I love shopping...I really, really do.  I love clothes and shoes and books...BUT...I HATE the mall.  The mall is probably the worst place on the planet for an ADDer to spend any significant amount of time.  The external stimuli bombarding our brains makes for an extremely stressful experience...especially at Christmas time.

Sight

• Decorations ~ The holiday decorations are big and bright and abundant; often times festooned with twinkling lights
• Displays ~ Merchandise is EVERYWHERE...racks and tables and counters and even the floor...so MUCH to look at.
• Food court ~ The food court is a metropolis all on it's own..every color of neon, menus, people, lines...ugh.

Sound

• Mall music vs. store music ~ Walk through the mall to one tune, and enter a store to another tune.  The teen stores are generally blaring some kind of incomprehensible hard core music which gets on my very last nerve.
• People ~ The constant hum of the crowd, babies crying, children screaming, Santa ho-ho-ho'ing....QUIET PLEASE!!!!
• Food court ~ MORE people, more crying, screaming children - fryers and steamers and ice machines oh my!

Smell

• Food court ~ are you sensing a theme with me? Every imaginable smell wafts through this jungle of junk food.
• Cookie and Pretzel stands ~ nuff said.
• People ~ All variety of human scents drifting through the air, and as you pass each individual.
• Perfume Section/Bath & lotion stores ~ I will go out of my way to avoid these places.  The variety and blending of scents and smells makes me insane.

Taste

• Food court
• Perfume Section/Bath & lotions stores ~ I can TASTE all the perfumes in the air...blllllleeeeeeeeeeeccchhhhhhh!!!

Touch/Feeling

• Touch
  • Sore feet and back
  • Shlepping a purse and heavy bags all over the place.
  • Trying on clothes ~ I personally hate this...I will very rarely try something on. I can't stand the confined space of the dressing room, for one thing, and the constant removing and putting on of clothing irritates me to no end.
  • Pawing through the racks and tables of merchandise with all of the various textures and weights.
• Feeling
  • Along with touch, there is the added sense of spatial feeling.  I avoid crowds at all costs because I can't stand the feel of strangers invading my personal space.  It makes me nervous and upset.
  • The size of the mall alone with it's soaring ceilings and endless walkways belies the claustrophobic feeling of comingling with the crowd and being forced to squeeze through tightly packed racks of merchandise.

The advent of online shopping has taken a lot of the stress of the holidays away.  Now, if I could only stop procrastinating so that people aren't waiting for their Christmas gifts in January. Hahahaha