notcrazy,

If these are your 'you wont believe this' symptoms, they are uncommon but not unheard of. I have trouble standing with my eyes closed. Never did before. The balance in a chaotic environment is due to over-attending. Your brain has too much information to process. This, again, is not unheard of.

You likely have a problem with how your brain is gating information between different areas. Instead of a constant flow of balance information, it allows sound and visual to 'cut in line' and disrupt the flow of balance information. You brain's bandwidth of information processing has been seriously narrowed, if you understand some computer speak.

Some intense vestibular therapy may be able to strengthen the vestibular neural pathways but it is a slow process. Starting in a sterile clinical environment and then add external stimuli. As the brain relearns how to block the distractions and stay focused on the vestibular information, hopefully, you will improve.

You might want to check out http://vision-audio.com/ease_overview.html to see if their system of auditory desensitization will help.

You mentioned martial arts. Have you done sparing where you get hit in the head, even if while wearing head gear?
This can set your brain up to be overly sensitive to the knock out blow you took. It is knwo by some that sub-concussive impact can cause brain injuries, especially when there are many with concentrations of these sub-concussive impacts during practice sessions.

Studies show that the average football (American) players suffer 600 to 900 sub-concussive impacts during a season. They may not suffer any concussion symptoms from any individual impact but the accumulation is showing to be dangerous. Helmets do not decrease these subconcussive impacts but in fact, make them more likely to happen. The head gear creates a false sense of security.

Your use of visual and tactile information to balance may have been in response to losing some of the basic balance skills from martial arts head impacts. You were multi-tasking to balance. Now, you have lost the ability to multi-task, at least temporarily. This is very common with concussion.

Hope we can help.

My best to you.