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.
Fr why is crying like the most reliable way to reset my brain
Unfortunately self-care stuff tends to not be super helpful for neurodivergent folks. Exercise can be helpful if it is rigorous enough to produce a lot of feel good chemicals but sometimes it makes it worse for me. If I’m at home, sometimes all I can do is put an eyemask on and some headphones with some relaxing music and just lay like a potato in bed until it goes away. My animals and my partner comforting me can also really help, but sometimes not.
Since it sounds like you are still figuring out what sensory output messes with you, part of the solution might just learning what consistently bothers you and avoiding it as much as possible. Do you have any sensory input you really like? I personally really like being in water so baths can really help regulate me. Engaging with special interests is also really important and beneficial, but identifying and maintaining special interests can unfortunately be difficult for AuDHDers, well at least it is for me. Sometimes it seems like trying to fight it just makes it worse too and you just have to kinda let it happen and run its course.
I’m in a similar boat so I’m still figuring it out too. I hope these suggestions can be helpful and I’ll definitely be checking back in on this thread.
Oh I may be a noob who doesn’t understand my body that well, but I’m pretty sure I know which things trigger me and what sensations I like, but the thing is I cant escape this particular environment most the time (I’m being vague not to doxx), at least I should be getting good ND endorsed noise cancelling headphones soon. A lot of sensations and stims I have identified mostly feel good when I’m already feeling good, and I don’t know when that is besides when I’m high out of my mind because the ADHD finally let the dopamine and energy get to me for a day. Baths can sometimes feel great, but today’s and the previous one mostly made me feel uncomfortably intoxicated. Overstimulation horseshoe theory. I also know a lot of things I’m interested in, but unless I want to learn everything at once often everything seems boring.
Damn I relate to pretty much all of that. Good luck fighting the good fight out there, we all deserve better.