Sensory overload when you can't leave

[MeghanWithAnH]

Has anyone found any helpful ways to deal with too much sensory stimulation when you can't leave the situation and can't physically block it out?

I started a new job two weeks ago. I like the job, but it can get a little loud. I say 'a little' because that's what it sounds like to most people, and what it usually sounds like to me, but today all of the sounds sharpened to the point that I was flinching at simple things like people talking and a squeaky door, and I couldn't filter anything. Normally when this happens, I either go somewhere quieter or put in ear plugs, but this was a situation that required me to stay present and listen closely. I made it through and got my work done, but I was miserable and I expect that I acted strangely. I know it will happen again at some point, because sometimes my brain hates fairly normal sounds, and that's not going to change.

I have to keep being a functioning professional regardless of whether every sound in the room is screeching at me. I don't think I can even let my coworkers know what's happening, because I'm new enough to this job that they might think I can't handle the job at all. I'm hoping someone here has found some ways to distract themselves or recalibrate their senses when they get turned up way too loud. If not, at least this group is more likely to relate to what I'm talking about than anyone else I might tell about it.

 

[Aspychata]

Sometimes it's extremely loud at my job. l am working at rolling with it but sometimes l slip away to a quiet place for 3 mins.

 

[Progster]

I have sound sensitivity too, and I'm open about this with others. So if someone is trying to tell me something and there's a creaky door in the background, then I'll tell them that the door is bugging me and ask to move to a quieter location. I teach online and that has its own plethora of sensory issues, including background noise that might not bother the student so much, but will bother me. If the sound is coming from the student's background, I ask them to close the window or door to try to eliminate the sound. If it's really bad and impossible to deal with and work with, such as a pneumatic drill coming from a construction site, then I reschedule the session for another time.

But I realise that my solutions work for me because I work for myself at home, and I have more control over my environment. In an office, that may not be possible. Also very situational - if you are in a meeting for example, the door is open and you are hearing noises coming from the room beyond the door, I think it should be ok to ask that they close the door.

 

[SDRSpark]

Oh my gosh...I don't know, because I rarely find myself in that situation and haven't really developed any strategies beyond "get out of the situation before you melt down" but I'm really glad I'm not the only one whose sensory issues vary that much. I have days when everything is, I suspect, more or less "normal" (well, my normal anyway, I don't know what everyone else's normal is, but definitely not all that bothersome) and then I have some days where it feels like the volume on everything is cranked up to 10 (like today for instance...I was just rinsing a dish and the sound of the water hitting it was borderline painful.)

Unfortunately when it comes to having to interact with people in a crowded or noisy environment, I actually have difficulty hearing/interpreting speech. And there's nothing wrong with my hearing. I just can't process speech when there are competing noises (such as the creaky door in someone's example.) My brain focuses on that and I miss stuff. If more than one person/group is talking, everything sounds a bit garbled. I have real difficulty speaking at the correct time (I either miss my cue or talk over people.)

I'm fortunate that I work in a factory environment - we're all wearing hearing protection, it's loud, and a lot of people have hearing loss (from years of not wearing hearing protection in similar environments). This levels the playing field - no one can hear properly so when I do something like totally mishear a question and give a completely unrelated statement in reply, no one thinks it's all that odd. Or when I have to ask someone to repeat themselves several times. Also, machine noise doesn't interfere with processing speech anywhere near as much as "noisy office environment" would. I do OK there, and my deficits are more or less shared across the board, even if its for different reasons.

 

[Judge]

Reminds me of my first days working in a very large and busy office.

I used my own sense of "tunnel vision" to try to block out all the external noise I wasn't used to. Focused on the paperwork and little else. Yeah, this was before personal computers were on anyone's desktop...

 

[Kalinychta]

I don’t know either. I wouldn’t be able to handle it. When I got home I’d rock for hours probably. But even then I’d eventually just lose it. If I were you, I’d start looking for another job, a quieter one.