Can't ignore/filter speech

[Nervous Rex]

It seems like I can't ignore any speech around me. It's like speech just demands that I listen to it - I have to give it my attention, completely involuntarily.

If there is a song playing, I have to listen to the lyrics. If someone is talking, I can't filter it out or ignore it. If two people are talking to me, I can't filter one out and listen to the other - I have to interrupt and ask that they speak one at a time.

If I'm doing anything that involves reading or writing, I can't have any music on with lyrics. If I'm watching a TV show and someone is talking on the phone within earshot of me, I have to pause the show until they're done talking, because I can't hear (filter? process?) what they're saying on TV.

Yesterday, my wife was watching a video on her phone and came over to talk to me. She left the video running while standing two feet from me, and I had to ask her to pause the video so I could focus on what she was saying.

Do any of you experience this? If so, how do you explain it? Do you have any coping tricks? Have any of you learned to filter out speech?

 

[onlything]

No. Speech is so... grating most of the time. Worse when it is around with other sounds buzzing as well, even in songs for example, and even worse if it's not my native one. Then, I just can't process it. It becomes a sound, a noise I can't understand or discern. Same if two people are talking at the same time - I may catch maybe every second or third word on a good day. And if someone talks too long, I stop being able to understand them as well. I start to nod and agree without any understanding whatsoever. It becomes just sound and nothing else.

I have no idea how to deal with it and it's so humiliating when you have to ask people to repeat or to speak one at a time...

 

[Aspychata]

Sorry to hear this, l like to slammed multisensory. l am listening to music , concentrating on the words being sung as l am typing this because my pea brain is engaged. May l suggest you slowly start doing two things like listening to music and typing here at this forum, for just five mins daily. As this becomes comfortable, then try for 10 mins. This may help desensitize that cognitive dept. of your brain, and you will feel confident.

 

[Autistamatic]

Speech is my major auditory hypersensitivity. I've got a video in the works about autistic senses and it's a personal example I talk about.
When I'm feeling well I can hear and follow several conversations at once, so I often hear things people don't want me to.
When I'm not strong I can still hear it all but it just becomes a cacophony and even one person talking within earshot can mean I can't concentrate on the person actually talking to me.
At home we've been known to take 4 hours to watch a 90 minute movie because of all the pausing

 

[Peter Morrison]

It's impossible for me to remain focused if someone is talking. It takes a lot of energy to attempt to override the voice and follow through on reading or an activity that requires selection or organization. I can listen if I am doing a mundane chore like polishing shoes, but it is concentration that gets derailed when I hear a voice. I hate shopping in stores that make announcements while I am focused on getting something - finding it, comparing, reading labels, etc. When I hear the announcement, I forget what I was doing. I have no magic method to overcome this. The voice rules.

 

[zurb]

At work I sometimes listen to music in another language with my headphones. I don’t understand enough for it distract me, nor can I understand English when its playing.
But sometimes it works to my advantage. I often know things ahead of my collegues simply because I can’t not hear conversations happening right beside us.

 

[Major Tom]

I also get very distracted by other people's voices. It makes my job a living hell, because I teach in very old crappy, non-soundproofed rooms. The worst is my boss who is basically always speaking at full volume right outside of the room I teach in. Sometimes I feel like going out and strangling her. I don't because I'd probably lose my job.
Over the years, I've learned to somewhat tune it out, but it still distracts the heck out of me and makes me wish I could work in a quieter environment.

 

[Nervous Rex]

The voice rules.

That's the best way to put it.

 

[Pats]

When my daughter in law or son come downstairs to talk to me I always turn the tv off or mute it (if it's on). I've never been able to hear one person talking when there are other conversations going on. Like at a restaurant, I could not pick out one conversation to listen to.

 

[Clueless in Canada]

I have similar difficulties to you although if I can determine that I am completely disinterested in what others around me are talking about it is less distracting. When I was a teacher I had difficulties with breaks in the staffroom where there were up to 20 people all talking at once.

 

[Graphin]

Same here

 

[Gracey]

Initially, if there’s a new noise added to the mix it grabs my attention.

Depending on what it is will determine what I do with it.

Some days I’m better at ignoring noises than others but it’s an all or nothing thing.
That is to say I won’t hear if someone addresses me either.

It’s like I can’t fine tune it to only hear what I want to hear.

 

[Progster]

Same here - I hate it when more that one person speaks at once. I can't filter out background noise - it's just a jumbled cacophony. I can't focus on one speaker when I can hear lots of other voices or conversations going on around me, and I get distracted when someone speaks... or, conversely, I can be so absorbed in what I'm doing that I don't hear them at all.

 

[Monachopia]

I didn't read the whole study here, but it seems relevant. Those with ASD appear to have a harder time filtering out speech and conversational patterns if there are other verbal signals going on, or background noise :
Auditory Processing in High-Functioning Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

I've struggled with this for a long time, going to noisy pubs or restaurants is a nightmare. It's just noise and I can't focus on any conversation happening around me. If it's a large group of people and there are several conversations going on, the auto-tune in my brain flips between them all, so I catch parts of everyone's conversations while not understanding any of them fully. I can't seem to just zero in on one. If someone decides to talk to me directly, I have to divert all my effort to looking at their mouth so I can even remotely understand what they're saying while I'm still catching words from everyone else too. It's exhausting and part of the reason why I hate social occasions. If they're in a more quiet place with smaller numbers, then it's fine as they're all more likely to speak one at a time and not split into 2-4 different conversational topics.

Also the TV being on while someone is talking to me is just asking for trouble, I always ask my partner to mute or turn it down if he wants to have a conversation. Reading is weirdly fine though, I think I learned to tune out noise while at school as I had to ignore all the loud people around me.

In relation to the paper mentioned above, it suggests early intervention to be able to have "good communication" and "social functioning". Knowing that I grew up in a very quiet environment with almost no interaction with other children until I was 7 and very little after (other than school), possibly explains why I just can't seem to cope with it very well.

 

[Suzanne]

Yes ,except I can filter out when reading. Which I managed to achieve as a child and it has come in handy, but anything else, I am like you.

 

[MeghanWithAnH]

I have a terrible time with this at school. First of all, my classmates are very chatty during lectures, despite being in a graduate program to learn to treat communication disorders. 25 dB musicians earplugs help me with that because it cuts the volume enough to get rid of the whispering without blocking the professor.

All of the professors also love group work, which is enough work on its own but when you add in all of the other groups trying to talk in the same classroom I can't follow a single thing that's going on. Sometimes I'll even start talking but have to stop mid-sentence because all the words in my head get lost in the jumble of everyone else's conversations. I can't use my earplugs for that because my group members aren't louder than the other groups and they also distort the way I talk. Sometimes I can focus, but sometimes I can't. I used to try to pretend I understood but now I just explain something like "sorry, I can't follow what you're saying with all this background noise."

I've also always hated when people talked on the phone around me or had the tv on in the background. I never knew why as a kid so people always thought I was whining about nothing. I was happy to find out the reason when I learned I was on the spectrum, and now I can justify why things bother me.

 

[Nervous Rex]

Yes ,except I can filter out when reading. Which I managed to achieve as a child and it has come in handy, but anything else, I am like you.

I used to hyperfocus so much that when someone stood right next to me and talked to me, I would only be vaguely aware of it. It was a mental effort to get out of hyperfocus mode so I could ask what they said and respond. I haven't done that for over 20 years - I'm not sure why.

 

[Nervous Rex]

May l suggest you slowly start doing two things like listening to music and typing here at this forum, for just five mins daily. As this becomes comfortable, then try for 10 mins. This may help desensitize that cognitive dept. of your brain, and you will feel confident.

I think you're right - practice is probably the only way I'll get better at it.