overstimulation

Planted Sep 2026 Tended 1 month ago Linked from 2 notes

Contents

🌿

overstimulation (mental health) ~ overload of one’s nervous system.

types

  • sensory (/physical)
    • sounds, lights, textures, pressure (+information?)
  • emotional
    • intense emotions, conflicting emotions, “bottling up” emotions
  • social
    • excessive period of socialization, masking, the need to read social cues
  • multiple or everything at once

(possible) accommodations

🔖 for everything (quick method)

  1. stimming
  2. put yo damn phone down
  3. doing something, anything, w/ your hands

sensory

  1. change clothes (more loose, soft, free)
  2. wash hands
  3. rinse face
  4. earplugs / earphones / noise-cancelling headphones
  5. warm, soft light / natural darkness (not closed windows)
  6. controlled ambient background sound OR full quiet
  7. 🔖 pause w/ receiving new information, sit with what you already have

emotional

paradoxically, but sometimes it happens simultaneously with physical understimulation and needs to be balanced

  1. easy and fast way to talk about / write down / describe emotions
    • voice notes, talking with someone, quick digital notes, using free-form journal or piece of paper
  2. artistic and indirect ways to express emotions
    • drawing abstract forms, colors
  3. 🔖 repetitive, relatively simple process
  4. with caution: intellectual distraction
    • videos, letsplays, no-brain videogames

social

  1. stop / pause interaction
  2. fully alone time
  3. paradoxical
    • be around strangers rather than familiar people
    • or be around safe person(s)

see also

  • understimulation
  • rest

references

  • my damn life