I have trouble telling what the pain in my stomach is telling me, so I pretty much only just realized how bad my body hates certain sensory and social stuff. It’s as though my insides were on fire and the only way to slightly affect it is to cry (and obvi get away from the noise). I thought it was just anxiety or under stimulation before, but no, those are separate things. I have spent hours today doing various self care type stuff (meditation, being in nature, exercising, mindfully eating, yoga nitra, massage, taking a bath, fun things on the internet, positive stimulus of other sorts, zoning out), and the feeling’s still there. I don’t even mask. How do you deal with having to be in a sensory hell for hours of the day? How do you calm down? Please don’t say drugs.
Context: ADHD often makes people struggle with interoception and being able to relax.
Depends a lot on what the source of my stress is
A common one for me is noise, oscillating fans and certain repetitive noises feel like nails on a chalkboard to me. Ideally I get rid of the source of the noise (turn the fan off, move it slightly so it’s not as audible, or move to a different room), if that’s not an option I have airpod pros which have noise cancelling and I just always have a podcast going (words of a podcast grab my attention better than music does)
If I’m out in public and the noise or crowd is bothering me I’ll typically go to the bathroom and just sit and close my eyes and take deep breaths. I usually have my headphones with me so if it’s real bad I’ll put them in for a minute.
If I’m at work I’ll go take a walk around the building. Thankfully I work in a lab so there’s no one watching where I am at any given time. I also get to have my headphones in almost always unless I’m talking to people. Seriously I listen to like 8 hours of podcasts a day on average.
Emergency solution is to activate the mammalian dive reflex; If you stick your face in cold water it activates a part of your lizard brain that slows down a bunch of metabolic functions to make it so you don’t drown. Those metabolic functions conveniently overlap a lot with the things that are hyperactive when you’re anxious.
Also while drugs is not the answer you’re looking for, that is also the answer I have: Medication wise I’m on Buspar and Wellbutrin, and propanalol or Xanax if it gets too bad. Also I smoke a lot of weed and vape nicotine, which in addition to their inherent effects give you a good excuse to step outside for a minute when in public.
I used to always listen to podcasts. Then I got bored of them. I need something more stimulating, but in a good way and it doesn’t really work if I still have the bad stimuli. I do the dive thing a lot, idk how helpful it is. That’s a lot of drugs and it doesn’t exactly intrigue me. Maybe I could benefit from a cocktail of drugs but it scares me.
Audiobooks maybe? My big problem with audiobooks is I need to pay too much attention to them or I get lost
Audiobooks have more information but they’re less entertaining. They only work for my adhd when I’m listening at three times speed and doing exactly one thing simultaneously.
Yeah same. And the one thing has to require very little brain power, like driving or just walking.
Buspar has done wonders for me
Same. It’s not everything, but it does like 80% of the work with absolutely no side effects.