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I’m in an auditorium full of people, and there’s something wrong with the sound system. There’s this low, ongoing, jarring hum in the background. You know the sound you hear momentarily when someone plugs in a speaker? It’s that sound, persistently.
And we’re all just carrying on as normal, as though it doesn’t exist. The host is introducing a new speaker, the speaker presents, we conduct a Q&A, rinse and repeat. What?
I’m finding it increasingly hard to think beyond the overwhelm it’s creating inside my mind. I can’t hear past it, and I can feel my internal panic rising. These are the times when I admire the neurotypical ability to just allow sensory chaos to co-exist, unencumbered. I can’t hear any of the speakers, or the sound of my own thoughts. I cannot get ahead of it, and so I declare the day disappointing and give up trying. I may actually be the only person in the room intent on paying attention anyway.
Until my diagnosis, I didn’t join the dots: I never knew I was so affected by sound and sensory overwhelm, but it does explain why I always wanted to leave the party after two hours: we’ve arrived, we’ve hello’d and I’ve had all my conversations!? And why I’d rather be up early in the morning to run errands when the roads and stores are empty- it’s much quieter on my nervous system. If you’d asked me to explain my choices to you, I would never have labelled them as ‘sensory overwhelm: too many people, too many voices, too many things in my space’.
I needed to understand it through my son, to understand it in me. In the very early months of my son’s diagnosis I declared an emergency meeting with the various practitioners I’d been consulting with to discuss my son’s meltdowns which were accelerating and we’d had a really bad one that had really rocked my world.
My Mom and I set off to ‘fix things’ and met with the practice head, two of the psychologists in his practice team and another independent psychiatrist whom I’d called on during the emergency. I learned many things that day, but this particular moment stuck with me. The practice head said: “you’re expecting your son to concentrate on the class lesson but he can’t think past his feet that are burning (with discomfort) in his shoes.”
I can’t think of a better explanation for sensory overwhelm or discomfort. It’s not a grit through it; suck it up buttercup kind of situation. It’s an experience that renders your ability to be present, impossible.
Now, when my son tells me that he can’t go into the restaurant (when we’re standing at the door about to go in and meet people), or refuses to leave the hotel room when we’re on holiday: I understand better, because all I wanted to do today was to get out of that auditorium.
I wish I’d had these forever ago. Whilst I’ve created a life that circumvents sensory noise, there are times when I need to cope: in the open plan office, at the work conference, commuting through the airport and thanks to these Loop earplugs, I can manage better. They make public spaces bearable. I particularly like these because they offer different settings so you can decide how much or little noise you need to filter out in your day. Some days I can handle more than others.
Sensory overwhelm is an individual experience. For me, it's sights, sounds, and unpredictable movement. For my son, it's smells as well. But we're both just looking for the same thing in that auditorium, that classroom, that hotel room: a way back to quiet.
Chat soon, AL
P.S. I did eventually leave that auditorium, but I had no coping left for the after drinks, and nothing you could have said would have convinced me to stay.