Kohl's Kills

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I get overstimulated easily. This could be a part of ADD, this could be my hypothesized borderline Asperger's, or it could just be Grace being Grace, the ultimate Oversensitive Princess. But it does give me at least one more excuse to stay home and hide on the weekends.

Shopping for clothing, although I love it, is hard.

Shopping for food is also hard.

Noisy restaurants are hard.




Restaurants with too much light are hard.

Restaurants with too little light are hard.

Concerts are hard.

Traveling is hard.

Basically, everything is too overstimulating. Except sitting in my couch depression reading American Apartheid. That's pretty much okay.

So what does overstimulation mean for Grace?

Let's take shopping for clothes at Kohl's. According to Dan, who is my ultimate barometer for this kind of thing, I start getting overwhelmed about ten minutes in. In fact, he is very reluctant to take me to Kohl's these days, because unless I'm very very careful, it can send me into a downward spiral for the entire day. Sometimes continuing into the next day.

So, first of all there are all the colors. Kohl's, being a nice store that actually sells pants in the petite short size range, has lots of options in all different colors. There are colors everywhere I look. There's some red. Some green. Lots of black and white. Colors. Everywhere.

There's also the music. Invariably, store ambient music is set to blasting every time I walk into Kohl's. The music's always there in the background, drumming away, yelling about some hot babe ditching her boyfriend, whatever.

Now here's the thing about all the colors and all the music: I don't really notice the details. I see all the colors, but it's not like I'm taking it in. I literally see just colors, not buttons, not details. If I'm looking on a rack for something to wear, my eyes will start jumping all over the place, because THERE ARE COLORS. I have to really use my (diminished) focus to make my eyes actually scan the rack from left to right. Same with the music. I don't ever really notice what's playing (unless there's a saxophone, I hate saxophones), but I do hear it. It just sounds like some loud noises in the background.

So there are lots of colors and lots of yelling "music". At this point, just when I'm assaulted by mint accents and Miley Cyrus, I'm trying to choose between the blue jean wash and the navy jean wash. There's too much coming in and the cognitive demand of making a decision sends me over the edge (I'm not good at making basic decisions at the best of time... ask me what I want for dinner tonight and watch me stall and be annoyingly non-committal).

First, I lose all focus. My brain goes in all directions and it won't stop. These jeans are good. But what about those other jeans I saw. I'm going to see those jeans. Wait, this is the wrong section. Wow, those are nice tank tops. I wonder if they have grey tank tops. Wait, I need to find the jeans. Crap, the tag of the tank top is caught on my button. I CAN'T GET IT OFF. Crap, I tore it. OK, make a run for it before Talya the Nice Associate sees me. Jeans. Wait, what?

One way I can tell that I've lost all focus is when I lose all purpose for walking. I will literally walk a few steps in one direction, stop, make a 180, stop, go over to the left, stop, backtrack, stop. I'm kind of following my brain at this point, but honestly, I don't even know anymore. My brain is on autopilot and my legs are following. Also, the autopilot is malfunctioning.

After I toddle around with no focus for a while, I move into Stage Two of Extreme Overstimulation. I will get the same feeling that you would get if you were trying to keep your eyes wide open in the face of some strong winds going, like, 40 mph. I squint. My eyes burn. My eyes start tearing up. I sometimes have to stop and sit down for a second and just close my eyes. Now I'm on malfunctioning autopilot and there's a crack in the cockpit window. Great.

Stage Three is where I start getting really frustrated. My fine motor control goes down the tubes. I bump into things. I fall down. I wreck the racks... like, I have to run to the other side of the store to avoid Talya, there are just that many sweaters lying on the floor. Oh, and I can't pick up the sweaters, because then I just drop the sweaters that are still on the wrack. I'll tear some tags off by accident and usually drop my purse upside down somehow and everything spills out on top of the sweaters so I lose my phone in the sleeve of a sweater and step on the sweaters to find the phone and leave a footprint on the sweater and run over to home goods for ten minutes to avoid Talya. Stage Three unfortunately usually coincides with trying-on clothing. I can't focus, my eyes are burning, and I have to button things. Yeah. That takes me like three minutes per shirt right there.

Stage Four is probably what would happen to most people if they were in a plane with a cracked window on malfunctioning autopilot that won't turn off. I start getting overheated. Really, really, really hot. I'm gross and I sweat buckets if you so much as look at me for three seconds, so the back of my shirt is damp by the second pair of jeans. Just to recap: We're now in a plane on autopilot that isn't working, with a crack in the window, with no way to fix the problems, and somebody just turned on the heat to about 90 degrees.

By the time I escape the fitting room, I've usually torn things, bumped my head, and smell funny. I'm near tears, both because of the wind stabbing my eyes and because of everything else. Sometimes I actually run out of the fitting room halfway through and demand that Dan and I leave NOW. Sometimes I just get my stuff and then go yell at Dan for ten minutes because he's not focused. And when I finally leave Kohl's, I'm still overstimulated. Sometimes I can refocus after a while, but sometimes the air's in my eyes all day long. Just remember, everyone, Kohl's kills.

On the plus side, I stumbled upon a technique that helps me quite a bit in these situations. I've found that if I block off either the visual or the auditory element, I'm much more equipped to take on the fitting room. Blocking off the visual is basically me sitting down and focusing on my phone for five or ten minutes. Since I like to leave Kohl's in under three hours, however, I usually block off the auditory. I take out my earbuds and stick them in. I don't actually attach them to anything, because I need the silence, not music, which is just move auditory input (I tried to listen to music and buy cereal at the same time a few months ago. Never again.). I just hope that nobody ever sees the loose end of the earbuds and thinks I'm more special than I actually am. (Sometimes I play Find The Adult With Autism And/Or Other Sensory Problems In Public. Very large headphones with no attached cord. Dead giveaway.)

Oh, and I only realized what was going on in my brain in public areas very recently. It's part of my whole self-discovery overshare life stage. It explained why every single time I went to NYC with Dan (I love New York!) it would end in abject disaster. I'd be happy at 8 AM and would be a crying angry mess by 8 PM. Now I know why.