I’m autistic and I’m going to try my best here to explain what it feels like to me when having a sensory overload, and how I get out of them and enter my happy place.

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You know that feeling when you’re driving up hill quickly and your ear drums begin to build up pressure, and you feel like you’re hearing things perfectly fine but with a delicate pain?

If you can’t get your ears to pop you forget just how you’re supposed to hear and how your ears are supposed to feel.

Then they pop and it’s a wave of relief.

Now try having your ears never pop, and you’re in a car with the windows down and music at full blast, and what occupants are in the car are talking loudly and you’re surrounded by bright and dim lights circling around you. Although you can’t see the shifts it feels like you’re looking directly into strobe lights and you become dizzy, you want to ask them to stop. And you do.

They ask what’s wrong, not aware of the chaos you sense. They cannot see or feel the pressure changes in the lighting, they cannot sense the vibrations rattling your body’s core, causing your stomach to churn.

So they continue.

You pull on your hair, you curl up in your seat, squeezing your eyes shut and begin rocking back and forth. You hold your hands over your ears pushing tighter and tighter until your head feels like it’s going to crack open. Your nails dig into your scalp, leaving marks no one will see.

The lights are there, taunting you on the backs of your eyelids, the pressure is building up and breathing spikes between hyperventilating and holding your breath until your face turns pale. The seat belt scratches you and you want to rip your skin off, the bass drum punches your stomach, and the simple, common smell causes you jaggedly jerk your head back and forth in attempt to get the scent out.

Nothing works.

No one stops.

Nothing stops.

And then your brain hits a point where it can’t take it anymore and it shuts down.

Suddenly everything is there at once and it’s clear, your eyes splitting open to take it in. It’s loud and your body rattles still with the vibration, but it’s all in focus and you find yourself unable to react.

So you close your eyes and take a deep breath. Your hands hadn’t stopped digging into your scalp, and they don’t lack with this breath either. You steady your breathing, focusing on that and nothing else, not even the throbbing pain in your head.

Your nails retract and you nod off into your mind.

Dark purple with the occasional pulse of red. White lights dazzle in front of you as entertainment and you pick out it’s shapes. You feel your hands soften and you nod along to a beat unmatching to the one playing on the radio.

Your brain stops screaming.