Tag Archives: apd

Is there any escape from noise?

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One of the downsides to my day job is when I end up monitoring the self checkout machines. That job on its own isn’t that bad, because I’m totally fine with helping customers there. No, the issue is that it’s right next to the shared sinks and hand dryers just outside the bathrooms, and every single time someone uses those dryers, everything I hear ends up getting covered up by a half-minute of WHHHSSSSHSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH white noise. I can handle it if it happens every now and again, but when it’s going all day long, I start getting a bit twitchy.

I’ve mentioned before that I have APD. I’m definitely not hard of hearing; in fact I’ve also mentioned that I have weirdly sharp directional hearing (in which I can usually tell you almost exactly which direction a noise is coming from). The way I explain it to people is to picture yourself in a very noisy restaurant. Not only do I hear the music being played over the speakers, I hear the conversation at the table next to us, the sports bros cheering at someone’s score on the TV, other conversations elsewhere around us, all on top of you trying to have a conversation with me. I hear it all at once and all at the same volume, and I can’t always filter it to focus only on you. [You’ll often see me cupping an ear in your direction because of this.]

So when that damn hand dryer goes off, it basically blots out any other sounds that might be going on around me, whether it’s a customer asking a question, my manager calling me on the radio, the store phone ringing, or someone calling me on the intercom. I love my job, but I hate that damn hand dryer sometimes.

What can I do about it? Well, not much unfortunately. It’s less irritating and disrupting if I’m working the register, where the noises are more muted. Or if I happen to do be doing an errand on the floor or upstairs, I embrace the peace and quiet and let my brain rest for a while. And thankfully I’m not assigned the self checkouts all that often.

I have noticed that my APD has gotten a bit more irritating over the years, and I’m sure that’s because I’m just getting older and finding this amount of chaotic noise more irritating, maybe even overwhelming. Perhaps this is why I’ve loved listening to music so much over the course of my life: this is where I focus on one source of sound and little else. And because I’m focusing only on the music, it resonates with me more on an emotional and mental level that most people, I assume.

I can certainly try to focus on the voices and sounds that I need to focus on at any moment, but it can certainly be exhausting as hell sometimes.

Headphones

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I’ve been thinking about digging out my mp3 players and filling them up again as something to listen to on my breaks at work. The break room is quite large compared to the one at the other shop, so there’s less of a chance of multiple loud conversations and TikTok videos going at the same time and irritating my audio processing disorder. I can handle the levels in that room, and there’s always other places within the building I can go (or even to my car) if I need a bit of quiet.

I’ll totally cop to wanting to revisit those old high school days where I could distance myself from everything and focus only on whatever I’m listening to. I keep coming back to that as a possible way to unplug from all the excess noise and online presence I currently find myself in. [If it worked in the past, why not try it again?] These days the only time I see earbuds is when a customer’s having a day job conversation on their phone while checking out, otherwise most people’s media intake is on speaker. While I’m not complaining about that per se, it can sometimes be overwhelming to my APD (especially if they’re the type that likes to have the reel repeat itself multiple times) because I have to work twice as hard to focus on what noises and voices I need to focus on at that moment.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s more than wanting to revisit those 80s memories once more like I’d mentioned previously. That’s a big part of why I want to revisit this listening habit. But I’ve always had APD to some extent though I only learned what it was in the last decade or so, so a lot of the listening issues I had during my school years suddenly make more sense. And my wanting to hide away with headphones, turns out, wasn’t just a matter of wanting to escape life for a while, either; it was also a way to shut out the sounds and voices that irritated me.

And to weave it all together: whenever I did cocoon myself with a set of headphones and music playing on my Walkman (or even listening to music on my radio in an otherwise quiet house), that’s when my mind was calm. And that’s when I was able to fully and successfully lose myself in the mood that music created, and thus use as influence and inspiration for my creative outlets. Calm audio input means calm audio process means calm focus.

And I sense that that is what my brain needs right now, once more. Some kind of aural realignment, something to bring a calm clarity and perhaps a refreshing inspiration.