You're Not Overstimulated, You're Extractulated

​​We all have an optimal state in which we feel and function in alignment with our mindbodies and in balance with our environment, in control of how we process our emotions. Dr Dan Siegel describes this as a ‘window of tolerance’: the best state of 'arousal' in which we are able to function and thrive in everyday life. Falling out of that window is described differently depending on the perception of that person. When that person is Neurodivergent, we may describe it as ‘sensory overload’ or being ‘overstimulated’.

The stress bucket is another concept that frames overwhelm as a linear process of input. The smaller the bucket, the lower one’s ability to cope with stress. When the bucket is full it overflows and the overflow is the state of anxiety/meltdown/shutdown.

These framings suggests that the resulting states are purely the result of the level of outside or sensory input - that we have ‘reached our limit’ for cognitive and emotional processing due to the level of external stimuli. This way of looking at things operates from a point of view that ‘functioning and thriving in every day life’ fits neatly into colonial interpretations and that it looks the same for everyone. However, the experience of what we refer to as ‘overstimulation’ and its subsequent manifestations are much more complex than this.