Yesterday I was sitting in a Sunday School class when two women behind me decided that they would rather have a conversation than listen to the lesson. I’m not bothered by a few whispers here or there (I’ve been known to whisper myself on occasion.) Usually I can tune-out the whispers and just listen to the lesson. Or I can tune-out the lesson and just listen to the whispers if I prefer that. On a rare, multi-tasking day I can follow both. Yesterday was not a good multi-tasking day. Yesterday was barely a solo-tasking day. I found myself unable to follow either the lesson or the whispers. The two sets of input clashed in my brain and turned everything into static. The only solution I could find was to tune out all aural input and just think my own thoughts.
I’ve had that experience before. It happens to me frequently when I’m tired or over stressed. The kids talk over each other and it all becomes a senseless wash of noise until I want to yell at them to all be quiet. I am fortunate that this only happens on my tired days. For people with auditory processing disorders every day is like that. I don’t know how they stand it. I usually end up fleeing. I turn off as many noise sources as I can. The filter goes off. All music gets turned off. Video games or movies get turned off. (Unless that threatens to create more noise in the form of child protests, then the volume just gets turned down.) I shut myself away, craving silence so that I can hear myself think. Because on really tired days the noise static blocks out my thoughts too.
I think this particular tired/stressed state is triggered by an input overload. This often gets discussed for newborns. The doctor will tell new moms that the baby is colicky because he can’t filter out any of the sensory input and so gets over-stimulated. I’m an adult. I can filter my input, but often I don’t want to. I want to read dozens of blogs, and the news, and listen to music, and watch movies, and talk to the kids, and do the accounting, and ship books, and plan for the next week, and wash the laundry, and, and, and. I switch from one thing to the next without stopping or pausing. There is no time for things to settle. I have no time to process one experience before I’ve shoved three more things into my brain. Some days are slower and allow me time to process, but lately there has been no time, no space. No wonder my poor, tired brain just gives up and stops interpreting for me.
The book shipping is over. There are a hundred small things that I need to catch up on because they were neglected. I could fill my whole day with getting them all done, as I did today. But the result is me feeling frazzled and discouraged by the end because all the input is turning to noise without meaning. I need to remember that one of the most important parts of re-establishing normal is to give myself the space and time to feel calm. I need to pause and remind myself why I want to do the things on my list. If I do that, then the sounds of the children become reason for joy rather than noise.
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This is a cause of much of my agoraphobia. I can’t hear in situations like that and I get distracted and antsy. And people get frustrated with me because I ask them to repeat things 4 or 5 times.
I have some noise canceling headphones for situations where the background noise gets too much. I slip those on and listen to a podcast or something completely innocuous. And I ignore the world for 15 – 20 minutes and work.
As I’m reading this, getting ready to start work in four minutes, a manager nearby is listening to some awful Christmas music featuring a harmonica; the adjusters one department over are discussing last night’s football game with a clear lack of understanding of football; two ladies nearby are weighing the merits of which Hobby Lobby store has the best deals. And I’m supposed to work through all of this.
You’ve described virtually every day for me. I wish just once I could convince all three of our dogs and both our cats to be quiet, keep the television off, and just sit in silence for half an hour. It’s something I truly long for. Silence.