Neutrally overstimmed and negatively stimmed are different though! If you’re just neutrally overstimmed you can find a quiet corner, another room with less noise and fewer people, or hang out on the porch. Negatively stimmed you won’t be able to be in or around the place at all. Depression or anxiety is a “general” upset, whereas overstimmed is a “local” upset.

That really makes no sense to me. Let me explain. Certain types of places / events are extremely distressing to me because of sensory factors. Now, when I have to attend a conference for work, I have extreme anxiety - the anxiety is caused because of the sensory distress I know I'll be facing. "Local" vs "general" doesn't seem to be a useful distinction for me. I could be misunderstanding you.

The anxiety is what I mean by general stress. I'd bet you probably suffer more from the anxiety about the sensory distress more than you do the sensory distress! I had a problem with this as well - the anxiety totally took over, and was much worse. Over time, I managed to keep the distress local to when I was actually feeling overwhelmed, and then could start to work to mitigate the sensory overload, by taking frequent breaks outside, wearing noise cancelling headphones, sunglasses, or finding quiet corners with fewer people.

Its not much of a problem for me anymore, and over time my senses have become a bit more fine tuned and won't be piqued by much more than very loud/unexpected sounds.

Yeah sucks doesn't it. I'm a friendly out going person. But I just can't do pubs or bars or clubs because the noise just overwhelms me and I become a jibbering idiot. Sad times

I'm having exactly this problem at the moment. Been isolated far too long, not used to noise now, stir in some buggery of mental problems... But I' forcing myself out right now to the pub. I won't enjoy it now nor for weeks yet, but going through that is necessary if I'm going to recover.

Sometimes it's just down to repeated practice, same as anything else.

HTH and good luck.