When Sound Cuts Through My Head

Hearing Too Little and Yet Hearing Too Much

I am severely hearing impaired. And yet I am sensitive to sound.

That may sound like a contradiction. How can a person who hears poorly at the same time experience sound as painful, intrusive, and overwhelming? But for me this is part of everyday life. I do not always hear what others say. Oral messages may disappear quickly. Voices may become unclear. Conversations may require great effort. At the same time, certain sounds can cut into my head like small explosions.

A kitchen cupboard closing. Footsteps on a wooden floor. Birdsong on a stressful morning. Drops of water dripping from the kitchen sink. A chair scraping against the floor. Several people talking at once. Sounds that for others are small and passing can become large, sharp, and invasive in me.

There is a name for this: hyperacusis. Sound sensitivity.

For me, this is connected to a long history. About forty years ago I developed Meniere’s disease, with reduced hearing, tinnitus, and hyperacusis. The illness came during a period of considerable stress. At that time, I did not know that I had ASC. I only knew that I reacted strongly to stress. I kept going with my interests, my work, and my social activities until I hit the wall. And I hit that wall often.

A doctor once told me an old Chinese saying:

Why bang your head against the brick wall just to get into the cell next door?

I probably understood something of it at the time. But I did not understand the full connection. Only when I received my ASC diagnosis late in life did the pieces begin to fall into place. Then I could see that stress, sound, exhaustion, broken routines, sensory overload, and meltdown were not isolated weaknesses. They were parts of a pattern.

Sound was one of the keys.

I have always reacted to sound. Perhaps it began very early. As an infant, I had acute middle-ear infection. This led to ear surgery in which infected bone tissue had to be removed. Later, professionals with knowledge of ASC have told me that already then the brain may have chosen to turn away from sound because sound and pain had become connected so early in life.

Whether that is the whole explanation, I do not know. But I know that I have had a very poor auditory memory. Oral instructions disappear quickly. As a child, a teacher could ask me to come up to the blackboard to write something. Before I reached the board, I had forgotten what the task was. The instruction had to be repeated. The teacher could become irritated and think I was doing it on purpose.

I was not.

I had simply lost the words on the way.

This is an old experience. To hear, but not retain. To listen, and yet lose what was said. To want to do it right, but no longer remember what the task was. When this happens often enough, a child may begin to believe that something is wrong with his will, attention, or intelligence. But perhaps it was not a matter of will. Perhaps it had to do with a brain and a body that had already, very early, developed a difficult relationship with sound.

This is what makes sound so complex for me. On the one hand, I hear too little. On the other hand, I may hear too much. Not too much in the ordinary sense, but too strongly, too sharply, too closely. Sound is not only a signal. It becomes a bodily event. It does not enter only through the ear. It enters the nervous system.

This becomes especially clear under stress. Then small sounds can become large. A kitchen cupboard can slam like a blow. Footsteps across the floor can make the body tense. Birdsong, which others may associate with peace, can become too much. Drops of water from the sink can become impossible to ignore. It is as if the brain cannot place the sounds in the background. Everything comes forward. Everything demands attention. Everything happens at once.

Then the world comes too close.

In a supermarket, sounds can come from all sides. Shopping carts. Voices. Refrigerated counters. Children. Loudspeakers. Footsteps. Cash registers. Plastic bags. Doors opening and closing. No single sound has to be dramatic, but together they can create chaos in my head. I lose direction. I lose overview. The body goes into alert.

Many times, I have had to leave the shop, the railway station, or the city street. Not because I did not want to be there. Not because I was impolite. Not because I was weak. But because I had to protect myself from what the sounds were doing to me.

What may look like overreaction from the outside may, from the inside, be self-protection.

This is one of the most difficult things about sensory overload. Others do not always see what is happening. They may hear the same sounds, but they are not struck by them in the same way. They may think it is only a little noise. They may feel that one ought to tolerate it. But for me, it is not only noise. It can be an assault on overview, concentration, balance, and the body’s ability to remain gathered.

When sound cuts through my head, reason does not always have time to explain. The body reacts first.

Only later can I put words to it.

Then I can say: There were too many sounds. They came from all directions. I could not separate what mattered from what did not. I could not hold on to one thing. I became tired. I became irritated. I became afraid. I had to get out.

But while it is happening, such words are not always available. There is only pressure. The sounds. The body. The need to get away.

This can also lead to meltdown. A meltdown is not something I choose. It is not a decision, not a strategy, not a conscious reaction. It simply happens. Often it comes after stress over time, but it can also be triggered by a break in routine, a sharp sound, or many sounds and voices at once. Then I lose overview. It is as if the world comes too close, too strongly, and too quickly.

Afterwards, I can understand more. While it is happening, I understand little.

That is why silence is not a luxury for me. Silence is repair.

Nor is silence merely the absence of sound. For me, silence is a concrete practice. The best silence is often found in a dark room where I can close the door. I turn off my hearing aids. I put on ear defenders. The world is muted. Sounds no longer gain access so easily. The body is given a chance to stop defending itself.

If I am fortunate, I can fall asleep. Sleep is often the deepest form of repair. Then I no longer have to maintain an overview. I no longer have to regulate. I no longer have to understand. The body can do its quiet work.

But I do not always fall asleep. Then stimming can help.

For me, stimming is not about harming myself. I do not bang my head against the floor. I do not flap my hands. I do not rock back and forth. But I know that all these can be forms of stimming that other people with ASC use in order to manage the chaos around them. From the outside, such movements may look strange. From the inside, they may be attempts to create rhythm, direction, and control when the world has become too strong.

My own stimming is quieter.

I have a Greek Orthodox prayer rope, knotted in lamb’s wool. It has thirty-three knots and is handmade by monks on Mount Athos. For many years I have used it to count the knots.

One knot.

Then the next.

Then the next again.

The fingers follow the rhythm. The body is given something concrete to hold. Attention gathers around touch, repetition, and slow movement. I do not necessarily always use the prayer rope for prayer in a formal sense. Sometimes perhaps I do. But just as much, it is a tool for calm.

The softness of the wool, the rhythm of the knots, and the repetition of the fingers create a small order inside the chaos. It is a silence I can hold in my hand.

In this way, stimming is not something primitive or meaningless. It is a bodily intelligence. A way in which the body tries to help itself. Where sounds have entered too strongly, the rhythm of the fingers can slowly lead me back. Not by explaining the unrest, but by giving it another movement.

Silence, therefore, is not passivity.

Silence is work.

The darkness works. Sleep works. The fingers work. The body slowly works its way back to the world.

I have previously written about how drawing can help me when the body remembers before the words come. The same applies to sound. After a day with too much sound, I can sometimes draw what has happened. Not the sound itself, but the traces it has left. The lines may become ruptures, pressure, whirlwinds, and unrest. The colours may show what I could not explain while it was happening.

Then what cut through my head can afterwards lie on the paper.

It is no longer only inside the body.

This does not mean that drawing solves everything. It does not cure me of Meniere’s disease. It does not remove tinnitus. It does not take away hyperacusis. It does not make ASC easier in itself. But it gives form to something that might otherwise remain formless. It helps me understand what happened. It helps me see that the reaction was not willed, but bodily.

That matters.

So much of life with ASC is about being misunderstood. As a child, I could be perceived as inattentive, stubborn, or difficult when I did not remember oral instructions. As an adult, I may be perceived as irritable or rejecting when I have to withdraw from sound. But from the inside, the picture is different. I am not trying to make life difficult for others. I am trying to find a way to live in the world without being broken by it.

Only when I received my ASC diagnosis did I begin to understand this in a new way. The diagnosis did not explain everything, but it gave me a language. It made it possible to see connections I had previously experienced only as failures. I could stop standing with my head against the wall. I could begin to look for the door.

That door is called, among other things, silence.

It is called routines.

It is called rest.

It is called drawing.

It is called the thirty-three knots of the prayer rope.

It is called turning off the hearing aids.

It is called putting on ear defenders.

It is called leaving the shop before it becomes too much.

It is called understanding that the body speaks before the words arrive.

When sound cuts through my head, I do not primarily need moral explanations. I do not need to be told that the sound is not dangerous. I often already know that. Nor do I need to be pushed into tolerating more than my body can bear. I need calm. I need time. I need respect for the fact that my nervous system does not filter the world in the same way as other people’s.

This is not about weakness.

It is about a different sensory reality.

To hear too little and yet hear too much is a strange experience. It is difficult to explain. But it is real. It has followed me through life, from early ear disease and poor auditory memory, through Meniere’s disease, tinnitus, and hyperacusis, to the late understanding of ASC.

Today I know more than I did before.

I know that sound can cut.

I know that silence can heal.

I know that the fingers can find rhythm when the head cannot find the words.

And I know that sometimes it is wiser to leave the room than to keep banging my head against the wall.

I know that silence can heal.

I know that the fingers can find rhythm when the head cannot find the words.

And I know that sometimes it is wiser to leave the room than to keep banging my head against the wall.

Author’s Note

This essay is based on my own experience with ASC, hearing impairment, tinnitus, hyperacusis, Meniere’s disease, sensory overload, meltdown, and the need for silence. It is not written as a clinical explanation, but as a personal and practical-philosophical reflection on how sound, stress, body, and silence can shape a life on the spectrum. This essay was written in a conversation witn OpenAI/ChatGPT.