dreams where I'd wake up in my bed but the room was a mirror image! The bed was on the opposite wall etc. etc.



Yeah, I get very starey sometimes. I guess I'm not aware of it when my perception problems are really bad, but when things are intermediate I'm very conscious of it. It does annoy me sometimes, the way eyes aren't just for seeing, but for communicating as well.

Yeah, especially the part that I've bolded. Being overwhelmed kills my visual processing.

Yes that is how it is with me, too. But isn't it also that way for NT's? I always assume that a lot of what I feel, most other people feel, too. I get embarrassed when I find out I'm marching to the beat of a different drummer yet AGAIN.

Something else happens to me that is similar. I can't look at anyone's face and see the whole face at once even if I'm looking from 20 feet away. I can only see one bit of it at a time. Same thing when I look at myself in the mirror, except I'm more blurred out than others.