Can you describe what sensory overload feels like?

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Because I really need something to explain the way I feel.

A few times a day my brain will go into complete overdrive. It feels like it is scrambling to do everything and accomplishes nothing. Usually it happens in the middle of having a conversation in a loud environment or talking with too many people at once.

I cannot focus on one particular thing. It's like my brain tries to pay attention to all of the environmental stimuli at once. i get a blurry sensation and my mind races/ruminates/obsesses 10x more intensely than it usually does to the point where I can't control it at all. This makes it extremely hard to focus, and leads to me keeping my head down. It leaves me in a completely vulnerable state. My self esteem drops and I become completely self-conscious. Also, when people try and talk to me I am extremely impulsive and defensive. Everything becomes slightly blurry for a second and I'm unable to hear what people are saying to me, even if they are RIGHT in front of me, which makes me look foolish when I have to keep saying "what?"

I feel slightly disoriented as well during this whole process. Unsure if the disorientation is a result of anxiety or something more.

When this happens at home, it sometimes manifests as aggressive and hostile behavior, and I always look back trying to figure out what came over me.

This slight disorientation lasts until I get some quiet time. This symptom persists without any sign of regression. I really can't shake it.

It feels emotionally painful because I have no control of it. Anger is a big part of it. At that moment I want to shut off the whole world and inflict pain on anybody who makes that sound/touch/movement. Think about someone scratching their nails on the old blackboards and multiply it a few times.

I was sent this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPDTEuot ... _embedded# which is a video on Youtube of one person's experience of sensory overload. It is similar to my experience, and it is a good description of sensory overload.

Dunno if this is quite the same thing as you're describing, but occasionally when others are talking to me I'll feel overloaded and my brain will go into shutdown, i.e. it dumps the whole shebang. I'm still able to look as if I'm paying attention (unless they trip me up with an awkward question like "what have I just said?"), but I'm not turning their words into thoughts any more, and my attention moves onto my own thoughts (usually "oh crap, it's happening again!") or the shape of the people's noses. It doesn't happen as much as it used to, probably because I've learned to avoid most situations that bring it on.

you know that scene on Just Visiting when Jean Reno plays a French Lord Chavlier knight who is transported to Contemporary Manhattan? He leaves the museum, and is confronted by leaf blowers, cars, street sweepers, etc etc. They quickly run back into the museum.

Well this is daily life in Shanghai. especially on sundays during market. And this is a small neighrborhood!! oddly skit over to Hong Kong, or even Macau, people live an idylic existance of slow paced walking, that supports one of the highest Life expectancy, but in Zhuhai (the chinese city attached to Macao). It's WORSE than Shanghai, because the roads haven't been repaired in what 30 years, and down to the gravel (from the tar), and they still drive like this here. Wakka Wakka Wakka.


My serious answer: everything you described. Being around these sensations are so tiring but so addicting oddly. I'm a pain freak what can I say. I get a pleasant narcotic sedative endorphine rush, and my legs feel like warm jello it's like being in a nice warm hot tub, but that is, if I can endure the chest pain inducing stress. One day my 35 year old heart is just going to explode spraying blood everywhere. this nasal Chinese yelling (when two Chinese moms haggle over 1 RMB discount of a fish already costing 1 RMB (7 cents USD). So I'm going have a heart attack, because I'm started by the sudden violin sounding conversation of Nasal tonals, because some lady wants to sell 7 cents.

I already chewed my fingernail down to the bone, it has trouble healing back, This is why..... my step mom complains that I chew my finger. Well it's her arguing with my dad, for money that he often gives just to shut up that voice. This is what inspires me to chew my nail in the first place. Well no the Flames sucking last year from FIRST place to last place on a losing streak did that.

But then I often just become catatonic, with a Stotic expression, when I'm in resting mode. If I can't sleep, on the bus, on the train, waiting for things, line ups I go into Nirvana mode. Where I just stare forward. People wave their hands infront of me. oh well. That's their ignorance.

When there are many sounds being emitted around me, they all blur together into a sort of white noise. I don't hear it any differently, it just comes through as a single block.

I react differently to loud, sudden noises. These immediately send me into a state of hypo-panic, and it's not uncommon for me to actually cry because of it.

On that video, it says that autistic minds are slower to process stuff. I agree with that when it comes to social situations, but I process other things very quickly and in primary school I quickly learnt to hide things by pretending to be slower etc, so the other kids wouldn't react to it. I still do that now, I can't think of an example, but I always caught on a lot more quickly than my peers in certain things and this would lead to teasing, whatever. Oh, like when we're reading aloud and they have to sound words out. That didn't happen to me, but I started to pretend it was really hard by imitating an NT person doing that. They pause, look up, smile and wait for the teacher to help them out. Well, anyway. I'm not trying to make myself look really clever, I know I'm not that clever, but I hope I misunderstood what that youtube person was saying.

And sensory overload...umm...vision gets blurry, hearing goes fuzzy (maybe the blood might pound in my ears a bit), can't concentrate. Feels a little bit like blacking out, except it doesn't go black. I might start to cry. It feels like someone's jerking my body up or down and something implodes a bit in my head. It's triggered when talking to people I feel scared around, when change happens, once I saw this person I knew from on the internet in a supermarket and I got the full-fuzzy effect right there in the bread aisle. I also started talking in a super loud voice when it was over, which I don't usually do (I was there with another girl).

I dont know why but when im driving, listening to a good song and generally enjoying myself I get a tingle on the top parts of my arms, shoulders and face. I dont know what it is at all.

For me it feels like I have a shield going right down, Halo style. I get confused out of my brain and feel vulnerable to people attacking me. I shield gets depleted and I nearly die if an ambulance sirens past me.

Once I'm overloaded all my senses become more hypersensitive - and even stimuli that wouldn't usually bother me is painful.

Since I always have a way to retreat from people (although not from their noise ) I can usually get away.

When I get overstimulated badly enough I tend to shut down more than anything, and the stimuli just sort of flows around me. I can hear the noise but it feels more distant, and I don't really hear the language as language anymore. Everything else isn't a problem because I am usually in my bedroom at this point.

I've had periods - at concerts, playing video games, in loud parties, etc - where I felt like my brain just stopped processing sensory input and everything became a nonsensical blur, which is the best way I can describe it. Times like that I find someplace quiet and private - or turn off the electronics that causes it.

That blur thing happens when I tune out in general, come to think of it. Not always when I'm overloaded.

Last edited by Verdandi on 13 Jan 2011, 7:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

lol. i understand that i thought it was cool how used halo to explain it. xD

The only feeling i can relate it to when i think back about it is anger, like Kon said, but on the moment, i feel something before the anger sets in.....first it's like starving. I feel the noise and the lights in my stomach, like a starving sensation when your stomach hurts. Then i get the headache and disorientation, and this also relates to starving, anyone ever been starving so much they want to throw up? it's a bit like that, or mosquito repellent poisonning.....it really feels like being sick. I get dizzy and in survival mode, and that's what triggers the anger with other people talking to me or maybe it's the subsequent shutdown that triggers it? Talking to me in shut down is never a good idea... i shut down in seconds from sensory overloads so it's easy to confuse the cause of the anger.
It feels bad. how do i describe it...I guess you want a description that an NT could understand? I don't know, lock them in a room with 20 mosquito fume thingies burning in it until they feel sick and they will get the idea i guess....I poisonned myself with these as a teen, basically by spending 2 days reading in my room and burning one after another without ever opening my window, and the feeling is very similar, tactile hypersensitivity , headache, dizziness, nausea....only the anger was missing

I am overloaded right now.

Every sound hurts a bit.

I get those when I have simple partial seizures. I once heard a neurologist (forget the name) say that tingling is a mild seizure. It's probably not as bad what happens after my tingling though.

My sensory overload makes me feel either underwater or that I'm standing and looking down at the world that's under the sea. Sounds become muffled and my focus either turns off or focuses on something very specific. I lose sense of taste. I stim uncontrollably. I lose the ability to speak or say words how I'd normally say them. "I don't feel well' turns into 'feels bad.' I either feel eurphoric, scared or no emotionally dead. Then I convulse. After it's all over I can barely walk.

I feel like my mind and my body doesn't exist anymore and that I am the "whole world". And that that "whole world" is trying to get at me. Lights are especially too bright and people talking (especially at me) makes me scream inside my head. I feel like I would do absolutely anything to escape them.

Wow, that is so descriptive and says something that I feel and had never put into words! Thankyou.