What am I recommending?
I recommend you watch this Youtube video simulation on sensory overload. This video does a really good job of showing how it can really amp up the fight/flight reflex, how the more affected a person becomes the less capable they are of managing information around them or even exiting the situation on their own. I like this one because It simulates the black patches and tunnel vision that can accompany the experience as well as the overexposed ‘snowblind’ effect where you’re just not sure of even what Im looking at.
Because Sensory Overload looks much different from the outside than the inside and I think just like we learn to recognize the bulging eyes and panicked look of a person drowning, we can learn to recognize a person who is mentally drowning from overstimulation. Occasionally a person who is overloaded may not be aware the situation has gotten as bad as it has. I’m talking from abundant personal experience on both sides of the situation.
The experience can be overwhelming and traumatic. It can also be embarrassing, though it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Why Should you care?
There is a lot to unpack here; sensory overload looks very different from the inside and the outside.
Sensory Overload is what happens when you run out of spoons and your brain ceases to process your experience.
Triggers can be individual but often include things like: Bright lights, overhead/fluorescent lighting, lots of shiny chrome, echoes, various noises coming from different sources, loud vibrational hums, stagnant air in the back of a store, sadly, anything can become a trigger. Even the sight of some foods, smells, clothing tags/seams. I often struggle with any non-cotton fabrics, which is why I dress like a child.
From the outside this can look like a person slumping in a chair staring out into space, or spinning around. It can look like a tantrum, or like the person may pass out.
They/You can get nauseous, stomach cramps. If you’re prone to hypoglycemia your sugars may bounce up or plumet into danger. This activates fight/flight(freeze/friend) and shut down rest and digest. When it flips back you may binge, the binge may cause cravings too.
Sensory overwhelm can also just manifest from having weak sensory processing. After my concussion and for a long time afterwards (sometimes still) I could get overwhelmed just from the visual processing involved in walking, or other simple activities. Sensory Integration therapies can help some and are worth a try. You can also create an emergency recovery kit that we can go into later, or do spoon building activities before hand.
Though each type of neurodiversity or cocktail of diagnoses may be individually small, the tendency to be neurodiverse in one way or another is being recognized as more common. Plus the added demands of life in a rapidly changing world can overwhelm anyone to the point where they can get sensory overload.
If you have any doubt, search sensory overload in Pinterest and look at the comments. Each pin has dozens of comments from people who were not only overwhelmed by sensory overload but traumatized by the treatment they received during the episode.
After living in lockdown for an extended period, many people are out of practice at being in public, not just our manners, but our ability to function in a demanding environment where lights or sounds can come and go randomly as we are trying to do our particular task at the moment. Being out of practice, we are seeing it discussed that lots of people are struggling to get back up to speed upon re-integration.
While the number of people with any particular condition may be fairly low, the tendency for a person to be Neurodivergent isn’t. People can have a variety of conditions that all create neurodivergence, even if they didn’t start out that way. Conditions like; Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADD/ADHD, Dyslexia, Dementia, PTSD/CPTSD, TBI/mTBI, can all affect a person’s ability to process incoming stimuli. Neurotypical people can also be temporarily affected by medications, illness, migraines, intoxication, grief, etc.
What you can walk away with?
Hopefully you can understand and anticipate how features in one’s physical surroundings can be triggering. Allow people who may be prone to this disturbance to exercise self agency and adopt helpful strategies, or consider if the experience is really necessary/optimal. Maybe just the understanding that an experience that you may not normally think twice about may be really toxic for others in a way they can’t articulate and not be personally hurt when they don’t want to do or struggle with certain activities.
What will you get from this?
You will learn to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. People do weird things when confronted with unexpected difficulty, not because they are mean or heartless but they don’t realize what the other person may be going through and they don’t know what would be helpful so they say something that they learned to say in these awkward situations that ends up sounding less helpful and more about making the situation actually better. And I know that you’d rather be the mild mannered hero(ine) that someone who says something awkward because they don’t know what to do.
What can you walk away with?
Knowledge is power. You will know what a sensory overload looks like from the inside, and outside and gain an appreciation for what the individual may be going through. You will understand why the person can not just think happy thought or ‘act normal’ (also known as masking).
Im not going to try to resolve this here but to let you know that this is a ‘thing’. And it happens. It happens a lot. If we can look at someone and see that they are not trying to be difficult, they are having difficulty.
A partial list of things that may be helpful include:
Some large facilities have infermeries, a quiet lounge, or outdoors. Sitting down so they don’t hit their head if they pass out. A drink of (cool) water, if they can drink, a small snack if they can eat. You want to limit the number of different sensory signals, something soft or with an easily discernable recognizeable pattern. Alternate tapping, humming, singing. If they have a preferred stim let them go with it, eating/chewing gum can be helpful (as long as they are not feeling faint) Trauma can knock the speech centers in our brain offline. Hand signals can be helpful. People who can’t speek or sing may be able to hum.
