Hi

I was just wondering if anyone else gets times when they feel like their brain temporarily shuts down?

It's happened to me a few times now. Sometimes it's after a very full on or bad day at work or on other occasions it's happened where I've been in an environment where the are competing noises. This has varied to just being at home with everyone talking at once & the TV on to an open plan environment where I was trying to hold a conversation & concentrate on that with music playing next to me from someone's ipod via a speaker with other general office noise & chatting going on.

On all occasions I suddenly feel that I have lost the ability to communicate or process things properly. So for example I'll read a text & have no ability to formulate & type my reply & yet the reply is a simple yes/no & maybe a short explanatory sentence in support of my answer.

The only cure I've found so far is to remove myself from everyone & find a completely silent place & close my eyes. It takes betwee half hour & an hour for 'reset' to occur & me feel normal again & be able to resume communication. Sometimes I have to sleep in order to fully shut the world out.

I've tried looking this up but all of my research has led me to pages aimed at those who have Autism/Asperger diagnoses. I don't.

Does anyone else experience anything similar? How do you cope? Is there a quicker way to reset? How do you explain it to people either to pre warn them that this is a thing for you or when it's happening? My family don't understand & I've not found a way to explain it to them. I have one friend so far who gets it and now when it happens if I say to them 'I can't do words' they know what I mean.

Thanks