I understand that they get them but what happens exactly to them?
In: Biology
What it feels like for me:
Have you ever thought about how listening works? Like, some sound hits your ear, and there’s some kind of background context and some expectation, etc. The combination of those gets interpreted by your brain to tell you not just what the sound was but how it fits into your expectations, how it adjusts the context, etc. Is that car engine you’re hearing a outside the building, or is it revving and heading right for you?
My sensory overloads feel like I lose my ability to connect the input with the context and expectations. So all the inputs become disconnected. Maybe I recognize that it’s a car engine, but suddenly I can’t figure out whether I expected to hear one right now. Or maybe it comes through as a sound I think I expected, but I lose track of what the sound actually is, or what produced it. For visual overload, I lose the ability to keep the narrative – it’s like watching TV where someone else is switching the channel several times each second, but all the channels are showing episodes of Friends so your brain tries to make sense out of it.
My brain gets stuck on that gap – trying to figure out what the missing information is, or how to contextualize, etc. For hearing, it turns up the volume on everything in the hopes that it will help. For visuals, colors stop making sense, it takes several seconds to recognize objects, etc. For touch, my skin loses its ability to discern, so everything feels itchy at once, and my brain gets stuck trying to manually separate the feeling of my clothes on me from the shape of the thing I’m holding, etc.
For me, when it happens to one sense it generally happens to others at the same time. Sometimes it’s sight and sound, sometimes it’s sound and touch, etc. It’s pretty rare for me to get smell or taste episodes.
Actually, I have a great example. It’s NSFW, though. Go to YouTube and find [Eminem’s new song, Godzilla](https://youtu.be/pWdI4pHbiU0), one where you can follow the lyrics onscreen. Put in on 2x and play it. Now, while listening and trying to read the lyrics, have someone else in the room start talking to you about the most boring subject in the world. Then have a third person pick up random objects in the room and start rubbing them against random parts of your exposed skin – the back of your neck, hands, etc. In front of you there’s a plate of unrelated foods that you can’t look at, you just have to eat them – carrots, jelly beans, sushi rolls, potato chips, mushrooms, licorice. There’s a lot of sensory information coming at you at once, none of it seems connected, but it doesn’t stop.
That’s what it feels like for me. Generally, it only lasts a few minutes, especially if I notice it happening and can pull myself away to a quiet room for a few minutes. On bad days it will happen at work and I’ll just have to either excuse myself or intentionally tune out of everything that’s happening. On really bad days it might last hours, and the best I can do is try to take a nap, which is almost impossible given the lightning storm in my brain.
Also, these are some great explanations. Thanks to everyone for writing down what it feels like for you.
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