Being active and getting regular exercise are not only good for your physical health - they’re also important in helping process without causing overstimulation. Of course, outside of proper sleep and hydration or identifying everyday risk factors for yourself, there are other ways to help avoid overstimulation. I discovered that noise-cancelling headphones contributed substantially to the overall fatigue state, since they operate by generating an oppositional sound to cancel out the background sounds - the frequencies involved in the “cancelling” part are what were inducing the worst symptoms of overstim. Likewise, lights and sounds can also cause overstimulation, so it’s important to identify what ranges of each have the most notable effect on you. Some commonly understood risk factors include fatigue and dehydration, both of which affect a number of body systems and play a major role in how our body regulates. If you suffer from any sensory processing sensitivity symptoms, it’s important to try to identify your personal triggers. For some people, it’s linked to being neurodivergent in other ways, such as having ADHD, epilepsy, or some other sensory processing sensitivity - someone who falls under such a category may sometimes be referred to as Highly Sensitive Person. Our understanding of what causes some people to experience overstimulation when others are fine is fairly poor. One way this can be expressed is by seizures, including vacant seizures and Grand Mal seizures (e.g., like those caused by photosensitive epilepsy).ĭifferent people react to over stimulation in different ways - some may become laser focused on the task at hand, some may find they tune out entirely, and some may lock up like a computer crashing. People who get overwhelmed by excessive stimuli can experience a similar situation but instead of their game client going silent, their brain kind of “freezes” while it resets. Have you ever been playing a game, probably in the middle of a complex encounter, and realized it has gone completely silent? That’s the game’s sound channels being overwhelmed with too many signals and muting itself until it can sort things out. My other half likes to watch movies or listen to music turned up loud - even being at the other end of the house can be too much some days, and I find particular noises are worse than others and can almost send me retching within minutes. I also experience moderate misophonia, which is where certain noises can irritate you intensely to the point of distress or rage. In the same way that some people see a reduced color gamut, some people have tetrachromia, where they have an extra set of cones for processing color and can see a broader range of color and be more sensitive to them. Of course, there are other conditions or experiences that can lead to overstimulation. After I started to share a workspace with my partner, I learned that wearing noise-cancelling headphones for an extended period can trigger my motion sickness. Personally, I have suffered from motion sickness and other stimuli-processing issues my entire life - visual triggers can leave me feeling nauseated, for example.
But sensory processing issues are so common it’s easy for us to almost accept them as normal. When people think of gaming causing discomfort, they typically think of physical issues such as carpal tunnel or other repetitive motion soft-tissue injuries. What will trigger overstimulation will vary from person to person, from day to day. I remember trying to lead the Hans and Franz fight in World of Warcraft’s Blackrock Foundry and having to keep a bucket next to my chair, as well as needing to get up and go for a walk during wipe recovery - in-game conveyor belts are my kryptonite. Certain visual or aural patters in games can cause the brain to think it’s moving or falling, or that there’s something behind you. When it comes to digital gaming, we are attempting to simulate whole worlds through auditory and visual stimulation alone, and for some people this can lead to an overload of those senses. While not typically included in the base count, most of us are familiar with the senses of hunger, time passing, movement or falling, temperature, of being followed, and so forth. It’s known that nerves are involved, and those nerves feed sensation to the brain that interprets that data and decides “good sensation” or “bad sensation” - but there’s no agreement on how many senses we have, and the commonly understood “five senses” approach grossly understates the situation. Though o ur understanding of sensation, stimuli, and pain is mostly in the trial-and-error stage still, the differences between boring, interesting, overstimulating, or painful are technically only a matter of intensity and degree.
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