Sensory Regulation and Helping Yourself When You’re Overwhelmed

Picture this.

You're at a work event with a bunch of your colleagues and there are lights, sounds, smells, touches, drinks, every sensory thing that you can think of, and you are feeling

overwhelmed, for lack of a better word.

The first thing that you might think to yourself is, can I modify my environment and get out of here?

Can I change something about what's going on around me so I can stay but feel a little bit more focused and less overwhelmed?

If that doesn't work,

How, if at all, can I get out of this environment so I can stop feeling overwhelmed?

What you are feeling beyond overwhelmed is dysregulated.

It's a really complicated word, which means that you as an individual are not able to regulate your emotions, your sensory environment.

You are having a hard time being able to control what you feel, the kind of input that's coming into your brain, that's coming into your mind.

telling your brain what to do with this information.

This is a really tough situation because there's only so much that you have the ability to do to self-regulate, to control what is in your environment.

At a party, at a work event, or at a social gathering, you might not be able to control every bit of your environment.

You might be stuck doing something, whether you want to be there or not.

And as much as it's easy to say, just leave and not go to the event,

There are some situations where maybe you have to go to the event, whether it is a work gathering, if it's a conference, if you're doing networking.

There are some situations where you may not have a choice but to be there.

Or what happens to me frequently is that I want to be in this setting.

There is something that I need to gain whether it is networking, if I'm trying to schmooze up to some people, if I haven't seen somebody in a while, if there is a specific outcome

that I need to achieve that I can only do in this environment, I may need to be in a situation and I may have no choice but to be exposed to some dysregulation.

And the question that that comes down to is,

What can I do as an individual to stay centered, to stay focused?

What can I bring?

What can I do?

What can I say to make this environment as accessible and manageable for me as possible?

This looks very different for every neurodivergent person.

Me being autistic, my issues are more about sensory stuff.

I was at a conference a while ago that took place in a casino.

This by itself isn't necessarily a problem.

Conferences can happen anywhere.

So why is it a problem if it's in a casino?

For me and my neurodivergent brain, I ended up encountering a lot of issues that just reared their head one after the other without me knowing it.

It being a casino, it was very bright and noisy all the time.

And you might think to yourself, the casino portion is separate from the event portion.

In this particular situation, it was not.

In order for me to go out of the hotel for any reason, I'd have to walk through rows and rows and rows of bright, noisy lottery machines or tables.

People would be smoking cigarettes and other sorts of things inside the casino.

The layouts are intentionally confusing.

There's no windows anywhere.

I could keep going, but I walked into this casino from the first moment.

I'm like, my gosh.

I have a problem on my hands.

How am I going to regulate or manage the situation as best I can?

The simple solution would be, don't go to the conference.

I did not have that option in the situation.

I was networking for business stuff.

I was working and I needed to make certain introductions.

I needed to talk to certain people.

And so I had to be at this event.

There was not a situation in this case where I could have just left.

So, okay.

I know that I have to say in this situation, what can I do to actually manage in this scenario?

What I ask myself in that moment, and what you can consider asking yourself is, what can I do as an individual before I reach out to other people?

Is there something that I can do to mitigate these very overwhelming things in my environment?

If it's sound, can I bring headphones and wear them?

People don't question why people are on headphones these days.

You might be on a phone call, listening to music.

If I am wearing headphones going through the busy part of the casino,

that is a great spot for me to wear headphones.

I can take the headphones off when I'm actually in the event space and everything is fine.

If it's a touch thing, can I wear different clothes that are, in my situation, looser and a little bit less tight or constricting in order for me to feel a little bit more free and

relaxed?

If it's a smell thing, can I go around any of the actual casino floor to avoid that cigarette smoke, the cigar smoke, whatever it is?

This is obviously easier said than done.

The layout might force you to go through the machines and it's a casino, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

Could you go a longer way?

Are there other doors, other places you can go through to avoid going through the portion of the room that is actually causing the issue?

Let's zoom out from the example of a conference for a moment and talk about workplaces or just you as a person.

If you know that your desk is near something that's noisy, bright, smelly, something that is bothering you and giving you a difficult time in regulating your emotions or state of

being, what can you do as an individual to regulate and make sure that you can still do your work in this environment?

Here's a specific example.

If your desk is near a common area or a kitchen or a conference room, which is a lot of people going in and out of it, and does that bother you?

If it does bother you, if it makes it harder for you to do your work, do you have the option of swapping desks or moving a desk to a situation where it is less of a sensory

issue, if it is quieter in this situation?

There's also an issue in some workplaces where if you walk across the floor, you might

feel or hear somebody walk across the floor.

This has happened to me at a previous job where people would be walking by me and I would feel them walking by me because my desk was in like the aisle as opposed to being in the

middle or closer to a wall or a window.

What this solution is could look very different from person to person.

In my situation, I didn't want to be near the kitchen because of the foot traffic, because of the noise, because of the smell sometimes, but that's just me personally.

For you, it helps to identify what about the situation is bothering me?

What is grinding my gears?

What is making it hard for me to do my work?

Can I figure this out?

Can I identify it?

Can I put a name to it?

And is there anything that I can do as an individual to address or better yet resolve this experience that I am having?

And if you can figure something out on your own, great.

If you can move to an empty desk, if you can choose to sit somewhere that is a little bit more catered to your working style, maybe it's quieter.

Maybe it's not as bright.

Maybe it is something to do with the lights.

Everyone is different, so what works for you is gonna be different than what works for me.

But the most important thing that you can do is try to identify and articulate that.

What's working?

What's not working?

And what can I do about it to get to a situation where I feel happy, where I am regulated?

Now, what happens if you do have to work with other people to help you emotionally regulate?

This is a scenario where it does help to be upfront with your peers, your manager, regarding what you need to operate in this environment, what you need to work in this

environment.

If you are only able to accomplish as much as 75 % of your work, because 25 % of that time is spent just dealing with the kitchen, dealing with the noise, dealing with the lights,

then you are only ever going to be able to do 75 % of your work.

If you could accomplish 100 % of your work, it is in the best interests of your teammates, of your boss, to help you get to a situation where you can do all of that work, where you

can get your stuff done, and not feel as though you have to

Fight your own brain.

They want you to be successful.

Your coworkers and your team and your manager, they want you to be able to do a good job.

You may not have good relationships with your coworkers, but I would be surprised if anybody wanted anybody else to not be able to do good work, to do high quality work, to do

a lot of it, to do it well, to do it thoroughly.

Whatever it is, nobody wants to see anybody struggle or have problems.

or suffer from something that could be addressed.

And in this situation, it could be as simple as moving a desk over to an empty desk that doesn't affect anybody but you.

And if that's all that it takes, great.

Maybe it's not as simple as that.

Maybe you need to be doing something at all times that other people might see, experience, or have to work with because of how you work.

Good example of this being fidget devices or something that you do with your hands or something that is an aspect of the way that you work physically.

I am a big proponent of fidget devices.

I've got one in my hand right now and I love fidget devices.

This one's a cool little thing.

People can create it for a Rubik's Cube, but I am a huge proponent of fidget devices.

I've got this, I've got fidget cubes, I've got so many of them and I love these things.

They are amazing.

And some people get bothered by that and I can't help it if other people are bothered by it on a personal level.

not because they get distracted by it, but because they take issue with this for some reason.

If someone gives you a hard time about using a Fidget Cube in your job when you are doing your work, ask them, okay, well, I am not able to stay focused, stay centered, keep myself

grounded in this meeting, in this conference, whatever I'm doing, because my hand needs something to be doing.

It can...

be difficult to explain it to somebody who doesn't understand your neurodiversity.

They may not understand that you having ADHD, your hand should be doing something.

It has to be doing something to give your hand something to do while your other hand is doing something else.

Or if you're on a call and you're anxious or you have OCD and you have to be doing something while you are talking so your hands don't

bite at your cuticles so you don't scratch yourself.

There are lots of valid reasons why you may want something in your hands to occupy your fingers while your mind is doing something else.

It's okay to explain that to people and say, hey, I may have a fidget device in my hand.

You might hear it.

People don't have to know much more beyond that, but you might get people who ask you, why do you need a fidget device?

Why do you need to have this thing in your hand?

and can explain it to them and be honest with them.

If you have that emotional safety and trust with them to say, hey, I use a fidget device because I pick at my nails, or if you don't feel like going into that level of detail, I

need a fidget device to keep my hands busy.

You can go into as much or as little detail as you feel comfortable saying and how much you think the other people need to know.

I don't recommend going into excruciating detail.

I don't think your coworkers need to know if you're picking your cuticles, but I do think it's important for them to know I use a fidget device to help me self-regulate, to help me

stay centered in my environment so I can focus on having a customer call, running a presentation, doing something.

The way that I like to say this is that I have fidget devices so that my hands can think and

Pretty much everybody understands what I mean when I say that and they don't press questions forever.

And you can use that, if you're gonna steal that.

I use a fidget device because my hands need to think.

And you might have a lot of success with people's understanding and being like, great, now I want one.

My fingers have to think all the time.

At my desk in the office where I work now, I have a lending library of fidget devices that other people in my area can use.

If they have fingers that need to think.

They can just borrow one.

I've got fidget cubes, I've got little bubble poppers, I've got lots of gadgets and gizmos that I've collected over the years.

And they're really awesome to use.

At the end of the day, self-regulation looks very different for everybody.

What that self-regulation looks like is very different for every person.

For me, that might be a fidget cube or a fidget device.

Some people like to take walking meetings.

They think by walking, being outside, doing something with their body.

Some people like complete darkness.

Some people like complete brightness.

Some people need to have extreme, minute control over their environment.

Some folks can work anywhere.

Every individual is different in the sense of how they regulate their environment.

The question that you have to ask yourself is, what about my environment?

Is it making it hard for me to get my job done?

What can I do about those things by myself?

And what can I ask of other people to help me modify this environment so that I can do my best possible work?

Give it to yourself to accomplish your best possible work.

You should not feel as though you have to hold yourself back.

Your ADHD brain shouldn't have to be worried about

all the minutia of your environment, you should be able to ask what you need to modify your environment, whether you're doing that yourself with a fidget device or wherever you

are asking someone or asking your boss or asking your team to help you with something.