Sensory over-stimulation? WHAT IS THIS?

A little back-story in order to ask my question:
I live in a very small, very rural farm community, so it is very still and quiet here. It's in Arizona, so it's also deadly hot, and living in a house with no A/C means we have to leave the windows open at night to catch the breeze.
There is a factory several miles away, across the river, that manufactures fertilizer. The factory runs all night (24/7) and happens to be directly out my bedroom window, although miles away. During the day the factory is hardly noticeable amid the background noise of birds chirping, neighbors mowing, occasional distant highway traffic. But at night it's a different story.

Two nights ago I was awake by 1 or 2 a.m, as is common for me, and all I could hear was the sound of this factory, churning and grinding and throbbing in my head, endlessly, relentlessly, pounding, pulsating, grinding, throbbing, chugging, churning, growling with a sinister monotony that hammered into my skull and pinned me down in agony, immobilized by a sense of dark foreboding and the impossibility of escaping it. The sound was much like in the Lord of the Rings movies, those underground dungeons and chambers like the caverns of hell, where the goblins operated all that immense and ominous machinery, with molten lava running, metal banging and clanging, and all the time that pulsing, grinding, throbbing, chugging, machinery running, hammers pounding, the essence of evil churning relentlessly, through eternal night, spreading it's dominance over the land, far and wide, hammering into the souls of the living, diabolically pervading mankind with it's darkness for all time.
I was absolutely miserable, laying awake in bed, my bones like jagged broken glass inside my aching body, exhausted by morning.

Then last night... same bed, same circumstances... but it took me a loooooong time to even notice that I could hear the faint hum of the factory in the distance.

W T F ? ? ?

I mean, clearly the first night was a hypo/ or manic driven (I can't distinguish the difference), but with the absolute dark hopelessness of depression, so that's mixed state, right? But then the next night it's entirely gone, so... what, rapid-cycling mixed manic depressive? Are you kidding me?

Now suddenly now my brain is making connections to all kinds of other examples of this. Like sometimes my boyfriend gets over-excited and his voice gets extremely loud and intense to the point I can hardly stand it, I want to listen but I can't even concentrate on what he's saying... the more he talks the more agitated I become. So if I ask him to tone it down and say he is acting so intense it's triggering me he's like, "babe it's YOU who's all agro right now."
Which of course infuriates me & the situation escalates...
Far same reasons, I can't have a fan on at night, or the cooler on, or any electrical device such as a plug-in alarm by my bed ~ I can hear the electric hum and these things grate on my nerves until I am a ragged, jagged, mess! I even have to turn the cooler off several times a day, even when it's 100°outside, just to get a break from the air blowing and blowing and blowing on my skin, it is utterly exhausting and maddening!!!

For the very 1st time now I wonder, is my boyfriend's voice voice exactly the same all that time and I am just experiencing it differently depending on what mood/phase I'm in??? Can somebody help me understand this, please???

Hey crackerjack,

I'm sure what you're experiencing at the moment is very distressing and confusing. I don't know what exactly it is or would be classified as, but I can tell you I've had some experience of 'sensory over-stimulation' when (hypo)manic or in a mixed state.

When my mood's going high, I often have the sensation of my visual surroundings becoming more vivid and colourful, almost as if it might hurt my eyes. In this state, sounds such as ambient music in shops or restaurants seem amplified and practically deafening. I also usually experience psychotic symptoms at the same time, especially paranoia, feeling that everyone's eyes are on me or that people are staring at me. Sometimes more bizarre hallucinations and delusions weigh in too, if I'm fully manic, which is extremely frightening.

Is there any way you can get an appointment with a psychiatrist to discuss this? I think that would be the best course of action, as they may decide a medication change is in order. They might also be able to put your mind at rest by explaining this symptom.

By the way, the way I experience mixed states is that my mood can switch from hypomanic, fairly 'baseline' to depressed everyday or even within the same day. Last time I felt like this, I took a mood diary to my psychiatrist showing these rapid changes and he said it was a mixed episode. I titrated up to 300mg of Quetiapine (an atypical antipsychotic) and literally within days my mood settled down.

I hope you find a way to successfully treat this symptom and find stability soon. Take care.

crackerjack wrote:For the very 1st time now I wonder, is my boyfriend's voice voice exactly the same all that time and I am just experiencing it differently depending on what mood/phase I'm in??? Can somebody help me understand this, please???[/b]

Hi Crackerjack

I've experienced exactly what you describe. It tends to happen to me when I'm mentally unstable and I drink alcohol. If I'm in a bar, the background noise in the bar becomes a roaring sound that is so intense that I have to leave.

If you want an explanation, I suppose its a case that the neurochemistry in your brain is out of whack and your perceptions of audio / visual events becomes out of proportion to what they normally would be. Much of the processes in our brain that deal with perception is actually filtering things out, as we are only able to deal with a limited amount of information at a time. Perhaps when this happens to us, are brains stop filtering things properly?

My only advice to deal with this is to breathe deeply, concentrate on your breath and wait for it to pass.

Your description of the sound of the machinery was incredibly vivid! You write very well.

I visited Arizona about 6 years ago and found it very beautiful (I live in Europe). Flying over the Arizona desert when I arrived into Pheonix was such an incredible experience. Its so crazy that they built a city in the middle of the desert there. I've never experienced such intense heat.

Thanks for your answers, it's really nice to hear that somebody can relate. I kept thinking it was like that sensitivity to stimuli seen in autism, but I couldn't find it listed as a symptom of bipolar.

l'ennui wrote:By the way, the way I experience mixed states is that my mood can switch from hypomanic, fairly 'baseline' to depressed everyday or even within the same day.

In the past few days/week I feel like I am distinguishing this more and more, too. There have been a few time I felt almost "normal," which I haven't felt in over 8 months, but it only lasts and hour or two... then perhaps clean my house like mad for a few hours, then drop on the sofa and sleep as if I were drugged.

darkroses wrote:I've experienced exactly what you describe. It tends to happen to me when I'm mentally unstable and I drink alcohol.

So glad I'm not the only one! Actually I know I am unstable right now, I'm not taking any meds as I had such adverse reactions. But interesting what you say about alcohol... I don't drink but I have been smoking weed to take the edge off. Kind of makes me wonder what else it's affecting, it's such a controversial topic. But I don't know how to stabilize without meds, there doesn't seem to be any onfo on it. Everything pretty much says meds is the only way to stabilize. But they're not an option for me.

I call mine sensory overload. When to many people talking, background noises all added together can drive me crazy. I cant handle to many different noises at once.

Aaaah, sensory overload, that's a good name for it!
Experiencing something that there isn't a name or word for is disconcerting to me.
I guess I feel like once I name it then I can figure out how to cope with or prevent it.
Thanks for your answers and input, my anxiety about it has gone way down since 'talking' about it!

crackerjack wrote:
But I don't know how to stabilize without meds, there doesn't seem to be any onfo on it. Everything pretty much says meds is the only way to stabilize. But they're not an option for me.

Have you read this article?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelells ... ipolar-ii/

I found it very inspiring. There may not be much info on how to stabilise without meds per-se, but there's lots of info out there on the lifestyle one should lead for good mental health

-good diet with little sugar + saturated fat
-avoiding alcohol + drugs
-meditation
-exercise
-Avoiding stress

All these things change the chemistry in our brains in a positive way, but without the side effects one gets from medication.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the weed was contributing to the heightened sensations you're describing. One of the reasons I enjoy smoking weed is because of the heightened sensations it provides! Unfortunately I find it virtually impossible to smoke it in moderation, and find it a disaster if I'm feeling mentally unstable at all.

I must admit that your displeasure with the sounds was very beautifully described

It could be a thousand different causes, but yes, mania increases perception.

Mania is your entire brain and endocrine system in a vulcanic eruption. It's an amplifier of EVERYTHING, inside and outside.

And about speed of cycling, this is not something to be bothered with since most bipolars do cycle very randomly or with specific triggers, time usually isn't a factor. "The bipolar organism" should normally be quite frenzied and swingy in very subtle degrees.

I'm not bipolar (I think, as some meds possibly caused mild hypomania), but I once took a very high dosage of Inositol, which can cause mania in anyone. I woke up at night with severe anxiety, but this odd hyperfocus. it's as if anything that I focused my attention on became VERY vidid and absolutely all I could notice. Like, if I turned on a fawcett, all I could see or feel was the fawcett. But eventually it became like a magnifier to all my perceptions (sense of touch, vision, task in mind, hearing). And this applied to everything. It was as if the world got slower, I got faster and somehow more "automatic".
Felt very scary, but at the same times intense and stimulating.

I could hear better, see better in the dark, mind going a hundred thousand kilometers per second but at the same time bizarrely focused. Usually, my mind is flooded with garbled intrusive thoughts, but now it was crystal clear and very random thoughts took over, most of them not unpleasant. I experienced something similar: I remember hearing a faint sound in the distance, then I went to my kitchen window and observed a warehouse a few miles away from my place. I could hear so well what was going on there, but usually I never do.

Anyways, since anxiety kept going up as well and the muscle tightness was starting to hurt all over, I took a 0.25mg Xanax and it fell asleep again pretty quick.

bipolarmusician wrote:I must admit that your displeasure with the sounds was very beautifully described

Agreed. Crackerjack: if you're not already writing fiction, you should be. That paragraph is amazing...