Sensory Overload

A specific sound in the room is using processing that should be going elsewhere. Others in the room don't seem to notice it.

You can work fine at home and feel completely overloaded in an open office doing the same tasks. The task didn't change.

A texture, seam, or tag in clothing takes up more attention than it has any right to. You've removed something you liked wearing because of it.

Crowds don't frighten you but they exhaust you in a way that's hard to explain as anything other than volume and unpredictability.

Certain lighting — fluorescent, very bright, or flickering — makes everything slightly harder in a way that builds over time.

You've left a situation because of noise or sensory input that didn't seem to be affecting anyone else in the room.

There are food textures you can't eat. It isn't a preference — it's a physical response that happens before you decide anything.

Strong smells in environments others describe as fine can take you out of what you were doing. The impact isn't proportional to how others react.

Moving from a quiet environment to a loud one takes a moment of recalibration before you can function normally in the new space.

You notice things in environments — a hum, a flicker, a background frequency — that the people around you say they can't perceive.