... ↑
metanymous в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)
All of us experience overwhelm at times. When there is too much happening at once, it is hard to focus on what we need to pay attention to. The resulting confusion and frustration can easily “boil over” into yelling, grumpiness, or other behaviors that create even more to deal with! Another phrase for this is “sensory overload.” For instance, when I am following directions while driving to an unfamiliar address, I find that I do much better if I turn the radio off. If I don’t, I begin to have symptoms that are much the same as in those diagnosed with “ADHD,” and I am more likely to miss a turn or make some other mistake in driving.
The fundamental problem with overwhelm is that there is too much information to process in a given time frame. This can be because there is too much occurring simultaneously, or because it is being presented too fast sequentially for us to process it well. To deal effectively with overwhelm, the first thing to do is find some way to reduce the immediate sensory overload. This sensory overload has two main components. One is the actual external sensory input around us in the moment, and the other is the internal input from what is going on in our own mind/body. Let’s consider the external input first.
Reducing external input
There are two fundamental ways to reduce external input.
One is to take some kind of practical action in the real world to reduce the input, as I do when I turn off the radio when driving to an unfamiliar address. You can ask others to be quiet so you can listen to one person at a time, or ask them all to be quiet so you can concentrate on reading or a phone call. You can turn off the TV, cover your eyes so you can hear better, or leave a chaotic scene altogether, etc.
The other way is to learn internal ways to concentrate on certain aspects of the external input, and reduce or “tune out” the rest of it. Although some people are more skilled at this than others, all of us already know how to do this well in certain contexts. When my wife Connirae is at work on her computer, she automatically tunes out the sounds around her. I know this because there have been times when I had entire “conversations” with her, but she wasn’t aware of it. I’ve learned that if I want her to actually notice that I’m saying something, I need to first get her attention by calling her name, or going over and putting my hand on her shoulder. Sometimes she’ll pause, and I can see her refocusing her attention from her work and onto me. Usually she can still find the auditory memory of whatever I’ve just said and replay it in her mind and understand it. If she hadn’t refocused her attention right then, what I had said would be gone.