Reply To: Head full of nothing

[Patte Rosebank]

@Lisa, I’ve experienced some of the sensitivities that you have, and I’ve had to be very aware of them and my limits, so I can either avoid them, or leave before they become too much for me.

I can physically feel the increased stress when I’m in restaurants and food courts. Those places are just big boxes full of hard surfaces that noises bounce off of and amplify and blend together. And it’s even worse because they’re full of unnecessary, obnoxious music, at unnecessarily high volumes, so people have to talk even louder to carry on a conversation. Needless to say, I do not go to nightclubs.

I can’t tolerate music that’s too loud, or heavy bass sounds, which I physically feel pounding through my body.

I can’t tolerate repetitive sounds, because my mind zooms into hyperfocus on them, and they become like a dripping tap or the Chinese Water Torture.

Ever since I was a baby, the Time Signal (a repetitive electronic tone) has evoked a visceral terror in me, though I can tolerate it now, for a few seconds.  I find the CBC’s Time Signal (800 Hz) a lot more traumatic than the BBC’s (1 kHz), though this might be because the BBC’s is only for 5 seconds, and the CBC’s used to air for a whole minute. My theory on this is that these sounds are nearly identical to the beeping of life-support equipment, which was the first thing I heard as an emergency C-section baby.

The sounds of crunching, chomping, slurping, and talking with mouths full drive me crazy! And yet, there are advertisers who use these sounds in commercials…commercials which I have to instantly turn off, usually while uttering some choice expletives.

I don’t seem to have trouble with sound coming from speakers that are behind me, but they’ve always made my mom feel very nauseous.

Fluorescent lights always hurt my eyes and make me feel headachey, especially blue-white ones. So, at work, I wear amber-tinted clip-on sunglasses, to filter out the harsh blue-white light. Soon, I’ll have prescription computer-glasses, with a faint orange tint and blue-light filter-coat. This should be a big improvement!

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