How it feels for me to be physically overwhelmed by stimuli

So, I thought I'd write about something that happens to me often, and how it feels. I just felt like sharing my thoughts, mainly because I'm procrastinating, but here are some of the stages I go through anyway, and what it's like.

Spoiler

You’re in a shopping mall. It starts with a small thing, an annoying sound or feel that you try to ignore. But then it becomes crowded. Noises multiply. You start seeing the bigger picture. Then your mind focuses on different sections of that picture, but then your eyes don’t know what to focus on. You turn inward. You try and focus on the thoughts in your mind. Suddenly, you feel the urge to run. You sway a little, trying to stay calm.

There is a feeling of disconnection that seems to come out of nowhere. Nothing seems real, the urge to leave becomes stronger. There’s too much going on in this seemingly alien world.

You desire to return to feeling like you’re in reality. Then, you try to focus on something physical, like a piece of music playing or some cloth hanging on the wall. Reaching for your pocket, you grab something you can fiddle with like a scrunchie/hair bobble, or some string. You run it through your fingers, anything to entertain your mind.

Then an opening appears, somewhere that you can disappear to, like a toilet stall. Everything is calm, everything is quiet and balanced finally. You laugh a little to yourself inside. This is silly. That’s what you tell yourself. You close your eyes, cover your ears and pretend to be somewhere else.

You’re in a field, there’s a helicopter above. The blades cut through the air, you can hear the engine as the helicopter comes close to landing nearby. Now you’re in a kitchen, on a summer’s day. Everyone’s happy, everything is calm. You open your eyes. You’re in a toilet stall.

You uncover your ears, and when you do- you feel like you’ve just come out from underwater and popped your head up and you were previously drowning. Everything is real again, thoughts are quiet. You look at the stall’s door, wondering if you’re ready to return.

You open the door, wash your hands and leave the toilets. Suddenly, you feel like you’ve been slapped in the face and that everything is crowding around you. It’s in your head you know, but you can’t shake the feeling. You desperately want to return to that stall, it was comforting in there. But people just saw you come out of there, wouldn’t that look weird? You wonder. So, you try to get through the rest of the day- uncomfortably.

Until a few hours pass, or less, and you return to the toilets again, going back to that beautiful rolling field. This time when you return back to the shopping mall, it is less daunting. It’s still as noisy, smelly and overwhelming as before, but somehow, it’s easier to take in now. Then you carry on your day, somehow feeling a little odd- but with a feeling you can’t describe. It’s not overly pleasant, but it’s not terrible either. It just is.

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Feel free to ignore this, I just had the urge to put my thoughts into words here for some reason. Anyone else feel this feeling of disconnection when they feel overwhelmed? :icon_redf

...Yeah.