Sensory Overload Quotes

Do you find me attractive?' Gene told me the next day that I got it wrong. But he was not in a taxi, after an evening of total sensory overload, with the most beautiful woman in the world. I believed I did well. I detected the trick question. I wanted Rosie to like me, and I remembered her passionate statement about men treating women as objects. She was testing to see if I saw her as an object or as a person. Obviously the correct answer was the latter. ‘I haven’t really noticed,’ I told the most beautiful woman in the world.

It was as if the sensory overload that is American life had somehow led to sensory deprivation, a gilded weariness, where everything is permitted and nothing appreciated.

I was so awash in sensory overload that I was caught completely unaware when he did push me away

Spring is the sound of birds chirping, the taste of cherry juice, the feel of grass on bare feet, the sight of pink roses and blue skies, and the feel of dandelion fuzz. Spring, in other words, is a welcome, wondrous sensory overload.

It’s like being a newborn, this sudden sensory overload of noise, color, smells and gravity after months of quietly floating, encased in relative calm and isolation. No wonder babies cry in protest when they’re born.

Many women latch onto language from popular psychology, such as "panic attack," when often they are instead experiencing sensory overwhelm.

Yes, forgetting can be a curse, especially as we age. But forgetting is also one of the more important things healthy brains do, almost as important as remembering. Think how quickly the sheer volume and multiplicity of sensory information we receive every waking minute would overwhelm our consciousness if we couldn’t quickly forget a great deal more of it than we remember.

I had no idea kissing felt like this. Sensory overload. At some point, Ren reluctantly let me down. He still supported my weight, which was good because I was ready to fall over. He cupped my cheek and ran a thumb slowly across my bottom lip. He stood close to me, keeping one arm wrapped around my waist. His other hand moved to my hair, and his fingers began to slowly twist the loose strands. I had to blink my eyes a few times to clear my vision. He laughed quietly. “Breathe, Kelsey.” He had a very self-satisfied, smug grin on his face, which, for some reason, got my ire up. “You seem very happy with yourself.” He raised an eyebrow. “I am.” I smirked back to him and said, “Well, you didn’t ask for permission.” “Hmm, perhaps we should rectify that.” He trailed his fingers up my arm, swirling little circles as he went. “Kelsey?” I watched his progress and mumbled, distracted, “Yes?” He stepped closer. “Do I-“ “Hmm?” I wiggled slightly. “Have your-“ He started nuzzling my neck then moved up to my ear. His lips ticked me as he whispered, and I felt him smile, “Permission-“ Goose bumps broke out on my arms and I trembled. “To kiss you?” I nodded weakly. Standing on my tiptoes, I slipped my arms around his neck showing him that I was definitely giving permission. He trailed kisses from my ear across to my cheek in achingly slow motion, grazing along a path of his choosing. He stopped, hovering just over my lips, and waited. I knew what he was waiting for. I paused only a brief second before whispering faintly, “Yes.” Smiling victoriously, he crushed me against his chest and kissed me again. This time, the kiss was bolder and playful. I ran my hands from his powerful shoulders, up to his neck, and pressed him close to me.

People with PTSD have their floodgates wide open. Lacking a filter, they are on constant sensory overload. In order to cope, they try to shut themselves down and develop tunnel vision and hyperfocus.

The internet reminds us on a daily basis that it is not at all rewarding to become aware of problems that you have no reasonable hope of solving. And, more important, the internet already is what it is. It has already become the central organ of contemporary life. It has already rewired the brains of its users, returning us to a state of primitive hyperawareness and distraction while overloading us with much more sensory input than was ever possible in primitive times. It has already built an ecosystem that runs on exploiting attention and monetizing the self. Even if you avoid the internet completely—my partner does: he thought #tbt meant “truth be told” for ages—you still live in the world that this internet has created, a world in which selfhood has become capitalism’s last natural resource, a world whose terms are set by centralized platforms that have deliberately established themselves as near-impossible to regulate or control.

The outside world is loud and demanding so the first step in honing our powers is learning to deal effectively with sensory overload. We have to identify and manage the things that jam our inner guidance system. And that involves turning down the volume on the outside world so we can hear what's going on inside.

A noxious stimulus, such as an angry person, crowds, noise, or bright light, can agitate us because our threshold for sensory overload is extremely low.

Everything has been degraded by what the sensory overload and the supposed freedom-of-choice technology has brought to us, and, in short, by the democratization of the arts.

If nature didn't whittle down your network to a smaller number of strongly forged connections, you would never become an adult. You would remain a permanent child, frozen in sensory overload.

The “Intense World” paper proposed that if the amygdala, which is associated with emotional responses, including fear, is affected by sensory overload, then certain responses that look antisocial actually aren’t.

I moved closer as I dragged myself through the frozen bracken. “Who’s coming?” My voice trembled like an autumn leaf in the wind. “Your Angels,” he replied breathily right before he crumpled to the ground in a great heap. My body went into sensory overload. I was hurt, angry, broken, sad, terrified, and . . . hopeful. He said my Angels were coming.

Approximately 15 to 20 percent of the population has a nervous system wired to be more sensitive. These people are more attuned to the subtleties of their environment and process that information much more deeply compared to others without this trait. While being more observant might be a survival advantage, it can also be overwhelming. Someone who is constantly aware of the subtleties of the environment and of the people around them can quickly experience sensory overload. My clients who consider themselves to be HSPs [highly sensitive persons] often report experiencing a certain type of disorganized attachment because the world itself is too much. Due to their increased sensitivity, even normal everyday events can feel too intense, too chaotic or too stimulating, leaving little respite to feel settled, safe and secure. In relationships, HSPs are often unclear as to whether what they are feeling has its origin in themselves or if their partner's feelings are creating that 'one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake' experience in their nervous system. They want to be close to people, but being close can be a sensory assault that is confusing or that dysregulates them for days.

I spent the first few days with his earbuds in, immersed in sensory overload. I finally had to tuck them away in my desk, having decided anyone who listens to music while emotionally compromised is a masochist. It’s utter agony knowing my mind now associates certain songs with a man forever trapped in a place and time I don’t want to outlive.

Though there is a spectrum of sensitivity that exists in human beings, empaths are emotional sponges who absorb both the stress and joy of the world. We feel everything, often to an extreme, and have little guard up between others and ourselves. As a result, we are often overwhelmed by excessive stimulation and are prone to exhaustion and sensory overload.

A modern man registers a hundred times more sensory impressions than an eighteenth-century artist

[Temple Grandin] told him that the one thing she wanted more than anything else in life was for someone to hug her - but the moment that anyone did, she couldn't bear it.

His senses are sodden with lust, so he cannot think, and this sensory overload, this incogitant drowning in sensation,

It’s unsurprising that so many empaths these days seek solitude as a form of protection against feeling emotionally depleted. Our environments are so hectic and constantly busy that allowing our senses to be completely open often results in a sensory overload. How can you tell where you begin and others end when there is so much frantic energy surrounding you?

Richard Foster is justified in writing: I am concerned that our reading and our writing is gravitating to the lowest common denominator so completely that the great themes of majesty and nobility and felicity are made to seem trite, puny, pedestrian. . . . I am concerned about the state of the soul in the midst of all the cheap sensory overload going on today. You see, without what Alfred North Whitehead called “an habitual vision of greatness,” our soul will shrivel up and lose the capacity for beauty and mystery and transcendence. . . .

I spent the first few days with his earbuds in, immersed in sensory overload. I finally had to tuck them away in my desk, having decided anyone who listens to music while emotionally compromised is a masochist.

The programme into which Cheryl was inducted combined all the different ways the intelligence community had learned could cause intense psychological change in adults and children. It had been learned through the use of both knowledgeable and 'unwitting' volunteers. They were subjected to sensory overload, isolation, drugs and hypnosis, all used on bodies that had been weakened from mild hunger. The horror of the programme was that it would be like having an elementary school sex education class conducted by a paedophile rapist. It would have been banned had the American government signed the Helsinki Accords. But, of course, they hadn't. For the test that day and in those that followed, Cheryl Hersha was positioned so she faced a portable movie screen. A 16mm movie projector was on a platform, along with several reels of film. Each was a short pornographic film meant to make her aware of sexuality in a variety of forms...

She understood strength. “Did it bother you?” I asked. “Pretending to be one of them?” “No, not really. You see, this host was a lot to get used to—there was so much that was new. Sensory overload. Following the set pattern was quite as much as I could handle at first.

Oh. My. God. I am buzzing with sensory overload. With just his mouth and that wicked, wicked tongue, this man has me losing my ever-loving mind. Five years and I’ve only ever been aroused in my dreams – and only because they were of Seb. My body is on fire and I feel like I could come from just this kiss! I can’t believe my parts are still working after all these years. I thought for sure I had dry rot. I can’t stop the sounds coming from my mouth, like a deranged kitten or something. I never would have guessed that he would want me and that confession has completely blown my mind.

A woman enters a department store from the street, looking no doubt very mortal, her hair windblown, her own face visible. To reach the cosmetics counter, she must pass a deliberately disorienting prism of mirrors, lights, and scents that combine to submit her to the “sensory overload” used by hypnotists and cults to encourage suggestibility. On either side of her are ranks of angels—seraphim and cherubim—the “perfect” faces of the models on display. Behind them, across a liminal counter in which is arranged the magic that will permit her to cross over, lit from below, stands the guardian angel.

All right, Simon," Gina said, lowering herself into one of the hard plastic chairs that littered the food court. "What were you up to while I was coordinating Ms. Webb's spring wardrobe?" I held up my bag from Music Town. "I bought a CD," I said lamely. Gina, appalled, echoed, "A what?" "A CD." I hadn't even wanted to buy one, but sent out into the wilds of the mall with instructions to return with a new purchase, I had panicked and headed into the first store I saw. "You know malls give me sensory overload," I said, by way of explanation. Gina shook her head at me, her copper curls swaying. "You can't really get mad at her," she said to Adam. "She's just so cute.

Lacking a filter, they are on constant sensory overload. In order to cope, they try to shut themselves down and develop tunnel vision and hyperfocus. If they can’t shut down naturally, they may enlist drugs or alcohol to block out the world. The tragedy is that the price of closing down includes filtering out sources of pleasure and joy, as well.

Today, humans in cities will see a hundred beings in just minutes, naming them strangers, a dehumanizing designation.

You know what kind of nerves are in your feet? The same ones that network into your genitals. Your feet are like a minnow bucket full of sensory neurons, all of them wriggling around in search of sensation. Stimulate those nerves just a little, and the impulse will rocket through your entire nervous system; that’s why tickling your feet can overload the switchboard and cause your whole body to spasm.

Modulation and processing of the range of sensory experiences allows for social engagement and attachment to others. A person who is easily overwhelmed by sounds, touch, movement, or visual stimulation may avoid interactions with persons or situations that are highly stimulating. In contrast, the person who does not process sensory input unless it is very intense may develop a pattern of thrill seeking, high stimulation, and risky behavior.

I’m smiling, doing my best to impersonate a person who doesn’t feel disoriented and sick. But my arms feel so heavy I can barely lift them, and I stay motionless, to reduce exertion. Every part of my body feels sore or shocked, or both. It’s like being a newborn, this sudden sensory overload of noise, color, smells and gravity after months of quietly floating, encased in relative calm and isolation. No wonder babies cry in protest when they’re born.

Creativity is on constant sensory over-load. She believes life is full of Beauty, but Beauty is highly subjective and Creativity finds it in unconventional places. What turns others off might attract Creativity. She defines Beauty for herself.

Class-Z mnestics are the last word in biochemical memory fortification. Class-Z mnestics permanently destroy the subject's ability to forget. The result is perfect eidetic memory and perfect immunity to arbitrarily strong antimemetic interference. The dose is taking effect now. Wheeler didn't read the book because she already knew every word of it. She knows everything that's about to happen to her. She can already feel her mind hardening, like steel, and the developing symptoms of extreme sensory overload. She can see everything.

We look to artists to feel for us, to suffer and rejoice, to describe the heights of their passionate response to life so that we can enjoy them from a safe distance. . . . We look to artists to stop time for us, to break the cycle of birth and death and temporarily put an end to life’s processes. It is too much of a whelm for any one person to face up to without going into sensory overload. Artists, on the other hand, court that intensity. We ask artists to fill our lives with a cavalcade of fresh sights and insights, the way life was for us when we were children and everything was new.39

Children are such tactile beings. They live so fully by their senses that if they see something, they will also want to touch it, smell it, possibly eat it, maybe throw it, feel what it feels like on their heads, listen to it, sort it, and probably submerge it in water. This is entirely natural. Strap on their pith helmets; they’re exploring the world. But imagine the sensory overload that can happen for a child when every surface, every drawer and closet is filled with stuff? So many choices and so much stimuli rob them of time and attention. Too much stuff deprives kids of leisure, and the ability to explore their worlds deeply.

that can expand or contract as needed to increase or decrease the amount of data allowed in. They act to prevent sensory overload. In other words, if we consciously perceived everything that was coming in simultaneously as it was happening we would be overwhelmed with sensory experience. This is, in fact, what many schizophrenics and those on hallucinogens experience—and it happens for a specific reason that is most definitely not pathological. It is crucial to our habitation of this planet and this book is about, in part, learning to open sensory gating channels at will to whatever degree is desired—to open the doors of perception.

The idea that hyperreactivity and hyporeactivity are two variations on a theme might even have implications for theory of mind. The “Intense World” paper proposed that if the amygdala, which is associated with emotional responses, including fear, is affected by sensory overload, then certain responses that look antisocial actually aren’t. “Impaired social interactions and withdrawal may not be the result of a lack of compassion, incapability to put oneself into someone else’s position or lack of emotionality, but quite to the contrary a result of an intensely if not painfully aversively perceived environment.” Behavior that looks antisocial to an outsider might actually be an expression of fear.

Shaya crossed one leg over the other. “How do you feel about Derren?” “Look, I’m a very self-aware person. I know I have plenty of flaws. I know I’m not very forthcoming when it comes to feelings or my past. I have constant nightmares and prefer sleeping outside in my hammock. I cook when I’m stressed—even if I’m not hungry or it’s three o’clock in the morning. Being a Seer, feeling people’s emotions all the time, means I sometimes get struck by a sensory overload, and so I’ll have my days when I need space, time, and privacy. “Derren is a very dominant, forceful, intrusive male who thinks my business is his and who is determined to have his own way all the time. But even though he pushes me to tell him things, he never pushes too hard—he shares with me so that I’ll share with him. Even though he doesn’t like any distance between us, he lets me have my space and privacy when I need it. And even though he very rarely gets a peaceful night’s sleep because of me, he never complains or sleeps anywhere but beside me. How can I not care about the fucker?

The next night was New Year’s Eve, and I made a secret plan with Shara to meet her outside the back door on the stroke of midnight. “Let’s take a walk,” I suggested. “Sure. It’s midnight, minus five degrees, and pitch black, but hey, let’s walk.” She paused. “But not up Loyal,” she added, smiling. And so we walked together along a moonlit track. Twenty yards and then I will make the move to kiss her, I told myself. But plucking up the courage with a girl this special was harder than I had thought. Twenty yards became two hundred yards. Then two thousand. Forty-five minutes later, she suggested that maybe we should turn around and head back to the house. “Yes. Good idea.” I replied. Do it, Bear, you old woman. Do it now! And so I did. A quick kiss on the lips, then a longer lingering one, and then I had to stop. It was sensory overload. Wow. That was worth the walk, I thought, smiling from ear to ear. “Let’s head back,” I confirmed, still smiling. I am not sure Shara was quite as impressed by the effort-to-reward ratio--long cold walk to short, hot kiss--but as far as I was concerned the sky and clouds had parted, and nothing would ever be the same again.

Making the most of an experience: Living fully is extolled everywhere in popular culture. I have only to turn on the television at random to be assailed with the following messages: “It’s the best a man can get.” “It’s like having an angel by your side.” “Every move is smooth, every word is cool. I never want to lose that feeling.” “You look, they smile. You win, they go home.” What is being sold here? A fantasy of total sensory pleasure, social status, sexual attraction, and the self-image of a winner. As it happens, all these phrases come from the same commercial for razor blades, but living life fully is part of almost any ad campaign. What is left out, however, is the reality of what it actually means to fully experience something. Instead of looking for sensory overload that lasts forever, you’ll find that the experiences need to be engaged at the level of meaning and emotion. Meaning is essential. If this moment truly matters to you, you will experience it fully. Emotion brings in the dimension of bonding or tuning in: An experience that touches your heart makes the meaning that much more personal. Pure physical sensation, social status, sexual attraction, and feeling like a winner are generally superficial, which is why people hunger for them repeatedly. If you spend time with athletes who have won hundreds of games or with sexually active singles who have slept with hundreds of partners, you’ll find out two things very quickly: (1) Numbers don’t count very much. The athlete usually doesn’t feel like a winner deep down; the sexual conqueror doesn’t usually feel deeply attractive or worthy. (2) Each experience brings diminishing returns; the thrill of winning or going to bed becomes less and less exciting and lasts a shorter time. To experience this moment, or any moment, fully means to engage fully. Meeting a stranger can be totally fleeting and meaningless, for example, unless you enter the individual’s world by finding out at least one thing that is meaningful to his or her life and exchange at least one genuine feeling. Tuning in to others is a circular flow: You send yourself out toward people; you receive them as they respond to you. Notice how often you don’t do that. You stand back and insulate yourself, sending out only the most superficial signals and receive little or nothing back. The same circle must be present even when someone else isn’t involved. Consider the way three people might observe the same sunset. The first person is obsessing over a business deal and doesn’t even see the sunset, even though his eyes are registering the photons that fall on their retinas. The second person thinks, “Nice sunset. We haven’t had one in a while.” The third person is an artist who immediately begins a sketch of the scene. The differences among the three are that the first person sent nothing out and received nothing back; the second allowed his awareness to receive the sunset but had no awareness to give back to it—his response was rote; the third person was the only one to complete the circle: He took in the sunset and turned it into a creative response that sent his awareness back out into the world with something to give. If you want to fully experience life, you must close the circle.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory.  In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me.  There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

SENSORY AVOIDERS – SENSORY DEFENSIVENESS “And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?” -Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) Imagine a day inside Jenny’s skin. The morning alarm goes off and she startles, her heart races, her body tightens, her breathing quickens.  Her husband turns to get out of bed, grazing her foot, and she cringes, her bodily rhythms speed up another notch and her body tightens further. He sees that she seems annoyed about something and affectionately strokes her cheek. She bristles and, when he turns around, rubs where he touched her. She slowly arises to get out of bed, as she feels a bit dizzy, and quickly puts on her soft cotton house slippers, as the feel of the carpet makes her recoil, and walks into the bathroom. The bright lights her husband has left turned on assault her. Her eyes squint painfully. She quickly turns off the lights and turns on a small lamp on the sink counter. Her already overloaded system gets further destabilized. She starts to brush her teeth but the toothbrush is new and the bristles tickle her uncomfortably. She leans over to spit out the toothpaste and feels a sudden loss of balance and a surge of panic engulfs her. She steadies herself and turns on the shower. The soft spray of water from the showerhead feels like pelts of hail hitting her body. Her already stressed system is accelerating fast into overload. And her morning has only just begun!  She still has to figure out what clothes to put on, as most textures annoy her and feel uncomfortable on her body. She has to figure out what to eat for breakfast, as anything soft, mushy, or creamy repulses her. Worst of all, she has to figure out how to face the world outside that, for her, is like maneuvering through a sensory minefield. Jenny is an avoider or what is commonly known as sensory defensive (SD), a common mimicker of anxiety and panic. The sensory defensive feel too much, too soon and for too long, and experience the world as too loud, too bright, too fast and too tight, becoming easily distressed by everyday sensation

But imagine the sensory overload that can happen for a child when every surface, every drawer and closet is filled with stuff? So many choices and so much stimuli rob them of time and attention. Too much stuff deprives kids of leisure, and the ability

Prayer can be a “land of spices,” a place of sensory overload, of exotic scents and tastes—and a “milkie way,” a place of marvels and wonders.

One new lover was always an adventure, as she’d discovered with Lachlan. But two at once might be a sensory overload. Gwynne worried that she’d die of physical pleasure. Was that even possible?

We crest a hill in the dead of night. San Francisco should be a city bustling with sparkling lights, motion, and noise. I used to look forward to and dread coming here at the same time because of all the sensory overload. I almost always got lost wandering around the windy streets the few times I visited with friends or my dad.

In the next chapter, we shall look at some aspects of ‘sensory deprivation’. As noise abatement enthusiasts have discovered, its opposite, sensory overload, is a largely disregarded problem. The current popularity of techniques like ‘transcendental meditation’ may represent an attempt to counterbalance the absence of silence and solitude which the modern urban environment inflicts upon us.

With my heightened sensitivity to smell, there were too many aromas to take in at one time. Pine. Apple. Cedar. Smoke from the fireplaces. An onslaught of sensorial experiences. All the odors blended together into one and, although wonderful and fresh, it was dizzying and my nose twitched from overload. My eyes focused on the orchard, the trees still laden with apples. Je vais tomber dans les pommes, I thought, thinking of the French expression "I'm going to fall in the apples," which meant to faint.

When feelings go on overload, I pause and breathe and all is . . . slowed.

In Silver’s model this injured filter system, which is regulated by the catecholamines, doesn’t screen out irrelevant information and sensory stimuli as efficiently as it should, thereby letting everything that registers at the desk of the reticular activating system arrive in the rooms of the frontal regions of the brain. The individual is bombarded, taking care of ten thousand guests in a hotel built for one thousand, on overload all the time, receiving messages about every minute aspect of his or her experience. It is no wonder, then, that the individual would be distractible or, as Silver would argue, inclined to withdraw from it all and shut the damned hotel down.

Her own bedroom, her own bed. Her own yard. Without a restaurant downstairs, or sirens or cops or dead bodies. No fishy garbage fumes, or flumes of mildewing vegetation, no cacophony of five dialects being smashed together, a solid block of sensory overload rising up the dank central corridor of INT. CHINATOWN SRO.

The internet reminds us on a daily basis that it is not at all rewarding to become aware of problems that you have no reasonable hope of solving. And, more important, the internet already is what it is. It has already become the central organ of contemporary life. It has already rewired the brains of its users, returning us to a state of primitive hyperawareness and distraction while overloading us with much more sensory input than was ever possible in primitive times.

We are now raising our children and youth in environments that are both relationally impoverished and sensory overloading from the proliferation of screen-based technologies

What allows human beings to concentrate on things amid the maelstrom of infinite stimuli is a neurological process called sensory gating. It filters out low-relevance (redundant or unnecessary) stimuli in the brain from all possible environmental stimuli. If this didn’t happen, we would experience an overload of irrelevant information in the higher cortical centers.

People with PTSD have their floodgates wide open. Lacking a filter, they are on constant sensory overload. In order to cope, they try to shut themselves down and develop tunnel vision and hyperfocus. If they can’t shut down naturally, they may enlist drugs or alcohol to block out the world. The tragedy is that the price of closing down includes filtering out sources of pleasure and joy, as well.

At first there was only light and sound. Bright, dazzling yellow that shone through the formless void of darkness and a cacophony of tuneless, unintelligible noise that frightened and confused her. The warmth of the sun was heavy and strong, and it burned. A sudden, brisk breeze cut through it, and her whole little body shivered. She curled into a ball. The noises were deep and resonant. There was thudding on the ground all around her and long, consistent growls from every direction. She opened her eyes and in the blur of yellow she began to see the great, blue sheet above and the endless, dusty ground below. Shadows loomed around her. Gigantic forms that blocked out the light and the heat. They reached out toward her, touched her. Finally, the sensory overload became too much. The bolts of panic shooting through her quivering flesh took hold. She raised her trunk into the air and screamed out…

your eyes deceive you every day, filling in the blanks for you in a world of sensory overload.

Fuck, I can’t do this. It was sensory overload. So much of him at once I felt dizzy. I wanted to leap off his lap and into the parking lot where I would be safe from myself. But he was the sun. His gravity was too strong, and now that I was so close, I couldn’t get out of his pull.

It was sensory overload. So much of him at once I felt dizzy. I wanted to leap off his lap and into the parking lot where I would be safe from myself. But he was the sun. His gravity was too strong, and now that I was so close, I couldn’t get out of his pull.

My body is often a place of too-muchness and not-enoughness—sensory overload, fog, discomfort, and body alienation. Alternatively, many Autistic people stay frozen in the space of perpetual too-muchness and are constantly overwhelmed by the world. To be Autistic is to frequently be intruded upon by the world. The smells, tastes, sounds, and demands for chitchat can feel like constant invasions.

Everything is Gideon Prewitt sensory overload, but then I don’t think there could even be such a thing. I don’t think there could ever be too much of him.

But it was no ordinary wakening. All of his senses had burst open as if he were a vessel and the world was pouring in.

Lacking a filter, they are on constant sensory overload. In order to cope, they try to shut themselves down and develop tunnel vision and hyperfocus.

If your distress is primarily driven by external stimuli, such as loud noises, bright lights, or crowded environments, it is likely a result of sensory overload. If your distress is primarily driven by internal thoughts, worries, or emotional triggers, it is indicative of anxiety or other emotion-based experiences.

Shutdowns are physically similar to meltdowns, but they look like the complete opposite on the outside. A shutdown is when a person has experienced sensory overload and their body responds by dissociating and shutting down. Shutdowns are tricky because, to the outsider, you likely look calm. During a shutdown, your body is taking in the sensory stress and freezing it—but the situation is still very stressful. It’s very important to realize that your body is in a state of stress and your body needs to complete the stress cycle and release the stress when it is safe to do so.

TOUCH: Navigating Preferences and Comfort Clothing choices can greatly impact your sensory experience. Whether you prefer constriction or a loose fit, opt for sensory-friendly clothing that you find comfortable. Depending on your preference, either style can act as a buffer against sensory overload.

Let’s explore some key signs you should be watchful for: Unrelenting fatigue: Persistent exhaustion, even after adequate rest and sleep, is a key part of Autistic burnout. When grappling with burnout, your body may feel utterly exhausted, leaving you scrambling for energy to complete even the simplest tasks. Heightened sensory sensitivities: Sensitivity to sensory stimuli—be it noise, light, texture, or smell—intensifies during burnout, amplifying your susceptibility to sensory overload, meltdowns, and shutdowns. Sensory stimuli that used to feel manageable may now feel overwhelming. Skills and functioning decline: A conspicuous drop in skills like focusing, organizing, problem-solving, and speaking is another feature of burnout and makes social interactions more daunting. Emotional dysregulation: Burnout-induced dysregulation in your nervous and sensory systems hampers your ability to manage your emotions, resulting in intense emotions or emotional numbness. Increased anxiety, irritability, or feelings of being overwhelmed are common during burnout. Diminished tolerance for change: During burnout, your capacity to absorb and adapt to change wanes, and you may seek comfort in sameness and predictability. You might experience heightened distress in the face of the unexpected. Social isolation: Burnout can spark a retreat into solitude and diminish your ability to engage socially. You might withdraw from social interactions and lose motivation for once-enjoyed hobbies or activities. Masking: Burnout can throw a wrench in your masking abilities, and it can be confusing if you don’t understand what is happening! Interestingly, lots of adults don’t get their autism diagnosis until they are in burnout and have lost their ability to mask.

Sensory overload is a legit thing. Everything on me is strung tight, just waiting to break. The more he moves over me, the tighter the strings get. My nails dig into his shoulders as he continues to watch the myriad of expressions I must be giving him as he unravels me thrust by thrust. Then it hits. It hits hard. Those strings break, and euphoria crackles across my body like a bomb that detonates in my core and explodes outward. It rolls across me, curling my toes, flashing behind my eyelids that shut at some point, and licks across my skin like hot, incredible flames. When I cry out and thrash beneath him wildly, his rhythm changes, becoming more urgent. I hold on as he drags out my orgasm in a way I didn’t know was possible, and then he grunts, his hips jerking against me as he finds his own little version of heaven. At least I hope he feels this good.

When there is a lot of information bombarding us all at once, such as the sounds, movements and smells of several people, it is hard to know what is most important, and all the information tries to flow down the small, indirect pathways, and gets clogged up, just like a traffic jam. It is sensory overload.

Orwell was wrong. You don’t need repression. You need only the sensory overload of an age of numbingly ephemeral social media.

Gut feelings help us filter the world, and what is taste, really, but a kind of cognitive mechanism for managing sensory overload? But

This book depicts a life journey with autism that begins at birth and takes the individual from a place of innocence and naïvety to that of confusion, sensory overload, immense fear, gradual understanding, eventual autonomy, and ultimately to that of selfless giving and legacy projects that benefit humanity.

Everyday we are innudated with exciting string of events on social media and news, even suffer sensory overload at times. Keep it simple; embrace one thing at a time

Berlin is a city that is truly 24/7, where creativity, sensory overload and hedonism roar with unapologetic abandon. Where New York might be the ‘Big Apple’, the German capital is the ‘Big Appetite’, and the hunger for experimentation and challenge is rarely sated. It’s a city where you can fairly hear and feel the collision between past and future, what is possible and what is realistic and the cultural hopes and the culture clashes between people who’ve joined together from around the globe in one big experiment.

He was like a kid who’d grown up beside an ocean, taking it as much for granted as he took the sky, but knowing nothing of currents, shipping routes, or the ins and outs of weather. He’d used decks in school, toys that shuttled you through the infinite reaches of that space that wasn’t space, mankind’s unthinkably complex consensual hallucination, the matrix, cyberspace, where the great corporate hotcores burned like neon novas, data so dense you suffered sensory overload if you tried to apprehend more than the merest outline.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

We are now raising our children and youth in environments that are both relationally impoverished and sensory overloading from the proliferation of screen-based technologies.

In a 1963 performance entitled "Who R U?" at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Stern and Callahan added highway sounds to the mix, moving them from speaker to speaker in the showroom. They also had individuals placed in booths around a central auditorium, miked their conversations, and replayed them simultaneously in an eighteen-channel remix. By 1965 this show had morphed into a program called "We R All One," in which USCO deployed slide and film projections, oscilloscopes, music, strobes, and live dancers to create a sensory cacophony. At the end of the performance, the lights would go down, and for ten minutes the audience would hear multiple "Om's" from the speakers. According to Stern, the show was designed to lead viewers from "overload to spiritual meditation."19 In the final moments, the audience was to experience the mystical unity that ostensibly bound together USCO's members.

Many people with Asperger syndrome can suffer from sensory overload – a feeling of being overwhelmed by bright lights, noise or crowds. Situations such as shopping or parties can be highly uncomfortable and nerve-wracking.

He nodded, his nose brushing my face. “Feeling better,” he breathed. “Good, even. Especially when I…” he broke off. Then he tilted his hips and bore down. “Right there,” he panted. “There’s nothing like it.” Biting the corner of his lip, he picked up the pace. It was magical. Every thrust thrilled me. And the knowledge that Josh was riding me, taking pleasure from my body was just incredible. It was sensory overload of the very best kind. “Love you,” I gasped. Josh put more weight on the headboard, and moaned. He moved his hips faster now, fucking himself on me with more urgency. I slid a hand around to cup his ass. The muscle under my hand was contracting rhythmically. Damn that was sexy. I wasn’t going to last much longer. So I took Josh’s cock in hand and started to stroke. I tipped my head back, trying to hold myself together. “Need you to come for me,” I panted, skimming the pad of my thumb over his slit. “Shoot all over my chest,” I begged. Josh shivered. Dirty talk always made him hornier. I loved that. I loved to shock him a little. “I’m going to come in your ass,” I threatened. “You’re going to feel my hot seed inside you. Probably for the rest of the day.” His moans got louder, and I stroked him harder. But it was just all too good. The sights and sounds of our fucking were more than I could bear. “Gotta come,” I growled. My hips began to shake, and then I was shooting, and shooting again. I gave a shout against Josh’s pecs. He whimpered, then froze, and I worried that something was wrong. But then he drenched my hand with his seed. “Mmm,” I crooned, milking him until he finally sagged against my chest.

Discipline When the child loses control, avoid punishment. Loss of self-control is scary enough; punishment adds guilt and shame. Comment on the child’s negative behavior, not on the child: “Your yelling makes me angry,” rather than “You infuriate me!” Help the child find a quiet space, away from sensory overload, as a technique to regain self-control. Let him decide the length of the time-out, if possible. Set limits, to make a child feel secure. Pick one battle at a time to help him develop self-control and appropriate behavior. Be firm about the limits you set. Show him that his feelings won’t change the outcome; a rule is a rule. “I know you’re mad because you want to play with the puppy, but it is suppertime.” Discipline consistently. Use gestures and empathy to explain why you are disciplining him. (Discipline means to teach or instruct, not punish.) After you tell him what you are going to do, then do it. Determine appropriate consequences for misbehavior. A natural consequence is best, because it is reasonable, factual, and you don’t impose it: “If you skip breakfast, you will be hungry.” A logical consequence, in which the child is responsible for the outcome of his behavior, is second best: “If you throw food, you must mop it up.” An applied consequence, in which the punishment doesn’t exactly fit the crime, is useful when nothing else works: “If you spit on the baby, you may not play with your friends,” or “If you hit me, you may not watch TV.” Reward appropriate behavior with approval.

Disadvantages of Being an Empath Overstimulation – empaths feel exhaustion more easily if they do not take time out for themselves. They easily suffer from sensory overload.

It felt like surfacing; the sounds and smells of the city hit her in a wave of sensory overload. A taxi peeled by. A horn blared. People milled past, on their way to countless destinations. Madi squinted into the late-afternoon glare and smiled. The hum of millions of separate lives, woven together, gave her a buzz she couldn’t explain. Here in New York she was faceless, unknown. Herself.

So it is necessary that we have a means of monitoring the tension developed by muscular activity, and equally necessary that the threshold of response for the inhibitory function of that monitor be a variable threshold that can be readily adjusted to suit many purposes, from preventing tissue damage due to overload, to providing a smooth and delicate twist of the tuning knob of a sensitive shortwave receiver. And such a marvelously adaptable tension-feedback system we do have in our Golgi tendon organs, reflex arcs which connect the sensory events in a stretching tendon directly to the motor events which control that degree of stretch, neural feed-back loops whose degree of sensory and motor stimulation may be widely altered according to our intent, our conscious training, and our unconscious habits. This ingenious device does, however, contain a singular danger, a danger unfortunately inherent in the very features of the Golgi reflex which are the cleverest, and the most indispensable to its proper function. The degree of facilitation of the feed-back loop, which sets the threshold value for the “required tension,” is controlled by descending impulses from higher brain centers down into the loop’s internuncial network in the brain stem and the spinal cord. In this way, conscious judgements and the fruits of practice are translated into precise neuromuscular values. But judgement and practice are not the only factors that can be involved in this facilitating higher brain activity. Relative levels of overall arousal, our attitudes towards our past experience, the quality of our present mood, neurotic avoidances and compulsions of all kinds, emotional associations from all quarters—any of these things can color descending messages, and do in fact cause considerable alterations in the Golgi’s threshold values. It is possible, for instance, to be so emotionally involved in an effort—either through panic or through exhilaration—that we do not even notice that our exertions have torn us internally until the excitement has receded, leaving the painful injury behind to surprise us. Or acute anxiety may drive the value of the “required tension” so high that our knuckles whiten as we grip the steering wheel, the pencil suddenly snaps in our fingers, or the glass shatters as we set it with too much force onto the table. On the other hand, timidity or the fear of being rejected can so sap us of “required tension” that it is difficult for us to produce a loud, clear knock upon a door that we tremble to enter.

Sensory overload can easily overwhelm and distress young babies.

My extreme reaction to sensory overload is common in people with brain trauma, autism, and many other brain conditions.

What happened? There's no response. I think you stimulated her too much and she froze. Ah, sensory overload, ok. What do you want me to do? Buzz her and move on to the next. Is that necessary? No, it's efficient.

A skill that sensitive people must learn is how to deal with sensory overload when too much is coming at them too quickly. This can leave them exhausted, anxious, depressed, or sick. Like

For example, attending a noisy, crowded party can be overwhelming. Taking a bumpy airplane ride can overload your brain with rapid movement sensations. Lingering in bed with the flu can prevent you from receiving sufficient movement experiences and make you feel weak. Walking from a well-lit room into a dark closet can deprive your eyes of light and therefore your brain of visual sensations. Not being in control of oneself is very unpleasant, but an occasional disorganizing experience is normal. It is when the brain is so disorganized that a person has difficulty functioning in daily life that the person is diagnosed as having Sensory Processing Disorder.

She looked at the city streets coated in rain, the early light illuminating their inky blackness, their darkness beautifully framed by the lighter concrete gutters and sidewalks. Broadway looks just like a big blackberry galette, Sam thought, before shaking her head at the terrible analogy. That would have earned a C minus in English lit, she thought, but my instructors at culinary school would be proud. Sam slowed for a second and considered the streets. So would my family, she added. New York had its own otherworldly beauty, stunning in its own sensory-overload sort of way, but a jarring juxtaposition to where Sam had grown up: on a family orchard in northern Michigan. Our skyscrapers were apple and peach trees, Sam thought, seeing dancing fruit in her mind once again. She smiled as she approached Union Square Park and stopped to touch an iridescent green leaf, still wet and dripping rain, her heart leaping at its incredible tenderness in the midst of the city. She leaned in and lifted the leaf to her nose, inhaling, the scents of summer and smells of her past- fresh fruit, fragrant pine, baking pies, lake water- flooding her mind.

Soon, he’s fucking me just as hard as he would my pussy, and my whole body is vibrating, shaking with the sensations running through me. I feel drugged, completely out of my mind. My body is on sensory overload. Over-stimulated to the point that tears stream down my cheeks.

It has already rewired the brains of its users, returning us to a state of primitive hyperawareness and distraction while overloading us with much more sensory input than was ever possible in primitive times. It

Portable digital devices are more than just a distraction or entertainment to us; they are essential tools that help us manage sensory overload, emotional stress, and mental exhaustion, often providing a very necessary refuge in a world that can extremely be demanding.