My vision goes the most wonky when I’m hyper vigilant. At its worst all I can see are cartoony representations of the thing I’m looking at, rather than the thing itself. Mother pushing baby carriage, jogger, construction worker, mail carrier, student, skateboarder, etc. You could line 1,000 of the same “thing” up right next to each other and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them. Age, race, sex, facial details, etc. all just swirls away and is replaced by this iconic representation of them. It’s a bit like that doll-house photography effect that was so popular a few years back. Everything gets just a bit distorted, details vanish, and colors pop. It’s not just people, although people wear the worst of it, as my brain is attempting to lock onto
everyone and I live in a city. It’s the opposite of what happens when I’m vigilant instead of hyper vigilant. In vigilance I’m aware of everyone/everything, but only something “weird” jumps out at me, gets lit up all neon colors, and the details instead of swirling away crystalize and sharpen As the unimportant stuff swirls away. Same thing playing sports. The ball is sharp, the players coming to intercept the ball/take it from me are sharp, but the rest of the team is just a blur on the field (until/unless one of them does something interesting), and the crowd in the stands is an even bigger less important blur. Bringing back the photography reference? Ever see a fast aperature shot where the thing moving really fast is crystal clear and everything else is a blur? That. But if someone has a crappy camera the stationary unimportant things are clear, whilst the action is an indecipherable mess. That’s what happens to my vision when my hypervig is running out of control. Everyhing is an indecipherable mess. Right down to people being caricatures of themselves, rather than seen as they actually are. It’s highly irritating. Makes getting dressed or buying bread all but impossible, as I’m not able to differentiate between like items. Shirts, pants, short/long, white/wheat, brands... they all get lost. Because they’re “the same” even when I know they’re not. So it’s stressful as hell, trying to make a decision with nothing saying “this is a nice top, this is a grubby one” or “this is the bread you like, this is the bread you’re allergic to”.
So that’s my worst bit... and it’s pretty easy to parse that systems that work well in emergencies (hyperfocus on the immediate, blurring of everything that doesn’t matter) are attempting to apply themselves to everyday life... and failing. Utterly. Because they’re not designed/intended for everyday life.
But there’s a helluva lot of other things that f*ck with my vision aside from hypervig/anxiety. This is just the most obnoxious one. Probably the 2nd worst is the inability to read large blocks of text. That’s a trauma-brain thing, that’s also common for people with low blood sugar, weirdly enough, as well as sleep dep. Can stare at a menus and not have any of the words make sense, even though you can read them just fine, or they just sort of swirl about, never solidifying into words at all.
but bright lights seem to bother me and dim lights especially if I go from outside to inside
Ah. That one. Eyes dilate in danger & desire... which makes bright light painful, and transitions between light & dark difficult... because of the dilation. Like having an eye exam, when the meds first START working, or start wearing off. There’s SOME control, but lights are hard, reading is difficult to impossible, etc.
If your eyes are reacting to internal anxiety? I’d expect your ears to probably be bothering you, too. Sounds are too loud, or muffled behind the sound of your own heart? Someone placing a fork down sounds like cymbals crashing, and a normal conversation sounds like it’s through a pillow one moment, and then STFU grating/screeching/annoying the next?
