Overstimulated at the Grocery Store

The grocery store doesn’t fit the typical bill for an overstimulating space. It’s quite boring. There is no loud music and no massive crowds. Nothing seems extraordinary. But there is something about grocery shopping that is overwhelming and overstimulating. It makes a normal trip a dangerous endeavor.

I might be a little hyperbolic with my language, but this is a strange phenomenon I’ve been noticing in the past few weeks on my winter vacation. I’ve had three sensory overloads since I got back: two at restaurants and one at Wegmans. This perplexed me. Why at the grocery store? Why in the world am I getting overstimulated there?

On further inspection, a few ideas jump out. I am not having just any old sensory overload. I am getting depersonalized, meaning I feel out of my body, dizzy, and detached. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt that way at a grocery store, but it is the first time I’ve felt this strongly. I also notice this doesn’t typically happen at stores I am used to, leading me to my first hypothesis. 

I get overstimulated in spaces I am less accustomed to. This explains for example, why I had so many sensory overloads in my first few weeks in Binghamton that then just suddenly disappeared. At a certain point, my body adapted to the spaces I was in. A grocery store is the complete opposite of a predictable space. There is no standard layout. If you go to a new store you should expect to get lost because it is designed that way. Even in familiar stores, the layout is dynamic, changing day to day and week to week. Some stores do this more than others. This is driven by human psychology: the more they make you wander, the more you gander and then the more you buy. It has one consequence for neurodivergent people - we get overstimulated. 

Looking back, this explains why I was struggling at Wegmans. I had no clue where I was going. Ben (my brother) and I were walking in circles, looking for cottage cheese for our grandfather and body wash for our uncle. These items were in unintuitive spots, which caused me to disconnect from my physical presence. My mind became foggy and I had a hard time processing things. I missed big signs and I almost forgot to pay at the register. I then went back to our grandmother's house and took a four-hour nap to recover. 

There are some other potential causes behind the depersonalization. The bright lights and the consistent background noise of the store is straining. Parking also causes stress. This trip came after a visit to Whole Foods where I was almost scammed in the parking lot by a man claiming I hit his car (I didn’t). Taken together, these factors piled up and led to an unexpected sensory overload.

As you can see, overstimulation happens in the most surprising places. Nowhere is immune. This could be why I hated clothes shopping or the mall in general as a child; I likely got overstimulated.

 What can be done? Sensory-friendly design could certainly help. I have to shout out Evergreen Kosher Market for being a safe sensory environment for me. I doubt this is their intention, but their layout is intuitive and rarely changes, likely due to kashrut. Sensory triggers are minimized, partly due to background music they play which blocks out other noises. The store still gets crowded and the aisles can be quite tight, but these features have made Evergreen a haven for me. It is a rare exception to the shopping overstimulation rule. 

I hope you’ll take from this blog the importance of sensory-friendly design. It impacts far more than a neurodivergent grocery experience. It impacts educational outcomes, job performance and customer satisfaction. After all, if you are overstimulated you won’t get that good grade, promotion, or return to that overstimulating store. This experience just touches the surface, but I recommend auditing your space to see what changes can be made to make it more like Evergreen and less like Wegmans.