Attention requests. If I hat to juggle three or more things that require my attention I start having urges to pummel them to fine dust. Doesn’t matter if they are my kids, co-workers, or even just machines.
Lyrics in songs while trying to talk to someone or read something. Have to turn the music down or off. Maybe has to do with English being my second language, but I can process only one stream of audio information at once.
Native english speaker here and I can’t hear just one stream. I hear them all at once. I regularly piss people off by not understanding them in a crowded room or being in a car with a lot of road noise.
I felt the same about music, and I usually stuck to jazzy instrumental stuff, but I got a record player a couple weeks ago, and I’m finding the selection has widened greatly. It still can’t be loud music, but the chiller stuff has been fine. Last night was Pet Shop Boys. It must be the warmer more natural quality of sound.
Florescent lights, and any bright light at night, especially at home, alone.
During a bad summer, living in a shitty thin caravan park permanent thing, I was stuck with an old portable A/C unit.
At some point, one of the pump rotors went out of alignment and made a horrible buzzing, grinding sound. I was already stressed out as fuck from the heat, and the noise drove me to actual insanity and tears.
And my fucking shitbag family refused to help fix it.
I very nearly smashed the whole thing to pieces trying to get the grinding to stop.
Noise is my trigger, clearly.
Guls screeching. Makes me gag. Also causes big emotional rage.
Gul Dukat?
I can think of worse people on DS9.
Strangers touching me, UGH
Overhead lights Showers That tingy sound a lot of hairdryers have Really repetitive sounds Babies wailing, I can handle crying but when they really get going I feel like I need to crawl out of my skin
Happened in a train. Toddler was really putting it on and everyone knew. I felt like going up to the toddler and saying something, but thankfully one of the parents snapped and started hitting their kid. I sat down and resumed my journey content
I’m not one to advocate for physical violence against children, usually. However, some children, at some point, need a demonstration of what happens when you push a person too far.
Edit: Also worth noting, it’s clear when one of those children never got that demonstration, never got that attitude correction, and grew up into an adult.
I grew up with someone at school who literally did not understand empathy, happily stole from his classmates, but knew how to apologise with fake sincerity when caught.
His parents didn’t seem like bad people, but people who had tried both positive and negative reinforcement and it just didn’t take.
I think he learned early on in life that he could do bad things to good people, and those good people would forgive him again and again. His friends learned to distance themselves, but his family? Oh gosh, what could they even do
Phone calls. The combination of audio compression, noise, and microphone/speaker quality make it extremely frustrating to have phone conversations.
I didn’t mind phone calls about 5 years ago when people would talk into an ear piece, but nowadays people talk to an open room with loudspeaker on and their poor mic is doing overtime trying to resolve the garbled mess. When I talk with my cousin, it’s like they’re either drowning or going through a roller coaster
N o t i f i c a t i o n s .
My phone going ping because someone outside of work wants something. Slack going ping because someone at work wants something. Windows going ding because of some bullshit and I’m not allowed to use Linux for work. Some other thing going ping in the distance because it’s not connected to the internet, or it is connected to the internet and has an update.
Why did we build this world for ourselves
When your walking down the street and you hear a chime of security cameras whistling as you to try and get you to look directly into all of them drives me into a blind rage
I’m sorry, what?
Where do you live, that they’ve sunk that low?!
ping
I mute all notifications ever and all phone calls on every platform I use.
The loud rumbling of vehicles (typically trucks and larger), the loud booming of a car blasting their music, and power tools like hacks-all, band saws, table saws…
I get irrationally frightened, like I can only shrink down and cover until it’s over.
But for irrationally irritated? Other’s sadness and frustration. I dont know what’s wrong, and I cant fix it. Cat screaming uncontrollably, people “in a mood”, crying children that won’t stop.
I then get frustrated. “Why won’t you eat?” “MEOW!!!”
Smells. #1 trigger.
Also how i realised i was asd. Turns out neurotypicals don’t get angered by smells
The garbage having a strong smell makes me get so angry and then husband has to take the garbage out early which annoys him mildly.
Stupid food having a scent after throw it away!!
Separating the compostables out pretty much eliminates smells. If you aren’t doing that already. Then it’s just a tiny bag of organics every couple days.
It all goes in the heap
Smells is like an opposite trigger for me! With some very strong exceptions, I’m extremely smell… oriented? Anything from “Amazing” to just “interesting”. Some smells trigger a flight response though, and my brain says I gotta get away ASAP. Fertilizer/doodoo/stomach acid/most rot/ammonia/the kitchen drain trap goo after they haven’t been cleaned for a long time/mold make me panic a little and I gotta get away from it.
That’s the “revulsion reflex”, it’s a “normal” urge. Useful in evolutionary terms, it instinctively keeps us away from disease vectors. It sounds like yours is… “Well developed” should we say? 💛
I go feral with the lawnmowers start up in the neighborhood. Im also near a small airport, the planes are bad but when The black hawks and shinooks are out doing drills is the worst cuz they just circle and circle until I feel insane.
sometimes, you get inccenant plane take offs, lawnmowers, highway traffic, and dogs barking all at the same time. I like being outside but holy fuck
Depending on how overt you want to be, ear defenders or “concert earplugs” might be helpful to you.
The concert plugs are designed to just take everything down a few notches but leave vocal range alone where possible, same as ear defenders in all honesty.
Means you can still hear people, birds and animals, but takes the amplitude out of everything else, making the soundscape far more tolerable.
💛
Air blowing over my skin is the worst.
Bright lights are bad, but they’re nothing compared to having a fan actively moving air across me. I can feel every bit of turbulence and it’s so distracting that it makes me want to stab something or tear my own skin off.
Now that it’s Summer everyone and their mother at work wants to have a personal fan on their desk or use a shop fan on the floor to keep cool and when I have to work with them it’s torture.
I’d rather be hot and just drink more water.
It’s ok if you’re really hot.
It’s ok if it’s ambient air moving.
But any other time something blowing directly on you? Nope.
Sound - as we are coming into party season. Some techno music was playing all night, the heartbeat-raising kind that travels through the granite, but I was not 100% sure if it also could be a combine harvester working at night, or even my fridge playing up, or a mix of all of these. So I had to listen to the sounds to figure out what they were, all night, and it kept me busy and annoyed. I’m afraid if I don’t get my lunchtime nap today I’ll throw myself a toddler tantrum later.
Light is awful but I can close my eyes at least.
same for me. sound is the worst. my neighbor likes to fall asleep to the tv so its just on like all fucking night. its not loud at all, but when theres people speaking i can hear the muffled base of their voice and nothing else. i have no idea what they’re saying but the cadence is so clearly human speech its impossible for my brain to ignore. there was a few months where i could barely sleep before i started wearing ear plugs at night.
i did talk to him about it eventually but after a while he went back to playing the tv at all hours. its such a minor sound its hard to describe to people how it could drive me so crazy so ive just resigned to sleeping with ear plugs forever. helps to tune out my cats having zoomies and yelling too.
Do you share a wall with this neighbor?
I have a white nose machine for the annoying nighttime sounds.
My fan is equal parts air mover and white noise machine.
I had a long call with some old friends the other day and was describing how I’ve been feeling unusually down for the last year or so without knowing why… and they said, hmm, does this have anything to do with how our entire country feels badly right now? And that was my light bulb moment. Not sure why that wasn’t obvious to me, but I guess that’s what friends are for.
That is somewhat scapegoating your feelings. Yes things are bad and expensive, but there should be a little circle of influence in your life where you feel you can do positive things for yourself and others.
I appreciate you, and you’re right. But it was also helpful to realize that it wasn’t just something inside me causing the discombobulation… It helps me see more clearly what i can work on.
absolutely!
Road noise; mostly just the constant tyre sound of a busy street. I hate it.
I especially hate extremely loud emotional support vehicles, but those are a passing annoyance compared to the near constant wirr of tyres on dirty asphalt.
