I noticed that visual confusion tends to give me headaches (I often get them in stores, for example), and that blocking off my peripheral vision by wearing a hood helps. So I bought glasses with thick stems, to make my field of vision smaller all the time.
I’m nearsighted enough that all I use my peripheral vision for is seeing whether there is movement behind me (which I can still do—the glasses only cover the middle part), so the only cost was restricting my choice of frames to styles with thick stems. Anything that prevents headaches is a productivity boost for me, because I tend to procrastinate and loose focus a lot more when uncomfortable.
I’m not sure whether it actually worked—stress and changes in the weather cause so much noise that it would be hard to measure. If my stress level ever gets more consistent, I might try making something even wider that fits over the stems and experimenting with that.
Are you sure it’s a matter of “visual confusion” and not having a lot of stuff clamoring for your attention but being blurry because it’s outside the radius of your glasses? I definitely noticed things were better visually for me when I switched to contact lenses and lost the blur-circle that existed around the edges of my vision all the time.
I suspect it’s not just from bad vision, because I’ve had problems in visually busy places even as a child, before I needed glasses. I didn’t get headaches then, but I had a habit of looking at the ground all the time, which my parents taught my not to do once I got older because it looked weird. I recently tried out looking down all the time in busy places, and found it made me feel a lot calmer, and my head feel less tight. So I suspect that looking down was a way of avoiding looking at other stuff. (I decided it was too costly to use in most cases, though, because it looks really weird.)
Thanks for the suggestion, though. I guess it is possible that blur circle also contributes.
I noticed that visual confusion tends to give me headaches (I often get them in stores, for example), and that blocking off my peripheral vision by wearing a hood helps. So I bought glasses with thick stems, to make my field of vision smaller all the time.
I’m nearsighted enough that all I use my peripheral vision for is seeing whether there is movement behind me (which I can still do—the glasses only cover the middle part), so the only cost was restricting my choice of frames to styles with thick stems. Anything that prevents headaches is a productivity boost for me, because I tend to procrastinate and loose focus a lot more when uncomfortable.
I’m not sure whether it actually worked—stress and changes in the weather cause so much noise that it would be hard to measure. If my stress level ever gets more consistent, I might try making something even wider that fits over the stems and experimenting with that.
Are you sure it’s a matter of “visual confusion” and not having a lot of stuff clamoring for your attention but being blurry because it’s outside the radius of your glasses? I definitely noticed things were better visually for me when I switched to contact lenses and lost the blur-circle that existed around the edges of my vision all the time.
I suspect it’s not just from bad vision, because I’ve had problems in visually busy places even as a child, before I needed glasses. I didn’t get headaches then, but I had a habit of looking at the ground all the time, which my parents taught my not to do once I got older because it looked weird. I recently tried out looking down all the time in busy places, and found it made me feel a lot calmer, and my head feel less tight. So I suspect that looking down was a way of avoiding looking at other stuff. (I decided it was too costly to use in most cases, though, because it looks really weird.)
Thanks for the suggestion, though. I guess it is possible that blur circle also contributes.