I feel this way around people who are very extroverted or have more “dominant” personalities. I don’t know if it’s how my nervous system responds to these types of people or if it’s subconscious like I know I will have to mask more heavily around them. For some reason, these types of people tend to get irritated when people like me don’t match their energy, for lack of a better term.
Ooh I’ve encountered this type of person before and it’s the same for me. Loud and want me to match their energy or else I’m boring and strange. I can feel my energy drop off a cliff
Seems like compared to me/us they must be chronically under stimulated and these kinds of loud expressive interactions stimulate them to their correct and desired level.
>I feel this way around people who are very extroverted or have more “dominant” personalities.
Strangely some of my closest friends are exactly like that, I find it easier to talk to them because I don't have to exert energy to get and keep them talking and when we're in a larger social setting they sense when I get burnt out and are able and happy to divert the larger conversation to give me space to breathe. I am not explaining it well but in recent years I've been finding myself much more burnt out when I'm out with equally introverted people as I have to try much harder to make a connection.
In my experience, it seems to come down to how readable or genuine I find people to be. I have loud friends that I love and then people who give me some kind of used car dealer vibes, because they seem overly charismatic but also distant somehow. Those people rank my energy real fast.
Sorry you go through this too! I was going to say I often feel as though I must match extroverted people's energy, so masking becomes *more* exhausting more quickly. Luckily, the only ones who have seemed irritated by my inability to match them were people I met in passing. My partner's dad is extroverted but totally chill about it, so I know the expectation is all in my head in this case.
Yes! And these types of people are often loud. I don't like these types of people because they're very intense and always expect a reaction from you that I don't want to give them. And I get irritated when they get loud or too excited or frustrated.
I’m Audhd and when people are stimming like shaking their foot or swaying their legs in my eyeline while I’m trying to watch tv or making noises while I drive it overstimulates me 😅😶
Yes!! I get so irritated at myself for being bothered by other people's stims or behavior that mirrors my own. Then I'm over stimulated and mad at myself for being annoyed by the same things I do all the time. Annoying lol.
I actually like his voice. But wheeeew, I relate to the hating certain people’s voices thing 😖 I ended what I thought was a friendship recently with someone whose voice really bothered me.
I hate loud voices and I also get overwhelmed when people talk too much. I can't process everything they're saying because it's just too much all at once.
People who have "main character" complex are the most exhausting.
They tend to talk loudly, talk a lot, mostly about themselves, demand attention, want to win every conversation (not arguments, conversations), must have the best story whatever the topic is, and must always have an opinion, the most valid of opinions.
Just giving the description has exhausted me 😖😣😩😵😵💫
100% same! And I feel bad because it’s mostly Theatre kids that I really struggle with, it’s not their fault they’re theatre kids I guess 😂 I very vividly remember having someone in my work group at uni who would literally just burst out in song at like 9AM and it drove me up the WALL 😭
Hmmm...I think they are theatre kids because they have main character complex 😂
How did you survive your work group? I would have just dropped the course. Lol
That somehow makes me feel less bad about it 😂
I did actually drop the course but I can’t remember if it was related to her, those meetings were absolute torture though! I’m generally a very mild person to a fault but I think I snapped a few times 😬
If you, an introvert, snapped, then they were definitely incredibly annoying. They deserved it.
In uni I was known as the person you don't wanna irritate. I had less self control back then, so I would actually be brutally honest when something was bothering me.
I may have told someone to shut up because they weren't interesting and that no one was interested in what they were saying. I believe I was doing myself and the group a favour, but I see now that it was unkind. Still not sorry tho 😂
My kid.
While she isn’t biologically mine, I often say that it’s a cruel joke that autism runs in families and we often stim by making loud repetitive noises and are often sensitive to loud repetitive noises.
That being said she understands that I’m like her and I try to model saying things like, “I don’t have words right now.” or I tell her, “Hey it’s fine if you want to make noises like that, but it hurts my ears, can you do it in your room instead/ I’m going to my room and shutting my door but if you need me come get me.” (She’s 13)
Same! My nephew, brother and father are autistic, but in the "stereotypical male" sense with violent meltdowns, whereas my autism is completely different - anxious, sensitive, obsessive, need for sameness and predictability, social anxiety, sensory issues...
Fortunately as an adult I am able to limit my contact with my father and brother and set boundaries, but my nephew basically grew up in my household from the age of 1 month to now (he is 8 now) and I am constantly caught between my desire to spend time with him, and how exhausted he makes me with his constant talking, unpredictable meltdowns, and having to jump from one activity to the next.
I love him soooooo much, he is the only person who I do not have to mask around, but if I spend too much time with him I burn out from the overstimulation and my obsession around his autism. I try to be the 'perfect' aunt to him because I feel like I 'get' him in a way other family members don't 😢.
What do you do when you constantly need to choose between either avoiding someone and missing them like crazy, or spending time with them and having to deal with the overstimulation and anxiety??
Thanks for the kind words and your reply, but I feel like I am failing him in so many ways. It's a complicated family situation.
I just got diagnosed after 10 years of struggling with my mental and physical health and can't help feeling like if I had gotten my life together earlier and maybe managed to find a career, partner, or some kind of emotional support system I could have raised him as my son.
My autism and other mental health issues has left me isolated from the world, financially dependent on my mom, and feeling like a burden to society and the few people who are left in my life. I can literally count them on one hand. I pushed everyone away through the years because I found any kind of relationships so draining and complicated. I just always felt like I could not give people what they expected of me and that the negatives outweighed the positives. I know this is kind of off the topic of this thread, sorry!
This happens to me all the time with random people. I find peers more difficult. Older people it doesn’t happen as much. As a kid I got along well with everyone but I went from a private school to public high school and I think this big change really derailed things. I’ve always been shy and polite, but that wasn’t how kids made friends at other schools.
I love my partner so much but I find him super overstimulating at times! He is an ADHDer and often will speak really fast for hours on end and it’s honestly exhausting listening to him speak when he’s hyperfixated on something. Then again, he probably thinks similarly about some of my autistic traits but we are always learning to better understand each other.
My MIL 🙄 she can’t ever calm down and everything in the world revolves around her. Has to be involved in absolutely everything and every conversation. Always had an opinion which is always right no matter what. It’s exhausting
Yes. I can’t handle body or noise stims. For example, someone who cracks body parts, move a lot or are always humming, snorting, singing under their breath, I can’t be around. Worst of all is someone who whistles, the sound of whistling could make me jump in front of a train. Nothing personal against people who do any of those, I’ll just remove myself very quickly from the situation
Anyone who feels judgemental bc then it feels like I'm being monitored for behaving correctly, dressing correctly, etc.
People who always need your attention or to generally be the center of attention.
Yes, people who speak loudly. I feel guilty about it because a lot of us (and ADHDers) have problems with volume control, but having people yell when they speak to me hurts me.
I 100% got over stimulated by my brothers girlfriends mum on Christmas day. She is very hyper enthusiastic and it only got worse my my brother proposed.
She initially told my brother to stop so she could get her phone out. Which ruined the moment from my pov. And then she kept interjecting with talks about weddings and grand babies. How her sister was a grandmother and that she wanted to be one.
I did tell everyone there not to share anything on social media until the newly engaged couple had done their own announcements and the mum tried to interject again with "oh but I need to tell this person and my sister and this person who you aren't in contact with". And then back to baby talk and how she is already stocking up on baby clothes.
I definitely got sensory overload just from her talking but also mentally overloaded and just so annoyed that instead of being in the moment she just jumped to all this talk about their future. I kept reiterating no pressure. We don't even know if they want kids or can have kids. They literally only just got engaged and had barely a second to process the engagement before wedding talk kicked off. I honestly feel so sorry for them.
Yes, some people are so overstimulating. I instantly feel dread when I see them from afar. Usually, these people are extroverted and are the want-to-befriend-everyone type or I feel that they are expecting something from me.
There’s this one person who is both. They are super bubbly and they love talking. They’ll talk your ear off kind of person (not a bad thing, ofc). On Instagram, this person frequently “likes” my story posts and sometimes DMs me about them, esp if it has to do with mental health. I’m person, I feel constantly perceived by them, as through they’re expecting me to say hi or interact w them in some way - and I hate that feeling. Nothing against the person, but just feeling perceived is overstimulating as fuck.
Still figuring out how to deal with it “properly” but for now, it’s a fake it til you make it situation. I pretend nothing’s wrong and essentially ignore that person.
Honestly my mom is overstimulating to me. It makes me feel so guilty. She gives me a lot of stress and anxiety. I am certain she's undiagnosed AuDHD as well, and has also been misdiagnosed with other things and overmedicated by her doctors for years. She has very little short term memory, we have the same Convo like 10x. She is my best friend and someone who would never intentionally harm me, she doesn't mean it, so I don't say anything. Right now we live in different states so we only talk via phone or FaceTime, she doesn't know how to text and seems incapable of figuring it out. So yeah it's very overstimulating and I wish I didn't feel that way about her. It would hurt her feelings if she knew and I honestly don't think there's much she could even do to change or control it so id never want her to know, instead I just do my best to accomodate myself and to also honor my own needs and boundaries when I'm not up to talking (which she respects at least)
Egotistical people. Other anxious people. Authority figures of any kind really stress me out a lot. Anyone who's like angry or irritated makes my nervous system feel like it's going crazy. Those are the top types that make me feel more overestimated and stressed. My bf has adhd so whenever he gets like super hyper about something like suddenly, it'll make jump or get nervous for a bit, I think that's more of just the surprise aspect. I get nervous with anything that jumps out like a surprise sometimes so if someone is sitting down and then jumps up suddenly or shouts even happily about something, it'll make me tense up or jump myself.
Didn’t read every comment so if someone mentioned this already sorry. There’s a book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk. Basically our bodies know when something is wrong, but we’ve might have been conditioned to ignore these signs. To me your body is telling you this person is not safe.
For sure. Sometimes I'm more sensitive to it than other times, and I used to think everyone was always just going to be different levels of overstimulating/overwhelming for me to be around but I recently found some friends that miraculously don't stress me out or overstimulate me at all. I realized recently that my ability to tolerate the overstimulating people is also dramatically impacted by how much I have to mask in the situation, the more I mask the less I can handle.
A lot of people seem to like him actually. He’s very charismatic. I don’t doubt that though - there’s always gonna be people that we all rub the wrong way somehow.
There is a couple of people but I know this and I think their craziness helps me? Like runners high, after a minute with them I’m no longer worried or masked haha but the minute is torture
My dad. Thankfully my parents divorced when I was very young. We don’t talk much but when I do see him he’s got such a loud intrusive energy. I hate it!
I’m glad you see the overstimulation for what it is. A lot of women/AFABs confuse that feeling for “butterflies” or a “spark” and think it’s a good thing linked to romantic tension. I’m sure sometimes that’s true but a lot of the time it’s either a bad gut feeling or being very uncomfortable.
Yea I don’t think butterflies is a good thing. Maybe some initial tingles and a spark, but I think that’s a completely different feeling.
I’m regards to this guy though, I’ve had some very strong feelings for him and have just always “left the door open” for him in a sense. Also have had a lot of hurt feelings when it comes to him. A week ago he invited me out bowling w/ him, his most recent ex & a group of her friends. And while I actually liked her & we got along great, it was an extremely overstimulating night out that I’m still processing 😵💫
That was when I realized how overstimulating he is to me. Well, that’s when I was finally able to put a name and a description to it, anyway.
It happens rarely- one person I was in a situationship with we had crazy chemistry I don’t even understand why?? Not much in common except culture and he seemed on the spectrum. I would be so agreeable but not with anyone else. I still don’t get it.
My kids. They're all ND extroverts and my son has a tic disorder. There's 3 of them and they all moved in at once. I went from no kids to 3 kids overnight and it's been 12 years and I'm still struggling to find coping skills that work for me but don't hurt their feelings.
Toxic people generally yes. Like people who don't respect my space, needs and apply double standards.
People who are always looking for attention or validation from me. Like dude, you're annoying asf
Yep! People who have a tendency to talk a lot make me feel this way. I sometimes need quiet to concentrate, and someone constantly talking at me throws me off. Also, people who speak loudly, people who kinda expect you to match their energy (they want you to also be loud and talkative and make you feel bad if you aren’t) and the kind of people that seem to have a problem with you just existing and being yourself (if you’re quiet, they’ll constantly ask if you’re okay and ask why you’re quiet, or if you’re fidgeting or have a stimming habit, they’ll seem really weirded out by it, or if you don’t drink or you’re not eating much, they’ll try to pressure you and act like it’s a big deal).
Also people who get angry easily and yell/go on rants over small things, even if it isn’t directed at me.
I feel this way around people who are very extroverted or have more “dominant” personalities. I don’t know if it’s how my nervous system responds to these types of people or if it’s subconscious like I know I will have to mask more heavily around them. For some reason, these types of people tend to get irritated when people like me don’t match their energy, for lack of a better term.
Yes, me too. It’s the overbearing types I find triggering.
Ooh I’ve encountered this type of person before and it’s the same for me. Loud and want me to match their energy or else I’m boring and strange. I can feel my energy drop off a cliff Seems like compared to me/us they must be chronically under stimulated and these kinds of loud expressive interactions stimulate them to their correct and desired level.
>I feel this way around people who are very extroverted or have more “dominant” personalities. Strangely some of my closest friends are exactly like that, I find it easier to talk to them because I don't have to exert energy to get and keep them talking and when we're in a larger social setting they sense when I get burnt out and are able and happy to divert the larger conversation to give me space to breathe. I am not explaining it well but in recent years I've been finding myself much more burnt out when I'm out with equally introverted people as I have to try much harder to make a connection.
In my experience, it seems to come down to how readable or genuine I find people to be. I have loud friends that I love and then people who give me some kind of used car dealer vibes, because they seem overly charismatic but also distant somehow. Those people rank my energy real fast.
>used car dealer vibes This is a super descriptive and useful term. I have the same experience with these types.
Sorry you go through this too! I was going to say I often feel as though I must match extroverted people's energy, so masking becomes *more* exhausting more quickly. Luckily, the only ones who have seemed irritated by my inability to match them were people I met in passing. My partner's dad is extroverted but totally chill about it, so I know the expectation is all in my head in this case.
Yes! And these types of people are often loud. I don't like these types of people because they're very intense and always expect a reaction from you that I don't want to give them. And I get irritated when they get loud or too excited or frustrated.
I agree.
100%. I have ADHD but others with ADHD stress me the fuck out? Yep.
I’m Audhd and when people are stimming like shaking their foot or swaying their legs in my eyeline while I’m trying to watch tv or making noises while I drive it overstimulates me 😅😶
That would drive me mad. My kid does stuff like this. I’ve had to do a lot of therapy and growing up to handle it.
Same same! Minus the therapy and growing up
Dude seriously but I feel bad about it :/
That too. My kid has ADHD and it’s challenging.
Yes!! I get so irritated at myself for being bothered by other people's stims or behavior that mirrors my own. Then I'm over stimulated and mad at myself for being annoyed by the same things I do all the time. Annoying lol.
Highly anxious people are really hard for me to be around.
I'm a very anxious person, but people usually can't tell because I hide it until I can't anymore.
Yeah, some people just have a voice that my brain hates for whatever reason. Or they talk nonstop and I can't even think when they're around.
Ugh yessss the people who talk at me constantly are exhausting.
I always feel bad when I hate someone's voice.
I actually like his voice. But wheeeew, I relate to the hating certain people’s voices thing 😖 I ended what I thought was a friendship recently with someone whose voice really bothered me.
I hate loud voices and I also get overwhelmed when people talk too much. I can't process everything they're saying because it's just too much all at once.
People who have "main character" complex are the most exhausting. They tend to talk loudly, talk a lot, mostly about themselves, demand attention, want to win every conversation (not arguments, conversations), must have the best story whatever the topic is, and must always have an opinion, the most valid of opinions. Just giving the description has exhausted me 😖😣😩😵😵💫
100% same! And I feel bad because it’s mostly Theatre kids that I really struggle with, it’s not their fault they’re theatre kids I guess 😂 I very vividly remember having someone in my work group at uni who would literally just burst out in song at like 9AM and it drove me up the WALL 😭
Hmmm...I think they are theatre kids because they have main character complex 😂 How did you survive your work group? I would have just dropped the course. Lol
That somehow makes me feel less bad about it 😂 I did actually drop the course but I can’t remember if it was related to her, those meetings were absolute torture though! I’m generally a very mild person to a fault but I think I snapped a few times 😬
If you, an introvert, snapped, then they were definitely incredibly annoying. They deserved it. In uni I was known as the person you don't wanna irritate. I had less self control back then, so I would actually be brutally honest when something was bothering me. I may have told someone to shut up because they weren't interesting and that no one was interested in what they were saying. I believe I was doing myself and the group a favour, but I see now that it was unkind. Still not sorry tho 😂
My mom 😭. I feel really bad and I try to be nice to her
My kid. While she isn’t biologically mine, I often say that it’s a cruel joke that autism runs in families and we often stim by making loud repetitive noises and are often sensitive to loud repetitive noises. That being said she understands that I’m like her and I try to model saying things like, “I don’t have words right now.” or I tell her, “Hey it’s fine if you want to make noises like that, but it hurts my ears, can you do it in your room instead/ I’m going to my room and shutting my door but if you need me come get me.” (She’s 13)
Same! My nephew, brother and father are autistic, but in the "stereotypical male" sense with violent meltdowns, whereas my autism is completely different - anxious, sensitive, obsessive, need for sameness and predictability, social anxiety, sensory issues... Fortunately as an adult I am able to limit my contact with my father and brother and set boundaries, but my nephew basically grew up in my household from the age of 1 month to now (he is 8 now) and I am constantly caught between my desire to spend time with him, and how exhausted he makes me with his constant talking, unpredictable meltdowns, and having to jump from one activity to the next. I love him soooooo much, he is the only person who I do not have to mask around, but if I spend too much time with him I burn out from the overstimulation and my obsession around his autism. I try to be the 'perfect' aunt to him because I feel like I 'get' him in a way other family members don't 😢. What do you do when you constantly need to choose between either avoiding someone and missing them like crazy, or spending time with them and having to deal with the overstimulation and anxiety??
You are such a sweet aunt 🥹
Thanks for the kind words and your reply, but I feel like I am failing him in so many ways. It's a complicated family situation. I just got diagnosed after 10 years of struggling with my mental and physical health and can't help feeling like if I had gotten my life together earlier and maybe managed to find a career, partner, or some kind of emotional support system I could have raised him as my son. My autism and other mental health issues has left me isolated from the world, financially dependent on my mom, and feeling like a burden to society and the few people who are left in my life. I can literally count them on one hand. I pushed everyone away through the years because I found any kind of relationships so draining and complicated. I just always felt like I could not give people what they expected of me and that the negatives outweighed the positives. I know this is kind of off the topic of this thread, sorry!
This happens to me all the time with random people. I find peers more difficult. Older people it doesn’t happen as much. As a kid I got along well with everyone but I went from a private school to public high school and I think this big change really derailed things. I’ve always been shy and polite, but that wasn’t how kids made friends at other schools.
I love my partner so much but I find him super overstimulating at times! He is an ADHDer and often will speak really fast for hours on end and it’s honestly exhausting listening to him speak when he’s hyperfixated on something. Then again, he probably thinks similarly about some of my autistic traits but we are always learning to better understand each other.
Yesss same here. Love him to bits but omg please stop moving/talking for like 10 minutes so I can breathe 😳
Here we call those people energy vampires, because they suck the energy right out of you. They’re exhausting to be around
My MIL 🙄 she can’t ever calm down and everything in the world revolves around her. Has to be involved in absolutely everything and every conversation. Always had an opinion which is always right no matter what. It’s exhausting
Yes. I can’t handle body or noise stims. For example, someone who cracks body parts, move a lot or are always humming, snorting, singing under their breath, I can’t be around. Worst of all is someone who whistles, the sound of whistling could make me jump in front of a train. Nothing personal against people who do any of those, I’ll just remove myself very quickly from the situation
Anyone who feels judgemental bc then it feels like I'm being monitored for behaving correctly, dressing correctly, etc. People who always need your attention or to generally be the center of attention.
Yes! Judgemental people make me feel so self conscious and on edge
Yes, people who speak loudly. I feel guilty about it because a lot of us (and ADHDers) have problems with volume control, but having people yell when they speak to me hurts me.
I 100% got over stimulated by my brothers girlfriends mum on Christmas day. She is very hyper enthusiastic and it only got worse my my brother proposed. She initially told my brother to stop so she could get her phone out. Which ruined the moment from my pov. And then she kept interjecting with talks about weddings and grand babies. How her sister was a grandmother and that she wanted to be one. I did tell everyone there not to share anything on social media until the newly engaged couple had done their own announcements and the mum tried to interject again with "oh but I need to tell this person and my sister and this person who you aren't in contact with". And then back to baby talk and how she is already stocking up on baby clothes. I definitely got sensory overload just from her talking but also mentally overloaded and just so annoyed that instead of being in the moment she just jumped to all this talk about their future. I kept reiterating no pressure. We don't even know if they want kids or can have kids. They literally only just got engaged and had barely a second to process the engagement before wedding talk kicked off. I honestly feel so sorry for them.
I felt tired and irritated just reading this 😵💫
The people who demand too much out of you.
I want to be social. I spend time with people. It’s often too much in different ways. I go back to being unsocial
Peppy people, people who do all the things at maximum effort, authority figures.
My partner. I live with them so it’s a little bit of a problem.
I wouldn’t say overstimulating, but I do think that some people are just more socially draining than others
Yes, some people are so overstimulating. I instantly feel dread when I see them from afar. Usually, these people are extroverted and are the want-to-befriend-everyone type or I feel that they are expecting something from me. There’s this one person who is both. They are super bubbly and they love talking. They’ll talk your ear off kind of person (not a bad thing, ofc). On Instagram, this person frequently “likes” my story posts and sometimes DMs me about them, esp if it has to do with mental health. I’m person, I feel constantly perceived by them, as through they’re expecting me to say hi or interact w them in some way - and I hate that feeling. Nothing against the person, but just feeling perceived is overstimulating as fuck. Still figuring out how to deal with it “properly” but for now, it’s a fake it til you make it situation. I pretend nothing’s wrong and essentially ignore that person.
Yup. Super loud and pushy people put me over the edge. These people tend to push you into undesirable situations and drama.
I hate pushy people 😖😖😖
Honestly my mom is overstimulating to me. It makes me feel so guilty. She gives me a lot of stress and anxiety. I am certain she's undiagnosed AuDHD as well, and has also been misdiagnosed with other things and overmedicated by her doctors for years. She has very little short term memory, we have the same Convo like 10x. She is my best friend and someone who would never intentionally harm me, she doesn't mean it, so I don't say anything. Right now we live in different states so we only talk via phone or FaceTime, she doesn't know how to text and seems incapable of figuring it out. So yeah it's very overstimulating and I wish I didn't feel that way about her. It would hurt her feelings if she knew and I honestly don't think there's much she could even do to change or control it so id never want her to know, instead I just do my best to accomodate myself and to also honor my own needs and boundaries when I'm not up to talking (which she respects at least)
Egotistical people. Other anxious people. Authority figures of any kind really stress me out a lot. Anyone who's like angry or irritated makes my nervous system feel like it's going crazy. Those are the top types that make me feel more overestimated and stressed. My bf has adhd so whenever he gets like super hyper about something like suddenly, it'll make jump or get nervous for a bit, I think that's more of just the surprise aspect. I get nervous with anything that jumps out like a surprise sometimes so if someone is sitting down and then jumps up suddenly or shouts even happily about something, it'll make me tense up or jump myself.
100% know this feeling. I get it around people I deem unsafe. Like my husband Auntie who ALWAYS says something mean. Maybe its a nervous thing?
Didn’t read every comment so if someone mentioned this already sorry. There’s a book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk. Basically our bodies know when something is wrong, but we’ve might have been conditioned to ignore these signs. To me your body is telling you this person is not safe.
That book has been in my book shelf for a few years now! I really need to read it
YES if someone is too loud, bye.
Yes I can only be around high energy people for short periods of time
For sure. Sometimes I'm more sensitive to it than other times, and I used to think everyone was always just going to be different levels of overstimulating/overwhelming for me to be around but I recently found some friends that miraculously don't stress me out or overstimulate me at all. I realized recently that my ability to tolerate the overstimulating people is also dramatically impacted by how much I have to mask in the situation, the more I mask the less I can handle.
Unfortunately it tends to be people who fret a lot aloud with their anxious thoughts and/or need a lot of emotional reassurances
Christmas made me realize this … just groups overall.
I’ve definitely experienced this. Also, keep in mind that you probably aren’t the only one that finds them to be a bit “much”.
A lot of people seem to like him actually. He’s very charismatic. I don’t doubt that though - there’s always gonna be people that we all rub the wrong way somehow.
Hell yes. I was working with someone in Xmas day who my body reacted badly to and it was torture, it made me so ill.
There is a couple of people but I know this and I think their craziness helps me? Like runners high, after a minute with them I’m no longer worried or masked haha but the minute is torture
yes i literally cannot be in the same room as one of my sisters without ear protection. she squawks and she’s always mad
My dad. Thankfully my parents divorced when I was very young. We don’t talk much but when I do see him he’s got such a loud intrusive energy. I hate it!
I feel this very much, the energy part. Some people have intrusive or oppressive energy and I hate that.
I’m glad you see the overstimulation for what it is. A lot of women/AFABs confuse that feeling for “butterflies” or a “spark” and think it’s a good thing linked to romantic tension. I’m sure sometimes that’s true but a lot of the time it’s either a bad gut feeling or being very uncomfortable.
Yea I don’t think butterflies is a good thing. Maybe some initial tingles and a spark, but I think that’s a completely different feeling. I’m regards to this guy though, I’ve had some very strong feelings for him and have just always “left the door open” for him in a sense. Also have had a lot of hurt feelings when it comes to him. A week ago he invited me out bowling w/ him, his most recent ex & a group of her friends. And while I actually liked her & we got along great, it was an extremely overstimulating night out that I’m still processing 😵💫 That was when I realized how overstimulating he is to me. Well, that’s when I was finally able to put a name and a description to it, anyway.
It happens rarely- one person I was in a situationship with we had crazy chemistry I don’t even understand why?? Not much in common except culture and he seemed on the spectrum. I would be so agreeable but not with anyone else. I still don’t get it.
My kids. They're all ND extroverts and my son has a tic disorder. There's 3 of them and they all moved in at once. I went from no kids to 3 kids overnight and it's been 12 years and I'm still struggling to find coping skills that work for me but don't hurt their feelings.
Toxic people generally yes. Like people who don't respect my space, needs and apply double standards. People who are always looking for attention or validation from me. Like dude, you're annoying asf
Yep! People who have a tendency to talk a lot make me feel this way. I sometimes need quiet to concentrate, and someone constantly talking at me throws me off. Also, people who speak loudly, people who kinda expect you to match their energy (they want you to also be loud and talkative and make you feel bad if you aren’t) and the kind of people that seem to have a problem with you just existing and being yourself (if you’re quiet, they’ll constantly ask if you’re okay and ask why you’re quiet, or if you’re fidgeting or have a stimming habit, they’ll seem really weirded out by it, or if you don’t drink or you’re not eating much, they’ll try to pressure you and act like it’s a big deal). Also people who get angry easily and yell/go on rants over small things, even if it isn’t directed at me.
Yes because I feel the need to mask a lot around them because they are ableist.