Have you ever felt over-stimulated by all of the sights and sounds coming at you? Do you seem more sensitive than others around you to bright light, loud noise, strong smells, and the way things feel when they touch your skin? Do you become dizzy if you look side to side too many times? Me too!
All of this can be challenging to manage in every day life, but can become overwhelming when you are away from home traveling. I started thinking more about it last week while I was in an airport with my husband.
I love traveling. Love immersing into another world to temporarily escape the stresses of work or school (Mahalo Maui!). Love being in warm places when the weather is too cold at home (SanDiego here we come!). Love going to concerts, even when it means going to different states and countries to follow my favorite music (Bon Jovi!).
But I don’t love being out of my comfort zone. Sure I deal with anxiety. But this is different. This is about maintaining internal homeostasis despite sensory overload.
Everyone experiences their senses uniquely. Because of this, two people can be living the exact same situation, however experience it quite differently.
Take for example my husband and I walking through an airport.
Sights
As we walk into the terminal from the dimly lit plane, we both notice that the walls are lined with floor to ceiling windows. I avert my eyes and squint because the brightness and glare feel like a spotlight aimed directly at my pupils. He merely notices that it must be a nice sunny day out. I love a good sunny day too, so it’s not about mental perception. But people can actually experience their senses in very different ways.
The same thing happens when going into some stores. Grocery and especially big box stores have overhead florescent lighting to help shoppers notice their products. I wear my sunglasses inside because without them I feel like I actually see the flickering of the too-bright lights, and it sometimes triggers a migraine headache. To him it’s just lit to help us see better.
Sounds
Back at the airport, over the dull roar of the regular crowd noise is the orchestra of competing loud noises from overhead announcements, the high pitch beep of indoor driving carts, and the screeches of the planes themselves. I wished I had remembered to pack earplugs to muffle it down a bit, while my husband says he doesn’t really notice it.
It’s like when we go to the movies or a sporting event. I know to sit angled so that my right ear is away from the loud input, since that’s the side that always seems the most sensitive to me. So not only can two people sense senses differently, even two sense organs within one individual can be at odds.
Smells
Back at the airport again, as we stand waiting at the baggage claim area, I notice someone nearby is wearing perfume. I quietly move to another area and subtly take a few deep breaths, hoping to dilute the scent molecules that just made it up my nose. Not all fragrances do it, but many trigger a migraine, and somehow I continue to smell the smell even after the person is long gone.
The same thing happens at the gas station. I’m always on the hunt for paper towels to grab the nozzle with so I don’t get the gas smell on my hands. My favorite sneakers are now out of commission because I stepped in a spill a few months back, and no amount of cleaning or rubbing them on other surfaces can take the smell away enough to stop triggering that migraine 5 minutes after I’ve put them on.
And don’t even get me started on smoking – one can only hold their breath walking by it for so long.
Touch
The way things feel on your skin is also part of the way we integrate our senses. For me, I don’t feel comfortable when shirts feel too tight or when the tag in the back scratches me. I know to buy shirts one size too big and then cut the tags out before I put them on. I also know to pack moist towelettes in case something sticky gets on my hands, and lotion in case they start to feel dry so it doesn’t become all I can focus on.
Back to our travel, this one showed it’s quirky little head when we went into a dueling piano bar in Nashville (such a fun place!). Upon entry they stamp your hand so you can come and go, and they’ll know you already showed ID and paid your cover charge. I always immediately wipe off the ink stamp because I don’t like the thought of it on my hand – it reminds me of a sticker, and stickers are… well, sticky. We left and then returned about an hour later. My husband waltzed right in with a quick flash of the back of his hand. He didn’t notice that I was still stuck at the door, trying to convince the bouncer that I had already been there, since I no longer had my hand stamp to prove it.
Movement
When you’re traveling, there’s a lot of time spent trying to find places. You look side to side for the street address of your hotel or concert venue, a parking spot, or a good place to eat. That eye movement, though, can add a distinct motion sick feeling to your sensory salad. It, like the other sensory overloads, can trigger those pesty migraines too.
We’ve realized that this also holds true for swiping up and down, or side to side one too many times on an ipad or smartphone. Since my husband zigs and zags while on a screen, we’ve learned that if we’re doing something together on the computer, I take a Bonine first (like Dramamine, without the drowsiness). Whatever works, right?
Germs
Germs really don’t fall into the category of senses, but since they resulted in a similar experience differential, they seemed to fit in with this anyway. As we walked through the airport terminal on our way back home, I became silly in my inner thoughts noticing our difference in germ perspective. Mine too much and his too little.
He comments on how cool it is they have a row of public ipads for people to use to help pass the time, while I’m thinking about all the germs laying in wait on the screens from all the past fingers touching it and wondering if they clean them each night. He grabs onto the rails of the escalator, while I try to balance in the center so as not to have to hold onto these bars that have been held by countless other hands today, knowing statistically some of them had to have been sick. He reaches into the seat pocket of the plane to look for a magazine, while I notice all the nooks and crannies that must be too hard to successfully disinfect between flights.
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The important thing is to not let any of it stop you from doing the things you want to do – like travel. Although it can be a lot to manage, the key is to become insightful enough to know all of your own quirks and mindful enough that you can subtly manage them all independently. This way it doesn’t impact your ability to live your life to it’s fullest – and experience all the things you want to do in the places they happen to be. With the perk of helping your idiosyncrasies make you interestingly eccentric, instead of weirdly neurotic.
And with any luck, you will have a travel partner who knows you well enough to recognize what’s probably going through your head during these moments so you’ll have someone to laugh with about it afterwards – and experience it all as comical instead of stressful…. once you aren’t sticky anymore.