I can tell when I need to lower the volume of something I'm listening to when I feel a kind of tightening in my ear muscles, and/or ringing in my ears, or a slight feeling of stress coming in from my environment.
I also just try to remember to always proactively lower the volume a couple ticks from what i first set it at, to prevent all those sensations.
What are the signs for you that things are a little too loud?
@actuallyautistic@dyani Wow! You just perfectly described how I react to loud sounds, such as having the car stereo too high. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.
Usually when I'm on road trips, I've got the music up loud. But as soon as I get off the highway and need to start paying closer attention to where I'm going, I need to turn the music down so I can focus on navigating.
@dave@dyani@actuallyautistic I have a friend who used to do long distance driving for a living (amongst other things were transplant organs and other time criticals) and he had 3 playlists set up on his music device (ipod I think) one was catchy tunes for motorways and to stay awake, one was softer to stay alert and one was very soft to blanket out other distractions for when he really needed to concentrate.
@dyani@actuallyautistic the "kind of tightening of my ear muscles" also does it for me. Also I feel a strong physical need to reproach from the sound origin so am shifting my upper half backwards if it's a person and inwards if it's coming through my own headphones. Worst: My earbuds sometimes get really loud mid-hearing bc the phone's volume buttons get cramped in the car mug holder burrow 🫨