Having ‘Sensory Overload’ Before it Was Cool

And Before it Had a Name

Photo by Aliaksei on Unsplash

Okay, sensory overload is not actually “cool,” but it is fairly well known now. It’s acceptable. It’s got a name.

I had a great deal of difficulty processing loud noises and unfamiliar situations for just about as long as I can remember, and it was excruciating. Especially since most of the people around me wondered what the hell was wrong.

I didn’t know it had a name — Sensory Overload Anxiety. It feels better just calling it something.

The anxiety part of that label makes so much freaking sense to me that it is a relief just to type it. It’s like a 5,000-lb elephant is lifted off my chest. For real.

The strangest thing is, I’m an extrovert. Big time. I have zero trouble meeting new people, talking to them as if I’ve known them forever, asking questions, being pleasant, all of that. It doesn’t trouble me in the least. But wow — put me in a room with more than a dozen or so people having multiple conversations at competing volumes? Nope, no way, no how. I am ready to freak out right then and there. It’s the worst place ever.

And the punch line to all of this?

I married into a family that was huge. Not hyperbole, there. My ex husband was one of ten siblings. Ten. And they had spouses and…