Okay, so this is weird.
I seriously don’t do loud environments. My speech discrimination goes to shit with a bunch of background noise, and if I get into overly-spiky crowd noise (eg. loud bars / parties, with everyone yelling over each other and echoing off the walls), I rapidly overload and need to GTFO before I break down.
So why in the purple fuck is frantic glitchy breakcore the most soothing thing in the universe?
I’ve been listening to stuff like femtanyl recently, and the more IYTGKIUFUYGLICGXJYUGJTYUFLIHFUYGKJKHJGHYTFTJGHFDYGFDJHCHTRF it gets, the more it feels like my brain is sinking into a warm bath. It’s like brown noise, but moreso.
Tha heck is going on?
Anyone relate?
Do you have a degree of social anxiety? Over the years I’ve noticed that multiple sources of sensory input get overwhelming when I’m stressed. If I feel in control and “calm” I can just mentally filter it all as a single background noise but if my anxiety is real bad or I’m upset about something else I feel like I’m being assaulted from all sides.
If I’m at a bar with friends I’m comfortable with and we’re relaxed and chatting then I’m fine. The music and myriad of conversations all just become a single background noise. Drinking probably helps.
If I’m struggling to accomplish some task and it’s really getting to me, any noise from multiple sources puts me on edge and I’ll do pretty much anything to stop it.
And if it’s not an anxiety thing for you, it might just be that it’s from multiple sources. Sensory overload isn’t usually a physical thing, it’s how our brain interprets it, which means our state of mind or even our perception matters. The music you listen to you know is coming from one place: your headphones/speakers. You know it’s meant to work together so your brain can file that away as a single thing to comprehend. A noisy party with 20 different conversation that you know are all separate? Your brain is trying to view them all separately and ADHD can make you want to interpret all of them.
I think that last bit is most likely and could just be the basic of what your brain is doing. But for me personally, stress triggers my brains inability to filter all background noise as a single “noise” because it’s on high alert fight-or-flight mode and on the lookout for dangers so it’s taking everything in that it can to locate the danger.
I think something like that coffitivity thing could help you acclimatize you to it if you’re looking to change your reaction. Train your brain to view that kind of noise as a singular source and not 100 different sources. And with the internet being what it is, there’s almost definitely something out there that will imitate whatever environment you’re wanting to adjust to.