Sensory Overload
This is what my office looks like these days.
Last time I worked in a corporate office environment, my co-workers must have thought I was insane for wearing sunglasses in the office. But the excessively bright fluorescent lights bouncing off the pure white walls was enough to bring back migraines after years of not having them (I have nerve damage from a domestic violence incident and suffered from migraines until I received a steroid nerve block injection). My manager always tried to get me to “ditch the shades,” but I kept wearing them. It got to the point where I had a breakdown in a meeting with my manager, begging to use a vacant (dark, quiet) office for my calls instead. Eventually I was fired, and I’m sure my penchant for wearing sunglasses in the office had some role in their decision.
I thought my oversensitivity to light and sound was a problem unique to me, but I’ve heard of other people with bipolar who are the exact same way. So maybe this is just one more way in which my disorder impacts my life.
The typical boiler room sales floor is my worst nightmare. Recruiters call them “bus” seating arrangements, where sales reps sit around a big table. It’s meant to encourage collaboration, but I find it horrendously distracting. You can hear other callers in the background because of how close the reps sit in proximity to each other. Prospects don’t really like to receive calls from people who are obviously in boiler rooms.
The only sound you hear on my calls working from home is the occasional train passing by or cat fight breaking out in the background before I can hit the mute button. Far more professional, in my book.
Tuesdays are my least favorite day because of the leafblowers. The gardeners come and start up with their machinery, the leafblowers being the most obnoxious of them all. When I hear them, I have this uncontrollable urge to get away to somewhere quiet. But there’s often nowhere to escape to, so I just have to sit and deal with the anxiety the sounds produce.
My therapist and I have been working on using “grounding techniques” in situations where I can’t remove myself from the thing causing me anxiety. My boyfriend gave me a necklace for Valentine’s Day that I hold onto. Or I’ll click a pen. Or I’ll tap a computer or phone screen mindlessly in geometric shapes. Anything to get my mind off the stressor at hand. These techniques don’t always provide adequate grounding when the anxiety is really high, but they’re good coping mechanisms in a lot of cases.
I suspect parenting will introduce me to a lot of sounds I will have to learn to tolerate. Oversensitivity to light and sound is not a quality about myself that I am attached to — I would be happy to improve that about myself, and part of that process involves getting myself out of my comfort zone and exposing myself to situations where those things will come up. Like when I’m over at my boyfriend’s house and he decides to put The Big Bang Theory on Volume 25. The canned laughter soundtrack just drives me insane. I’ve actually chosen to go home just to escape that before.
I’ve never tried breathing techniques but maybe they’d be helpful in a situation like that. I should note that while I find many noises irritating, I can listen to my own music at full blast and think nothing of it. It’s when there’s irregular sounds that I can’t control that I get annoyed. I’m getting a lot better at tolerating my boyfriend’s music. Music in general can be appreciated on an emotional level and isn’t the mental distraction other noises are to me.
In any case, it was good to know I wasn’t alone in my shunning of light and sound. Makes me feel a little less weird. For now, I’m off to work by Christmas lights. I have to post two more stories today to be caught up on the 30-day blogging challenge I’m doing with my friend. Wish me luck.
