How can I stop being jumpy?

September 4, 2007 1:50 PM

How can I stop being jumpy?

I'm not an anxious person, but when I hear a loud noise or someone taps me on the shoulder when I'm not paying attention, I spaz out and overreact like someone just scared the #!$@ out of me.

Also, small amount of unexpected pain makes me act like I've been stabbed with a knife. But if I know the pain is coming, I don't overreact.

When it's a sound, it happens even when I anticipate it. I will watch a movie and see a guy pull out a gun in a quiet scene and still react when I hear the shot, even though I know it was coming.

I've been like this as long as I can remember. I don't have any other anxiety issues, other than this I'm relaxed.

posted by anonymous to health (14 comments total)

Cut back on coffee?
posted by Manjusri at 2:13 PM on September 4, 2007

Ask people around you to scare you on purpose as much as possible so that it'll become meaningless?
posted by PowerCat at 2:15 PM on September 4, 2007

Have you had your thyroid levels checked? Heightened reflexes and startle response are sometimes signs of an adrenal issue.
posted by headspace at 2:33 PM on September 4, 2007

I used to be much the same. In my case it was simply an indication of my stress levels - in some ways, the level of my startle response is still a pretty good indicator of how stressed I am.
posted by ysabet at 2:50 PM on September 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

I've been this way my entire life. It's just the way I'm wired and, I suspect, so are you. It doesn't have anything to do with caffeine intake or other mental disorders-- we're just overly sensitive to that kind of stimulus.

Wish I had better advice, but I can certainly commiserate... It drives my partner nuts the way I jump three feet every time the phone has the audacity to ring.
posted by hollisimo at 2:56 PM on September 4, 2007

I've been this way my entire life as well. When people find out I react this way to surprise movement/noise they think it's a super good time to try to scare the shit out of me which is annoying.

It's not something that I've ever been able to fix and it's not something that really bothers me because it only happens unexpectedly...like at two in the morning when it's perfectly quiet and my dog barks, when a cat jumps up on me that I didn't know was there, when someone pokes me and I'm not aware they're there...basically it happens to me the most when I'm in comfortable situations and don't feel any danger...so for me I don't associate it with stress.

The same thing happens to me during scary movies. However, I frequently see scary movies with my dad and he freaking knows I will jump out of my skin so he normally jabs me with his elbow during at least one scary scene. We both laugh over it because it's something he's been doing my entire life (I am 34.) When we saw The Grudge in the theater he actually made me scream because he reached around and tapped me on the opposite shoulder instead of his normal tactic of jabbing me with his elbow.

The only problem I have with my jumpy reactions are how other people think it's super funny to mess with me over them.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 3:50 PM on September 4, 2007

Apparently decades of meditation help.
posted by ManInSuit at 3:50 PM on September 4, 2007

Anonymous, I have the same problem and will be watching this thread closely for suggestions. I know caffeine does have an intensifying effect on my startle response, but cutting down isn't really practical for me right now.

I suspect PowerCat may belong to the subset of folks who think it's hilarious to startle jumpy folks but seriously: if I haven't become immune in 41 years, it's not likely to happen anytime soon. Also? Trust me when I tell you

IT'S NOT FUNNY.
posted by Space Kitty at 4:42 PM on September 4, 2007

A bit more on meditation and the startle response here.

In the course of his research, Ekman and Robert Levenson, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, may have found a man who cannot be startled. In a series of yet unpublished experiments, Ekman exposed one Tibetan Buddhist monk to a sudden sound as loud as a firecracker and monitored the participant's blood pressure, muscle movements, heart rate and skin temperature for signs of startle. The Buddhist monk, possibly due to hours of practice regulating his emotions through meditation, registered little sign of disturbance.
posted by DarkForest at 5:28 PM on September 4, 2007

I'm yet another chiming in that I've always been that way. I don't emotionally get scared, I just physically jump as if startled to all hell and back, but my breathing and heart rate stay normal.

One thing that I'll note, is those of us who lean into the autism spectrum tend to have enhanced reactions to the environment. I think I'm close to demonstrating asperger's syndrome while my wife swears I'm the poster child for it. I can't help but make faces like a 5 year old while walking through the laundry section of the supermarket, or when tasting something I dislike. I get auditorally lost and overwhelmed in crowds, etc...

I suspect my startle response is related to this.
posted by nobeagle at 5:42 PM on September 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

When I compare my reactions when I was a little boy to my reactions now, I think the main difference is that I have learned to accept and tune out the serious disruptions of modern reality.

There is an absolutely horrible amount of noise, sudden and ambient, in 21st century cities, and it sucks. The best thing seems to be an overall calming down– meditation might work, though I've never tried it; you need to slow down to calm down. The thyroid idea might not be all that crazy.
posted by blacklite at 6:09 PM on September 4, 2007

Boo!

couldn't resist

Keep in mind that people range across the spectrum, generally; you might be at one extreme, and someone like Jesse James (the mechanic/driver/TV personality, not the bank robber) might be at the other. In particular, on one program he was working with some NASCAR guys who decided to test his mettle by making a huge crashing metallic sound right behind him, and he didn't flinch in the slightest.

So first, remember that you might be at an extreme, but not actually "broken" in any way; second, your suspicion that you're a bit asperger is worth exploring, but not stressing out about; and third, since knowing something is coming eliminates the problem, perhaps you should practice being more aware of your immediate surroundings, and actively predicting things that might be inclined to startle you. After all, if you were walking down a dark street, you would anticipate the possibility of someone jumping out to mug you, without taking so much attention that you couldn't function...try to envelop the surrounding environment further into your conscious awareness, until it becomes second nature and you're caught off-guard less.
posted by davejay at 6:51 PM on September 4, 2007

Anon - I do the same thing. When I hear a plate clank loudly in a restaurant, I flinch/jump. When I'm blithely listening to music and have my back to the kitchen door and my bf happens to walk up behind me quietly, I scream bloody murder and my heart rate goes through the roof.

It's been indicated to me that it's a matter of an out-of-whack nervous system. If memory serves, there are the sympathetic and a parasympathetic sides to your nervous system, each of whom work in opposite directions to keep all of your bodily functions running smoothly. In my case, the two are not good at balancing each other and get easily out of whack. This supposedly causes me to have more adrenaline than usual and makes me very susceptible to startling sounds.

I haven't had any specific luck with meditation or guided breathing exercises... but overall I think the elevated startle response does correlate to my stress level. Good luck!
posted by ahimsa at 11:05 AM on September 5, 2007

My co-worker is generally oblivious to all sounds aside from the one(s) she is specifically and actively listening to. Any other sounds near her either fall on deaf ears or scare the crap outta her.

This is especially interesting to me because I tend to be painfully aware of all sounds at all times and am difficult to startle. I've spent a lot of time practicing meditation and am in general slow to react to things. I was like this before meditation but I'm sure it has contributed to my ability to regulate my reactions.
posted by J-Garr at 2:00 PM on September 6, 2007