Veröffentlicht am: 5. November 2024 | Geschrieben von: lalunadermond

Disclaimer: This sensory overload experience I will be describing is personal; not all sensory overload episodes are alike. I want to share my experience in hopes that those of us who suffer from them and people who want to help will understand how to help someone get through one of these episodes. 

The last Sensory Overload episode I experienced happened this month. My birthday is in the second week of October, and I am always very excited about it. I’ve learned to pace my overly excited emotions into what I call «Birthday Week». This way, I don’t have one massive peak of excitement, but rather, I get seven days to celebrate with friends in short periods. I don’t enjoy sitting at a table with a big group of people, even if these people were to be my closest friends. The same goes for walking into a room full of people, even if I were happy to see them. In the end, seeing two or three friends at a time is much more manageable for a specific amount of time. My multiple birthday celebration invitations come with an allotted time. Something like, «Brunch at my place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m». I’m grateful my friends understand that I can’t be in a group setting for a long time. Even though I followed my usual weekly plan this year, something went wrong. 

I met up with friends on Monday and every day until my birthday on Thursday. I felt fine. I was happy and excited but not I-can’t-sleep-because-I’m-that-excited. On Saturday, I put some sweet potatoes in the oven for dinner. I was nibbling on a piece of bread at the dining room table, waiting for them to be ready. My partner was playing video games on his computer. Then I felt it. Do you know that feeling when you want to cough but are in a quiet room and force yourself not to cough? Or, when you’re in a quiet room and feel a sneeze coming, and for what feels like four seconds, you think you can control whether you will sneeze or not? It’s like that. [Strong impulse to self-soothe through bodily stimming] My body wanted to turn my torso slowly from right to left, right to left. I thought that if I allowed my body to move very slowly, that would be it. It would leave me alone to enjoy my dinner. I moved my torso sideways slowly. I felt my mind become very still, like fog. Note: Brainfog tends to be a precursor of an overload. My thoughts become simple. It feels like my brain is cooking my thoughts like a raw egg into a hard-boiled egg. Blank. Hard. My body keeps moving. My partner removed his headset and gave me an are you okay? look. I told him I was fine and that I was going to the hallway to play with my Fluff for a bit. 

Backstory on the Fluff: one lucky day, this white fluff came through the dining room window. It looks like a snowflake. It’s possibly some part of a flower. I caught it between my hands and released it in the air. It swam gently and came back to me. I released it and caught it over and over for half an hour. I keep it in a glass jar behind the couch for moments when I need to calm down. The constant up-and-down movement and predictability make my brain calm.  [Repeating stimuli are naturally low in new stimuli that would lead to more overload] Probably what the ocean does to some people or lullabies do to some babies. I’m in the hallway playing with my Fluff when it kicks in. 

[Using a coping strategy to calm down] I’m aware I’m standing on my tip-toes. I can feel the back of my left hand rubbing my mouth from left to right, left to right. I can hear myself humming something. All I can see is the Fluff. Every little limb against the light. Every little turn it makes as it falls onto my right palm. Time is lost. [Loss of time and space is also known as derealisation, which happens when reality is too much to process – our body’s last resort to flee sensory overload] I feel my partner’s arms around me. He holds my left hand away from my mouth. [Partner stops possible self-harming stim] On my tiptoes, I keep catching and releasing my Fluff. He asks me where my heavy blanket is. [Partner stepping in to provide coping strategy] I tell him it’s in the basement. I said to him that the Fluff didn’t work. My brain is still hard-boiled. I can hold a conversation, but it also feels like I’m the only one in the apartment. [Loss of connection to others – part derealisation] It’s a weird feeling because I’m aware of my movements, what is being said to me, and the words I speak, but it’s as if I’m underwater. [Dimmed auditive processing] I’m slower, more panicky, and exhausted. 

My partner leads me to the couch. I tell my dog that I’ll just take a short nap. I try to make my voice sound reassuring, but I know that my voice is monotonous in these instances, with no sign of emotion. [Loss of some executive function – the function to control tone at will] I lay down, and my body began to rock back and forth. My psychologist has explained to us that this is nothing like having convulsions. [Involuntary bodily stimming] But it’s still scary to watch, I’m sure. 

These strategies help me give my senses an intense but straightforward sensory input to come back to reality:

• Tightness. My partner hugs me tightly–gently and with care but also in a bear-hug strength. He pays special attention to the area around my head, ensuring I don’t hit it when my head moves. 
• Heavy blanket. My blanket is on the heavier side. It weighs 9 kilos. I like my blanket up to my neck. It makes me feel safe. Feeling this added weight on my body makes me feel like I’m “still here,” like even when my brain feels heavy, my body is still here.
• My dog. When these episodes happen, my dog lays down on top of me. In the beginning stage of my body rocking back and forth, he lays right next to me or on top of me. On my side or my shoulder. Once the rocking has subdued, I lie on my back, and he alternates between laying on my stomach and my chest. 
• Strong scents. Mint and Eucalyptus work well for me. My partner plugs in an essential oil diffuser with a heavy dose of either of these oils. 
• Warm shower with these oils in the background. I say warm, but it’s more hot than warm. However, for some others, a cold shower may work better. I fear water, so the cold water makes me anxious. However, with warm water, I can manage it okay. 
•  Sleep. This is the final stage for me. Once my body has let out all the movement, I feel like I just ran a marathon. I fall asleep, and at some point, I remove the heavy blanket. 
• Water. When I’m awake, I’m very thirsty. Again, it feels like recovering from a marathon.

This sensory overload episode was relatively short. It was about two hours long, from nibbling on the bread to waking up. My nap was longer than thirty minutes. The shower took at least ten minutes. Playing with my Fluff and being on the couch took over an hour. What I wish people who haven’t experienced sensory overload knew is that, to me, it’s an embarrassing experience. When these episodes happen, I am at my most vulnerable. This time, I felt embarrassed because it felt like I’d ruined our dinner. 

It felt like thirty-two-year-old me couldn’t take care of herself. When my partner helped me lie on the couch, I began to cry, and like I’ve told him before, these are not sad tears or tears that I want to cry. They just happen, but they could also be[an effective way to release accumulated tension or just happen because of exhaustion]. I was also embarrassed because my mouth made noises I didn’t want to make, and I couldn’t stop them. When I told my dog, «I’m taking a short nap», my brain got caught up in the word short. 

This happened instead of having dinner on a Saturday night watching a movie with my boyfriend: My body rocked back and forth on the couch; I told my boyfriend I was sorry for ruining dinner. He told me that I hadn’t ruined anything while bear-hugging me. All this while, I cried pretty bad even though I wasn’t upset or sad; my dog added his whole 4 kilos to my heavy blanket, My brain making me stammer the «sh» syllable in the word short, over and over. Sh. Sh. Back and forth. Sh. Sh. Back and forth. Heavy brain. Heavy body. I fell asleep. 

I think it’s important to keep calm. To understand that this episode will end. That our loved one, our friend, and ourselves will be fine. Speaking to my psychologist two days after this, I told her how frustrated I felt because «I should have seen it coming». [Some of us experience alexithymia – the inability to sense one’s emotions or needs.] I should have known better than to pack every day with something that excites me. Plus, I’m celebrating my dog’s birthday on Sunday. It was a big deal to me, and even though it felt like I was fine, I needed to be more careful with my brain. There are a lot of small things that make me feel very excited and happy that would probably not have the same effect on other people, and the thing is, my brain gets saturated, and then it boils. 

List of things that made me too excited during my Birthday Week:

• It’s my birthday week, and I’ll never be this old again. It’s the last birthday I won’t be a mom, and then I reverse that and get excited too because next birthday I will be a mom. So that’s a double-exciting thing.
• Eating brunch with my friends at my favorite table by the window. They make pancakes at this restaurant, and I really like pancakes.
• On my birthday, I ate lunch with my best friend and partner and spent time with them. 
• Spending time with my dog before he turned eleven years old. And then, the thought of him being eleven years old. All the memories and what’s yet to come. That’s a double excitement, too.
• Eating sweet potatoes with pumpkin spice for dinner with my partner while watching one of my favorite TV shows. Sweet potatoes. ❤️❤️
• Going shopping for a stroller with my partner. Seeing him gliding the stroller around the shop. *heart melts*
• Getting to blow candles on a cake to make a wish. I love doing this. I really do. I wholeheartedly believe they will come true. 

Looking back, it was too much. Even though I was so happy this week, all this excitement is also stressful, so I need to get better at managing my days because it gets to be too much, even when it’s too much of a good feeling. 

If you experience Sensory Overload, please don’t be shy about asking for help. If you know someone who experiences Sensory Overload, please don’t be afraid to ask if that person needs accommodation or help. 

I want to thank my partner for his support and understanding and for taking out my dog the following day to let me sleep in. And a big thank you to you, Chicken Leg.