I eventually want to do a video series of basically things I wish someone had shown or told me when I was a kid.
One really big one is how to recognize overload. I did have a few crude techniques worked out, but I didn’t know what they meant, or how to respond to them.
Basically, I carried certain objects that normally produced certain sensations. I had a necklace with piano wire in it that made soft bell-like noises. I had a scarf made out of multicolored criss-crossing ribbons. I had soft clothing.
The more overloaded I got, the more the soft bell-like noises turned into loud and obnoxious clanging that hurt my ears. The multicolored scarf became painful to look at rather than interesting. And the soft clothing turned to sandpaper.
So one good way to recognize overload, if you don’t have some other way, is to have some sort of object that you know what it’s like when you’re not overloaded. If it becomes more and more unbearable in some way, you’re getting more and more overloaded (and should probably find something to do about it).
(This would have been much better information than the information I got when I tried to indicate to an adult what was happening with the changes in the bell. She backed away and told me that there was something seriously wrong with me, and became distant after that.)