When Everything Feels Too Loud (Even When It’s Quiet)

Why Noise Can Trigger Anxiety (And Why Silence Can Too)

Some days everything feels too loud.

The kids.
The notifications.
The conversations.
The background noise you can’t switch off.

And other days…

It’s the silence that feels uncomfortable.

In this episode of The Anxiety Compass, Sammy and Nat explore the relationship between noise, silence, and the nervous system.

Because it’s not just about what you hear.

It’s about how your body processes stimulation, safety, and control.

We unpack:

✨ Why noise can feel overwhelming when your nervous system is already overloaded
 ✨ How sensory input impacts anxiety and emotional regulation
 ✨ Why silence can feel just as uncomfortable as noise for some people
 ✨ The connection between overstimulation, burnout, and anxiety
 ✨ How your environment influences your nervous system more than you realise
 ✨ Simple ways to create sound-based safety and regulation

This episode is for anyone who has ever felt:

“Everything is too much.”
 or
 “Why can’t I just handle this like everyone else?”

You’re not too sensitive.

Your nervous system is just responding to the level of input it’s receiving.

🎧 Listen now and start understanding how sound, space, and stimulation affect anxiety.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Where anxiety isn't the enemy, it's our tool guide. We'll swap stories, share tools, and have a laugh while we find our way back to true north. Come along. What is the most annoying noise, Nat?

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Oh. For me now or in the past when I had severe anxiety?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

You're just overthinking the question.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Back when I was it back when I had really bad anxiety, it was the all the noise in shopping centres. Because it was like a cacophony of just all these noises of trolleys clashing and music playing and people talking, and it was just, it was too the chaos of that noise was just too much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Noise. We've talked about a lot of things that trigger anxiety and uh the feelings of not feeling safe in that. And one of the things that we slightly have mentioned in past podcasts is uh the noise and and how it can really be a sensitive thing and set our bodies off. And I know that when I'm feeling a little bit on edge, um, just being around a lot of noise or even just types of music or even my dog licking himself can really trigger sense I know gross hate can trigger sensations in my body. And it was only just the other day where I said to myself, I need to turn all the noise off so that I can start recalibrating again in my body and switching that internal compass like back to my true north because the noise is just making it spin around in circles, and um silence, even silence can trigger the nervous system in a positive way or a negative way, really. It really does on what's going on. So today we're actually gonna do, I'm hoping that we can do a a smaller sort of episode for you. We'll see where this goes. Um, but talking about why sometimes anxiety isn't just about thoughts, it's about um things out in the environment that can trigger us, like smells and sounds. Um, and we're gonna really talk about sounds today and and why our nervous system is getting oversensitive. With there's so much noise out there. Have you ever been away from the city and realised just how noisy living in the suburbs near a city is? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

I used to live in the country, and yeah, it's just that just that constant background drone of traffic going by and yeah, planes flying overhead, and it's just that there's a constant actually. I really noticed it during COVID when we went into that first lockdown. The entire world went into the lockdown and realized, wow, like the the the silence sounded so loud. Ah, wow, it was really interesting. I was like, because you don't even notice, you know, I don't notice that the here the trains going past, which is you know one block down, or the the background noise. I live near it close to a main road.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

But when the silence was like, and our cities are really noisy, they are, and I also notice like for me, it's also the opposite when everything goes quiet. I'm sort of one with my thoughts, and that can be quite scary too, depending on on where you are with your big, yeah, exactly. When it comes to sort of looking at our nervous system and anxiety, we've mentioned before nervous uh anxiety is sort of control and and making sure that everything is safe and it's a constant need for safety, and so our body is constantly scanning the environment for anything that can be triggering, and uh, sometimes a loud noise or even someone who's yelling in a house can be so triggering and your body to all of a sudden think there's a danger and your whole nervous system goes into overdrive and goes threaten to fight or flight, exactly. And if you're overly sensitive from uh being exposed to something traumatic as a child, for example, being around a parent that's constantly yelling, your nervous system set like the thermostat set pretty high for loud noises and and things that trigger you all of a sudden. Do you like does your nervous system maybe not so much now, but it did it used to go into overdrive if someone was like yelling near you?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah, 100%. Look, and I still do, I not not to the degree it used to, but if I hear someone yelling, instantly I my anxiety just goes through the roof. Yeah, and I I brought I literally brace myself and and then I'm listening out, trying to hear what they're saying, even if it's a neighbor two doors down, yeah. It's just that automatic response, and then I've got to remind myself, hang on, hang on, I'm safe. Yeah, this is not you know, and I do some breathing, but yeah, it's an automatic response.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yeah, and and when we're hyper-aware, which like if you're having panic attacks or you're already anxious, your body's in overdrive listening out for sounds. So, as you were saying before, going into busy restaurants or shopping centres can be so overwhelming. Like I know when I was at the peak of feeling anxious and everything was just setting me off. Being at a party was a no-go zone. It wasn't just the crowds, it was the buzzing of people talking and your bodies going, what's safe, what's safe, what's safe? And it's just listening to the man shaking the cocktail behind the bar or the the scanny noise at the entry door, or someone laughing really loudly, your body just goes, Oh, what's that, what's that? And um it can be really unsettling, or even just like being in traffic, the noises around cars tooting and absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

I used to have that was a used to be a huge trigger. I think I've mentioned in in an earlier episode when I was at the height, and it was over a decade of of living this way. But if if I was in the car travelling with my husband, because I couldn't drive because of my anxiety disorder was so bad, um, he would have to give me a heads up saying a motorbike is about to overtake us, or a car or something is about to overtake us. This is you know, if we were out driving on the highways, because if just even that sudden sound of a car rushing past or a motorbike, because they're loud, I would literally scream and then go into a panic attack.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like you're already like right.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

I was that hyper-vigilance already, yeah. Yeah, and then it would set me off.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Yeah, yeah. And as we were saying the other end, um, your thoughts get louder when it's quiet, overthinking increases, like at night when it's quiet. I I have um what's it called? Tinnitus and focus on that more, which causes, you know, oh my god, there's something wrong with my ears, what's this? It's absolutely noise.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Um I mean, I talk a lot about meditation. When I was at the height of my anxiety and panic disorder when I had CPDSD, I actually couldn't meditate. Because as soon as I became quiet and tried to go in, I it would literally set off a panic attack. It was actually the the noise of the anxiety was too loud itself. So even in silence, it was loud. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Oh, and the feeling like I also find like either way, whichever way you want to go, whether you're in deep silence, and it's it's quite scary because you're with your thoughts, or whether you're in a room with very, very loud, it has such an impact on your mood as well and energy levels. So I felt yeah, like some people will go into a room that's full of, like, even if you go to like a gym or a hit class or something, and the music's like boom, boom, boom. It really depends on your nervous system, how it can handle it. So if you've got a lot going on in your life and you're dealing with a lot, that can just push you over the edge.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Push you, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Or the opposite. So, really listening to your body and knowing what it needs, whether it needs silence. So, for me at the moment, I have so many plates going on with business, work, health, everything that when I'm in the car, I don't want to listen to people talking or music. I just want to listen to classical violin. I've actually been listening to um, do you watch Bridgetton?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

No, I don't.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Oh, well, they play a lot of like clap like violin sort of string quartets, but they play um current sort of music um in that sort of so I don't know if you've ever watched Cake Pop Demon Hunters, they had that golden song, which was huge in the charts. There's a song that I found that's done with string quartet that plays it. Yeah, you you know because if you start to listen to your body, you know how it's going to react. So all of a sudden, you feel this sort of calming sensation as opposed to listening to a podcast where they're talking like this, and maybe this is triggering you right now, and then you switch that frequency, and all of a sudden it's like, oh my god, I feel so at ease right now.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Classical music is a huge one. I listen to it um a lot, even as I started to get better and understood. If I slipped back into anxiety andor depression, instantly I'd go and put on some classical music. I often listen to classical music in the car. Um, I mean, there's studies show that classical music actually has a direct effect uh and improves depression and anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

If you use in sound therapy, like they actually literally, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

But I often in the car, I will often drive in just silence. If I've if like driving home from work, if I've had a big day and I've just had people talking all day, or if I've been to a party or something, a gathering, I just enjoy just the complete silence. Enjoy the silence by depeche mode. Best song.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Oh, I love that. I used to have an app, like I used to use like the calm apps in your headspace, and they have um specific like white noises and whatever and all that sort of stuff. Um, and a lot of the time it actually really helped because for me at one point I did not like silence because it would trigger the tinnitus in my ears, and then I'd overthink things and I'd just get uncomfortable. And so having a slight background noise for me um really helped like the white noise, except for where white noise like, what's that static noise? What's this? He used to make me go to sleep to heavy metal music. I mean, that for me is my whole white.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Oh, yeah, no, ah, yeah. But it's funny what you use as white noise. My sister, she was really unwell when she was little, and so she was often home from school, and mum would always be vacuuming. And Deb actually found my sister found that that was for her, and it still is, a really calming sound. Because to her, it's white noise. To me, it's like it actually sets my nervous system off. But she found it that's her white noise, so it doesn't even have to be white noise, something that is repetitive that you find really nostalgic sounds, yeah. Absolutely, and that's another thing about repetition, is um, I use it a lot in my meditation classes. I will use the same piece of music all the time. Yeah, so if you've got a piece of music, no matter what it is, probably not maybe not met heavy metal, um, but whatever it is, but play it on repeat or but have that as your go-to sound because you're then retraining your nervous system as soon as you hear the first bar, your nervous system starts to recognise that. Ah, calm.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

I love that. You know, when my kids were little, I used to play uh it was called Celtic or Celtic, however you want to call it.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

I love Celtic music. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

And it was the um there was one track that had like a pan flute or something on it, it had like a Japanese vibe to it. I don't know what was on there. Um, but I played, I found the album like 10 years later, and I played it in the car and because my mum used to live with us when the kids were little growing up, and my mom's whole nervous system just relaxed because it took her straight, because it's funny how sounds can take us straight. It's like smells, they can take us straight to a piece. And she's like, Oh my gosh, she used to play this every night when the boys were getting in their jummies and you'd read them a book and put them to bed, and just listening to that. And like, this is probably why I love Outlander so much. It's like all of that goddish bagpipes and all that, it just sends this wave of calm and looking out at the green space, and absolutely absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

I've got a it's a double C D from it, it was a BBC like show or documentary or something it was on decades ago, but it was a whole Celtic thing, and the music from that is just uh stunning.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

It's just so inspirational and big emotions, and it's just yeah, sets my soul on fire, and the same with that certain like depending on what level of anxiety I'm feeling. But dance music, like listening like Gloria.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Oh, absolutely, and yeah. If I need to pick me up, yeah, and I need to move the the anxiety or stress, whatever, out of my body, yeah, I'll put on a good dance track, good pop song.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

I think it's just when it comes back to listening to your body, because sometimes it can be triggering. It really depends on how you're because your body is constantly talking to you, right? We we say that in nearly every episode. Yep. When you play something, like I know sometimes if I get in the car and a podcast starts and people are talking, it can be so jarring to my nervous system. I have to whereas other times I'm like, oh, give me that information, I really want to listen to that. I'm I'm in the right frame of mind, right? Yeah, um, but one thing that I do love is nature sounds. And for me, getting up and walking and listening to my favorite bird, um, musical bird is the magpie. And I know people are terrified of magpies, but they just have the most beautiful song. I think they play it like they play like four different tunes out of there. And I just think like that just is just I don't know, it must be sort of like a um something that's passed on through generation and generation. Like when you are in the calm forest and you can hear the birds chirping, that signals safety, right? Yeah, because the birds are quiet and they're gone, something's in the birds, and it's not yes, yeah, yeah, they've they've they've taken off because there's something going on. Well, there's science behind it when you listen to birds, like if you play there's bird song radio and you put that through your house, it can completely bring down your nervous system like to a level of so much calm just from listening to birds singing a lovely little song.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, yeah. I know I agree. I was sitting out in the park uh yesterday, and a Maggie came and sat stood right in front of me and just started singing to me. And I just sat there watching him, and then I turned and I said, Thank you so much, that was so pretty.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Uh yeah, I talked to birds. I'm like, Oh, look, minus his birds come to follow us. Yeah, some of the birds are triggering like a cockatoo.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Oh, like your minor birds.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

They're very smart birds, don't get me wrong, I love them. They've not got a very nice talk, they they're very um scratchy. But um with your meditation and doing all the breath work and that that you do, because you know, this is your expertise. Do you find like I've done a few classes where they get you to really listen to the sound of your breath and the rhythm of your breathing? Do you find that that is another great sound? Like I've done that to be quite loud, and you and you listen to that and sensation and feeling, and it's supposed to calm your nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Is that there's another, yeah, there's another really great one in Pranyama where you actually block your ears so that you can listen to your breath internally. It's almost got that same, it's the same sort of connotation of you know, when you put a seashell up to your ear, it's got that sound, it's very calming. So, yeah, listening to our breath is is um incredibly calming for to our nervous system, even when it's dysregulated. So, even if you've got anxiety or you're having a panic attack, um, you know, just being able to block your ears, go somewhere, just close your ears down and just start listening to your breath. It will start to calm it down, it'll start to slow your breath down. I love that. It's a really lovely root um little tool to use.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

On a Sunday, I um there was a meditation sort of um yin yoga class that I used to go to, and we did the breath work. But one of the elements that she started adding in was at the end we would all hum, hum, yeah, and have that um vagus nerve vibration. And I noticed that there's a lot of monks and that they do a lot of chanting, chanting, chanting, however you want to say it, and um the humming and the vibration. So the vibration.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Well, the I mean the om sound, I mean, I mean, a lot of yeah, a lot of people make you know think it's funny and it's you know, oh, it's so such a woo-woo thing, but it's literally mimicking well, it's the sound of the universe, it's the frequency of the universe, that's why it's been used for centuries, and that's why even mantras, if you use a mantra, and that's why even in our chakras, every single chakra has a different sound.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Oh, that's great. Yeah, you can like I've looked online, and you know, as you get older, you start to look at different ways to heal and more. I just feel like I need more slow. Like I was talking to a friend, we went for a walk the other night, and we were saying, like, as much as fun it is to go out for dinner and have a drink, and that I'm all about, you know, going for a morning walk and doing some stretching and maybe going having some high tea with a gone with jam and cream and listening to classical music. Like you start to really tune into what your body wants, and I've realized there's so many really great classes out there, like that I would never have really looked at, like chanting circles that you can join, and and um like I would have laughed at things like that back when I was 20, but now it's like wow, like this is quite therapeutic and uh and helpful.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

I've actually got a seven-week um chakra course coming up in my membership, and part of that will be uh you know, the sounds of every one, every chakra. So practicing that for the whole week to regulate our nervous system and to just regulate at each chakra as well. So it's gonna be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Because, like when I do the chanting and the rhythm and you do it in a group, you can feel that collective energy build up. Um it's just amazing, and your nervous system actually really loves rhythm and flow, and that sort of brings that back in with the sound, the power of sound and music and vibrations. So yeah, um, I interviewed years ago on my old podcast from my old business. I interviewed a lady who was a sound therapist, and she um actually got people to listen to the sounds and the hums and the vibrations of whales talking to each other under the ocean, and I just thought she used the whale sound to actually heal people who were suffering with like really bad tinnitus in their ears and that, yeah, and it was the humming sensation that she heard from other animals, like it's a it was a nature-based healing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah, no, whale sounds are uh are known to be for how they're I can't even talk, how healing their sound is absolutely whale, can you speak whale? No, and I'm not gonna try now.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Oh, you know, that's funny. Uh so the the one of the key things is awareness, um, that knowing when something's triggering you, like when you walk into a room, knowing what sounds are triggering you and whatnot, and listening to your body and sort of steering it to what it needs right now. And this is something I'm really teaching myself the last few days. Sometimes I need to leave the room because my son um he runs around the house going pew, phew, phew, and then the other one's yelling at him, and then my husband's playing guitar, and it's just and then marking everything over, and I'm just so overwhelmed that I'm gonna snap, and it's not their fault, it's my nervous system's not regulating this very well. And so I grab minus and I go for a walk, and just that 20 minutes outside of the house, I come back and I'm a different person, I can handle the sound of things better.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

And and that's a really important thing. Don't be afraid to remove yourself, even briefly. Like I remember when I was, you know, when I had anxiety disorder, and I'd be at my parents' house, like for Christmas or East or something, and so the whole family was there. And we and it was only my immediate family, so my sister, my brother-in-law, my husband, mum and dad, but even still just sitting around the table, everyone talking was often too much. So I would just excuse myself in the middle of the meal, and I would just get up, leave the room, go and sit there for five minutes, just regulate my own nervous system, then come back. Yeah. You know, and if you explain to people, if that's something that you feel like you should do, explain to people, explain to your family. family beforehand. Just say, listen, you know, I'm trying to manage my anxiety better. If I need to get up and leave for the table, I'm fine. I just need to go off and just for five minutes, just to breathe and bring ground, reground myself before I come back. It's better than sitting there and suffering in silence and slowly getting internally worse and worse and worse. And then you know you go home later and you fall in a heap because you're just so exhausted from trying to hold yourself together.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

I totally agree. I totally agree. And I find like in today's modern world like you've got to think back what a couple thousand years ago there was not much noise out there. There is so much noise today like even just people on their phones, listening to things, clicking phones, notifications, everything is just so triggering for so many of us. So having that awareness of when it's too much to allow yourself like Nat was saying to allow yourself to walk out of the room or just even let people know that this is too much. I'm trying to have a conversation with someone and there's about 20 conversations happening at the one table. I can't concentrate and I'm I'm going to have to leave the room and bring the conversation outside under the tree with this particular person. Like there's so many things you can suggest. Yeah so your nervous system is always listening. Sometimes anxiety isn't is is simply your body asking for a different environment and it wants to be removed or it wants just a few things in the area to change to make it feel safer to make it feel more rhythm and in flow and to stop that compass inside going crazy because it does spinning wee yeah trying to find the north yes we need some bird songs and some Celtic music please yes yeah yeah uh let's jump in and throw in a reflective question before we shut this uh this episode down sounds like it shutting it down um shutting it down I'm shutting it down so as you're driving or whatever it is you may be doing I'd love for you to ask yourself uh is there something that's triggering you right now like can you hear a noise? Can you is it if you're feeling agitated maybe it isn't your thoughts and this and and you know uh thinking about what's happening in your life but maybe there's something like a noise or a sensation that's triggering you even more and maybe turning us off and putting on some classical music or Celtic music or something that your body absolutely loves. Like even just listening to the lawnmower outside is bringing me back to summers from when I was a little kid and I know some people don't like the sound of a lawnmower like my husband it reminds him that he needs to mow the lawn but it actually makes me go into a place of happiness. So finding out what sounds your body loves to make it feel whole again and yeah regulated. Amazing well did you want to add anything else to this or are we happy to wrap up no I think that's we've covered it quite well amazing I love it all right have a fabulous uh day and we'll see you in the next you two see you thanks for joining us on the Anxiety Compass. If you love this episode share it with a friend who needs a little laugh and a low calm we'll see you in the next one. Keep following your true north disclaimer time Sammy and Natalie may be clinical nutritionists but we're not your personal doctors. What you hear is for learning and laughing not diagnosing or prescribing if things feel bigger than you call your doctor or local support line or we can have you a qualified health professional