1/16/2024 0 Comments Auditory sensitivity and anxietyIn New Jersey, where I live, approximately 13,000 people have died during the pandemic – more than the state’s WWII deaths. The loudness of the crisis is still there. My overall “noise-reduction” strategy has made a huge difference. I used an app for daily guided visualizations. But still, my overall efforts helped cut off the steady stream of stress-inducing news and views.Īt the same time, I worked on my breathing and visualization techniques: I joined a yoga teacher friend’s Skype class, and joined another friend’s weekly breathing and drumming meditation, also online. I limited my time on social media – though, admittedly, some days were complete failures, especially if there was a breaking news item. I started exerting some control over how I could “reduce the noise.” I turned off the television and stopped reading as many news updates. With the internal noise of worry growing louder, I realized early in this pandemic lockdown that I’d have to devise new strategies to keep (relatively) calm. I’ve also learned other coping skills - removing myself to another room, asking someone kindly to turn off a piece of music, or just trying to breathe through an aggravating situation, like a loud restaurant or noisy traffic. It does help, though it takes practice and certainly isn’t a silver bullet. Over the past year or so, after becoming more aware of the relationship between focus and anxiety, I’ve used breathing techniques and guided visualization even more. How I Lowered the Volume on the Noise in My Headįor the past couple of decades, I’ve practiced and even taught meditation and guided visualization for relaxation. With my anxiety level up, the quiet only highlights how loud it gets inside my head. So, you’d think that an eerily quiet neighborhood would be bliss during this pandemic. I feel bad about all this, but as I get older, I realize it’s less about me being annoying as a person - and more about my ADHD brain being annoying as a processing system. Just ask my husband about what works (or doesn’t) as background music when we entertain guests. If I’m talking in a restaurant with a group of friends, and the room is loud, I sometimes have to practice my deep breathing to stay relaxed. What I learned about myself is this: anxiety plus too many mixed sounds equal brain malfunction. Sometimes this struggle has given me migraines. When Anxiety Gets Loudīefore the pandemic, I was looking into how anxiety and ADHD may have something to do with my life-long sensitivity to sound - and how I often struggle to separate background and foreground sounds. And the noise in my head becomes harder and harder to manage - drawing a stark contrast to the National Park-like quietude around me. Even as things open, my father remains in a pretty firm quarantine in his Pennsylvania retirement community. I have several family members and friends who have fragile immune systems. Right now, all my usual worries have been replaced with big worries. I usually love the relative quiet, but I don’t love the quiet of lockdown. Even the usual morning dog walkers aren’t out, so any passer-by who peoples my mornings gets an overly enthusiastic (though socially distanced) hello. It has been ghastly quiet in my suburban neighborhood during the pandemic shut-down. I felt like Gilligan on his deserted island, wanting to run toward the beach with my arms waving, “I’m down here! I’m down here!” I was walking my dog recently, and a small airplane flew overhead.
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