Brown noise helps me stop random intrusions and provides calm and focus. I use the Star Trek TNG Enterprise D engine noise piped into my earbuds, headphones or home speakers.
I go into a meditative state when it gets really bad, like pushing everything to the side and focus past it all.
I’m 47, I don’t know how old you are but I’ve struggled with this throughout my life along with the other sensory stuff I have (emotion > color, Concept > shape, perceived emotion > color, mirror touch, texture > color/shape and a few other types of synesthesia). I have found that practicing to calm my mind, mute my senses and practice holistic balance in my life has greatly improved my quality of life.
I do not know how debilitating this is for you but it greatly affected my life. Realizing that I cannot stop my mind or isolate myself and live a fulfilling life. I learned to acknowledge these things and live with them as a benefit. The best analogy is that I surf the waves of my thoughts and no longer let the waves crash over me. Or like emotional/mental aikido. Learn to turn it to your advantage and empower you instead of letting it overwhelm you. Figure out triggers, isolate them and understand them.
Anyway, if you struggle with this you are not alone. There aren’t a ton of us out there but there are others. Don’t fight against it but learn to live in balance with it. When I did my life greatly improved. I have skills that no one else has and while people do not know what it comes from they can tell that my insightfulness, pattern recognition, logical decision making, memory and creativity are very different from the usual sort.
Apologies if this comes off as preachy, you may have your thing on lock already but 7 out of 10 times the person who I am discussing this stuff with who has something similar doesn’t. I will always be learning new tricks or hidden features and I am always looking for tips from others I interact with in the wild.
DM me whenever.
I’ve ridden in a few Waymo’s before, in SF they can be more dependable or easier to get than other ride options. I never felt like I was ever in danger in one.
Within my handful of experiences with them I’ve never had to use the help button or features to request assistance from a tele-operator but it was clear that they weren’t trying to hide the function from the passengers as the feature was explained and clearly labeled.
A friend who uses them often told me of the one time he needed to ask for assistance when their Waymo was stuck behind a doordash scooter with its hazard lights on that was either delivering or picking up and blocking a turn lane in downtown SF. The Waymo didn’t know what to do to get around it, my friend hit the button for assistance, a voice came over the speakers asking how they could help, my friend explained the situation and the tele-operator drove the car to safely navigate the situation. He said it was probably 1.5-2mins of tota inconvenience with 75% of that time was him wondering if he should hit the help button or not.
I understand a lot of AI implementation, such as Amazon Fresh or other business models have been hiding offshored human assistance within their “AI” features, which I do agree with you is deceitful but my experience with Waymo was not that. They did not hide or obfuscate that function and feature of the service but actively informed the passenger of its existence.
Granted, I haven’t ridden in one for almost a year at this point and I only did so in the SF market so things may have changed since or are different elsewhere.
Also, I can’t say that I follow the news intently about Waymo, I know they have run over a couple cats but I hadn’t heard anything about them killing people. Has that happened?