Sensory overload

#278

There are days when everything feels too much. Too loud or too bright. Flickering lights that make my eyes hurt. A crowd of people all talking at once, each voice competing for space in your head. So many inputs and stimuli that my nervous system just wants to run away.

So I run away. To my room if possible. Find a quiet corner. Curl up with my knees drawn to my chest - I love this posture. It makes me feel contained and safe. I dim the lights. And slowly, things start to get better. My mind quietens and I can think again. My brows un-furrow.

This is what sensory overload looks like: your brain receives more input than it can process. Sound, light, movement, people—all at once. Your nervous system gets flooded. You need to retreat because you can't process anymore. It's easy to label that as weak or antisocial but it's really just dealing with an overwhelming situation.

After stepping away from Instagram and discovering boredom (see #276 and #277), I started enjoying quiet spaces even more. I love silence nowadays. No TV, no podcasts, no music, just me and my thoughts. And sometimes, my thoughts aren't thinking anything either. I've lately discovered that doing this - just sitting quietly in my room even for 15 brief minutes calms and regulates my nervous system, similar to what writing often does for me.

You can find your own quiet space in whichever way appeals to you when you need it - A corner of a café during off-hours. A park bench early morning. A bathroom with the door locked. Anywhere your nervous system can pause and reset.

This quiet space is sometimes where I come up with blog post ideas in the realm of self-care. Like this post on sensory overload.

The world is loud, bright, and full of competing demands. Self-care during sensory overload isn't necessarily always about meditating or forcing yourself to calm down. Sometimes, it's simply giving yourself permission to step toward outer peace to find your inner peace.

"I'm bored." "Sometimes, that's great!"

#277

In my previous post (#276), I talked about stepping away from Instagram for 30 days. This led to moments of doomscrolling being replaced by my ability to experience boredom. When you're not scrolling, there's no new content and no notifications to constantly stimulate your brain. What happens then?

I watched a YouTube video about someone who stared at white walls for about 15 continuous minutes. What happens from a neurological standpoint there is that your brain activates something called the Default Mode Network—a system of interconnected brain regions that turn on when you're bored or daydreaming. Or when you allow your mind to wander.

Your brain is consolidating memories, making new connections between ideas, processing emotions, generating creativity. The things that don't get a chance to happen when you're constantly stimulated. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that mind-wandering is linked to greater working memory capacity. Your brain is literally thinking better when you're "doing nothing."

Growing up in an Asian household in an extra-Asian society conditions you to fear boredom. To fill every gap with content. With input. With something. Kids get bored for five minutes and parents immediately pull out a screen. Adults feel restless and scroll. We treat boredom like it's a problem to solve instead of what it actually is—a necessary rest and reset.

Look at what happens when you let a kid actually be bored for a while. Really bored. No iPad. No suggestions. Just time and space. Eventually, they stop complaining. They get creative. They build something. Boredom is where independence and curiosity develop on their own terms. This is different from meditation, where you're actively trying to direct your mind. Boredom is the opposite—you're just letting it roam.

That's the Default Mode Network doing its job. Introspection. Memory consolidation. Creativity. Reflective thinking. All the stuff we say we value but don't actually make space for.

When I stopped scrolling, I noticed I started thinking differently. Not in a tortured, existential way. Just... clearer. Ideas came that weren't reactions to someone else's content. I had thoughts that surprised me because they came from me, not from what I'd consumed. Same logic applies for great ideas coming to you when you're in the shower.

The white walls aren't depressing. They're restorative. Minimal visual input means your brain isn't constantly processing external stimuli. It gets to process itself instead.

In a world that's obsessed with optimization and productivity and constant input, boredom has become almost rebellious. Sitting with nothing. Staring at a wall. Letting your mind wander without trying to direct it. That's radical now.

Digital detox

#276

I uninstalled Instagram for 30 days. Just as a random first-of-the-month resolution - the kind I make every once in a while to reset habits that have slowly drifted away from me. Eat healthier. Sleep earlier. Practice violin for 5 minutes a day.

This time it was: see what happens if I'm not watching other people's lives.

It was nice to remain up-to-date with what all my school and college friends and acquaintances have been doing these past few years as we've lost touch. However, the issue with Instagram is that people only show you the highlight reels. Someone's vacation in Bali. Someone's fancy new mansion. Their morning yoga routine. Their pottery creation. Their perfectly plated breakfast. And much more. What it doesn't show you is the fight they had with their partner that morning, or the several jobs they applied for and didn't get, or the three months they spent stressed about money before that vacation happened.

We tend to compare our internal experiences - our doubts, our failures, our ordinary Tuesday mornings—against everyone else's external curated moments. It's not a fair parallel to draw. No one's posting their bad days or their messy kitchen or the fact that they cried during a meeting. So naturally, everyone else's life looks better than yours.

I noticed this wasn't even subtle. Someone would post about a trip and I'd immediately feel the pull. Where am I not going? What am I not doing? Why haven't I learned that skill or taken that class or traveled to that country yet? The comparison was constant. And it was draining. I felt like I was missing out even though I felt perfectly content and happy with my own life.

After about two weeks without the app, these comparisons in my head stopped. I stopped wondering what everyone was up to. Stopped measuring my life against theirs. My mood shifted. I felt a lot more focused. I also repurposed that time and energy towards reaching out directly to friends and family I actually cared about, and of course treasured the voice call to a friend in another city, the long message on WhatsApp to my cousin, and asking my partner about his day way more than doom-scrolling and self-loathing.

Nowadays, when I randomly get the urge to find out what others are up to, I open Instagram on my mobile browser instead of reinstalling the app. I have to log in every single time and I set a 15-minute limit, which helps me snap out of it and put my phone away. This helped convert mindless, endless action into something intentional. Instagram was no longer the default way I spent my idle minutes.

Remind yourself when you face this that you're only seeing one side of the story, and that side has almost nothing to do with anyone's actual life. Majority of folks posting on Instagram make it seem like they're doing something you're not, but in reality, they're just good at making it look that way. Focus on creating real, meaningful connections in ways that appeal to you. Hopefully in no time, you'll be FOMO-resistant!

Let the sunshine in

#275

I remember this song from my 4th grade music class called "Let the Sunshine In", written by Stuart Hamblen. The lyrics go: 

"So let the sunshine in, face it with a grin

Smilers never lose and frowners never win

So let the sunshine in, face it with a grin

Open up your heart and let the sunshine in"

Every time the sun graces us with its presence in gloomy Seattle, my brain automatically starts singing these lyrics. I've lived here more than three years now. The first winter, I was too busy adjusting to notice anything different. Big move from India. New city. New job. New lifestyle. Pretty much new everything. But during the fall and winter the second year - from September to roughly March - I realized I was sleeping at least 10 hours at night! The sun would set around 4PM and it wouldn't turn bright until about 8AM the next day. Also, no matter how rested I'd feel, and regardless of my sleep quality, I'd wake up feeling tired. Some days, I'd even feel kinda hopeless and low. Meh and bleh.

Year three, same thing. And then my friend educated me about SAD. Very apt name for the Seasonal Affective Disorder. It is a type of depression that occurs around the same time each year, typically when daylight hours shorten. Your brain chemistry responds to less sunlight by producing less serotonin. How does one combat it? Several options, including taking vitamin D3 tablets every day, purchasing a light therapy lamp that mimics sunlight, planning trips to sunny cities to escape Seattle winters. These made the hibernation period slightly more manageable.

Just like you allow the sun rays to caress your face, penetrating through the thick, dense clouds, take care of yourself by enabling a glimmer of hope or positivity to pass through despite all the things you might be going through. You're not denying the gloom, you're not weak just by admitting you need help. All you're doing is recognizing that even when your forecast looks bleak, you still get to choose how much light you make space for.

The song rings true. Smilers never lose. Just that they sometimes need vitamin D and a plane ticket south to get there!

Environment design

#274

My partner noticed my two instruments - guitar and violin - both living in their cases. I'd talk about playing them, about wanting to pick them up more. But they stayed tucked away because the effort required just to get them out felt like too much. So one day, my partner bought me two stands. One for the guitar. One for the violin. Nothing fancy, just $8 each. The two instruments sit pretty on their stands, right next to my desk, visible and ready.

Now when I walk past the guitar or violin or sit at my desk, they're just there. No case to unzip or rummaging through a closet. It's an easy grab, and even playing for just 5 minutes a day has become ultra easy. Same impulse I had before - I wanted to play - but now there's no barrier between the thought and the action.


My partner was doing what James Clear talks about in Atomic Habits - Design your environment. Why? Because: environment shapes behavior way more than willpower does. You can have all the intention in the world, but if every single step requires effort, you won't do it. The stands removed those steps.


I do this everywhere now. In the kitchen, my InstaPot that I use every other day, lives on the countertop. Front and center. The toaster - something I use maybe once a week or less often - gets tucked away inside a bottom shelf. It takes an extra two minutes to haul it out. Even with my other appliances - the thing I end up using most is the thing I see first. Environment does the work. You just show up.


Same logic by my bed. I keep a book on my nightstand. A journal. My laptop table setup and ready. When I'm tired at night and my brain won't shut up, the choice is right there. I can read. I can write. I can do two of my favorite hobbies without getting up, without friction. The reading and writing are seamless because the environment made them possible. 


Designing your immediate surroundings so the person you want to be is an easy path to self-care, to taking meaningful action without exercising willpower. And most times, it requires very little effort to remove the friction between you and the thing you actually want to do.