This one’s a happy accident. I think I’ve cracked the thing that makes me cringe when I record videos like these — and it turned out to be a sensory fix, not a confidence one.
I’ve always struggled to film with people around. Someone approaches, someone moves at the edge of my vision, and I lose the thread. The one time it didn’t happen was filming in Poland while speaking English — everyone assumed I was just some foreign tourist narrating their city, so I stopped bracing for their reactions. But I can’t move abroad every time I want to record.
It’s not nerves. It’s signal.
The real issue is sensory overload. I’m autistic and ADHD, so I take in a lot at once — I see, hear and feel people moving around me, and my nervous system is fine-tuned to react to all of it. I’m supposed to be able to filter that out; I can’t, not really. Even when I train myself to be more mindful, I’m still reacting, because it isn’t a bad habit — it’s how my brain is wired.
What actually helped
Here’s the accident. I don’t normally wear headphones for this, and the ones I grabbed aren’t noise-cancelling — they’re studio headphones I put on just to check the audio before posting. And they fixed it.
The reason is the bit I’d have got wrong if I’d planned it: they muffle, they don’t mute. Passive dampening takes the edge off everything without sealing me off. I can still hear the room, still clock the people around me — but the volume of it all drops enough that a parakeet screeching outside doesn’t hijack my attention anymore.
That partial dampening is the whole trick. Full noise-cancelling does the opposite for me: cutting the world out completely makes me feel sealed in, and somehow more self-conscious, not less. Sudden silence is its own kind of loud.
The takeaway
Turns out I never needed silence. I needed the volume of the world turned down about 30%.
If you’re autistic or ADHD and noise-cancelling never quite worked for you — if it boxes you in rather than calming you down — try passive instead. Cheap foam, studio headphones, even decent earmuffs. The goal isn’t to disappear from the room. It’s to stay in it, with the edge taken off.
Show transcript
Try this one — it's funny. I think I've just figured out how to defeat my cringe when recording videos like this. I always had a problem when someone arrives nearby, running around, approaching me. I first cracked it when I was visiting family — I was recording in English while in Poland, so everyone just assumed I was some foreign tourist recording their city, and I stopped bracing for their reactions. But now I realise it's about sensory overload, because I have both autism and ADHD. I take in a lot of signals — I'm seeing, hearing and feeling people moving around me. I should be able to ignore it, but my nervous system is fine-tuned to react. Even when I train myself to be more mindful, I'm still reacting; it's very hard to turn off, because it's part of how my brain works. So I don't normally need headphones — and definitely not noise-cancelling ones. These aren't noise-cancelling; I'm only using them to check the sound quality before I post. And guess what — they're actually helping, because they're muffling, not muting, the sound around me. So even if I hear a parakeet screeching outside, it's not distracting me anymore.