Anxiety while out shopping?

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Stress adds up and we all go into sensory overload. Tis why I shop late at night when the traffic is low.

i practicly run through stores now, and get overloaded by slow moving crowds, w/ bright lights.it is getting worse and at the same time i'm devloping mild vertigo,only w/ white and black horizontal lines, when it comes on i have to look away or i feel sick and dizzy.on my own i can deal w/ it.lately i've been helping my mom and would go to the store for her(everytime she would be suprized at how fast i got back). a few times she wanted to go w/ and that is when it got real bad, she rides the cart and go's nowhere very slow.she could tell that i wasn't right and thought i was getting sick of her.
for this i know my boundries:bight lights, slow people, strong odors, and sometimes design triggered vertigo.

oh, strobe lights always had this effect on me, at times it would intoxacate me to where i thought i was going to pass out(vertigo that is)

There are some great suggestions posted here for dealing with shopping anxiety - I laughed when I saw the 'commando' reference [AdamDZ: "Shopping with the Enemy"]. It made me realize I've done that a time or two...which makes a high level of familiarity with the store's layout crucial. I wanted to add that I've actually used earplugs (when not able to shop during the 'quiet window' time). Pulling them out of my bag and inserting them has occasionally provided the unexpected (and unpremeditated) benefit of parents being shamed enough to rein in their noisy kids. I learned quick to take advantage of that 'shame' and have 'shadowed' those families up and down the same aisles they travel. It's kind of an involuntary buddy-up mechanism, plus the now-quieted family seems to present a demeanor that also quiets others already in (or entering) 'our' current aisle.

Yup. That's why I go to the same stores all the time