A Sensory Nightmare.

Sensory Issues.

Sensory Issues often accompany Autism. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association added sensory sensitivities to the symptoms that help diagnose autism. 

Autism's sensory issues can involve both hyper-sensitivities (over-responsiveness) and hypo-sensitivities (under responsiveness) to a wide range of stimuli.

These can involve:
-Sights
-Sounds
-Smells
-Tastes
-Touch
-Balance
-Body awareness (proprioception)

For example, many people on the spectrum are hyper-sensitive to bright lights or certain light wavelengths (e.g. from fluorescent lights). Many find certain sounds, smells and tastes overwhelming. Certain types of touch (light or deep) can feel extremely uncomfortable. (autismspeaks.org)

I am hyper-sensitive. I always have been. As a child I hated loud noise and would hold my hands over my ears. I was very particular with my clothing, hating the feeling of scratchy tags, twisted socks, shoe laces too tight, or one shoe tighter than the other. I hated jeans and had a preference for dresses rather than pants of any kind but my absolute favorite item of clothing to wear was my bathing suit. Ah yes, my bathing suit was soft, silky, smooth, with no flapping arms or legs to touch and irritate my body, no cuffs too tight and scratchy. No waistband pinching my tummy. No excess fabric to twist and suffocate me. After bedtime I would secretly change into my bathing suit to sleep as I couldn't tolerate my nightie riding up and twisting around my body or my pajama pants legs doing the same, causing a buildup of scrunched fabric behind my knees. I would mourn an outgrown or worn out bathing suit, I remember this feeling clearly, the sadness even disbelief of losing my friendly bathing suit. The injustice. It didn't seem fair. Thinking about it now, perhaps I also enjoyed the torso compression a bathing suit provided.

If there was an item of clothing that was particularly comfy I would try to wear it to death. My Mum recalls a particular dress I had that she struggled to wash as I wanted to wear it all the time. I actually remember the dress and remember rescuing it from the "rag bag"at least once. I am still like this today. I found a particular style of long sleeve top at Target many years ago, in the kids section, it was so comfortable I bought at least 8 of them, all the same colour too. Today I recon I have 4 left, and they are very sad indeed. Holes in the armpits, they are thin, stretched, stained.......but oh so comfortable. I still trawl the internet every now and then on the lookout for something similar, but nothing ever stacks up.

Tags today are much softer and I can tolerate some of them. However I wear alot of active wear and most of them come tagless which is awesome. Most of my undies have matching holes at the back where a tag once took up unwanted residence. Ripping the tags out, usually in frustration, almost always results in a hole. My gym bag has a collection of tags in it, I would often be performing sets and be so distracted by an irritating tag, frustration would build until I would openly explode and furiously rip the offending tag off, mid workout, throw the tag on the floor in an epic display of childish tantrum.........then feel bad about littering and pick the tag up and pop it in my bag for later disposal (or to be forgotten and simply become an addition the the gym bag tag collection). As a child I remember my Mum cutting the tags off my clothing, knowing full well an irritating tag would result in an epic tantrum. Sadly, the sharp stump of a tag left behind from cutting was always more irritating than the original tag (which is why I am now a tag ripper rather than cutter). 

I remember socks being a challenge as a child. Always either too tight around the cuff or too loose causing them to fall down, tickle my legs or even worse......scrunch up in my shoe. Ewwwwwww. When I was so young my Mum would put my socks on for me I remember her always doing it wrong. My socks would feel horrific. She would pull them on too tight causing my toes to scrunch and the heel to be in the wrong place (halfway up my calf), they would be slightly twisted causing the toe seam to rub irritatingly. I was known to be a tantruming child, is it any wonder when your socks are TOO TIGHT, TWISTED AND SCRUNCHED. She would also lick her fingers to grip the socks as she tried to adjust them, touching MY socks with HER licked fingers (EWWWWWWWW) then pinching the skin on my legs as she pinched the fabric of the offending socks. I'm actually raging right now at the memory. You'd think that now I am 40 and dressing myself all these woes would be over. You'd be wrong. 

My sensory issues were one of the main things that tipped that Anvil off the cliff. I remember when my Son was first diagnosed and we were reading books about ASD I related so much to all the chapters on Sensory issues, book after book I related. My Son is more on the hypo-sensitive side. He is definitely in the "feels it less"category. I can say in all honestly that if I could change anything, ANYTHING about my ASD traits it would be my sensory issues. I actually quite like my other traits, I even love many of them. But my sensory stuff ruins me......absolutely ruins me. I hear, smell, see and feel EVERYTHING intensely. Temperature. Hunger. The need to pee. Dry lips. Irritating clothing. I have an acute sense of smell and find offensive smells intolerable and often nauseating. I hate noise, to the point where I really have to fight the urge to put my hands over my ears. I learned pretty early on as a child that the action of putting your hands over your ears is socially unacceptable. I cant remember if I was told off for it but I learned somehow not to do it......but the urge is always there. The gym I go to, well used to go to pre covid-19, has music playing really really loud. I hate it. It has caused me to spontaneous combust into tears numerous times. Its hard to describe the effect it has on me, it's like I get disoriented, panicked, anxious, my heart feels like its racing and I just explode and lost it. So Arthur, my dear sweet Arthur got me some ripper noise cancelling headphones, top of the range.......I could buy two pairs of Dr Martin boots for the price of these headphones, yet I can still hear the effing music through them and the combination of my music with the offending gym music just makes me Sperg out, the result.....same as above, spontaneous combustion. So now, or pre Covid-19, I wear the noise cancelling headphones (in ear style) with Ear Defenders (like ear muffs like what you'd wear to mow the lawns) over the top. It works, but is uncomfortable. 

My Sensory issues are much more complex that I could possibly write about in one blog post, so I have been vague, as vague as someone who goes on and on and on and on and on about any one topic can be. There is so much for me to say about Sensory issues it's going to take multiple posts. One of the many things I have learned about ASD is that it always comes with Comorbidities and we all have different sets of Comorbidities and the extent of these Comorbidities also ranges from person to person but they are often intertwined. I will one day post about something called Interoception and how it ties in with my sensory (and my Son's lack of sensory) issues. 

The reason I chose to blog about Sensory Issues today is because I returned to work a few days ago, after 3.5 glorious weeks at home, in my safe comfortable environment where I am able to control and accommodate for my sensory issues and to say the return was a Sensory overload is an understatement. At home I am able to wear my most comfortable clothes, I mostly wear shorts as I hate the feeling of pants around my legs, when I do wear pants its soft buttery feeling, high waisted, tagless gym leggings (Lululemon). I don't wear a bra, I don't need one, but if I do wear something it's a crop top, no padding, no moulding, no fixtures just a basic soft tagless pull on crop top. I prefer tank tops as I hate the feeling of sleeves, I will wear a hoodie to keep warm but I always take it off to do anything as I feel sleeves restrictive and they get wet in the kitchen and I have zero tolerance for wet clothes, wet sleeves and pants cuffs in particular make me rage. My house doesn't smell and my family know to limit perfumes and colognes. I can control the noise to a degree and what I can't control I can block out by wearing my headphones or going to my room. I can eat when I am hungry, drink when I am thirsty and pee when I need to. I went from this blissful state of comfort to sensory HELL the day I returned to work. My uniform felt restrictive even though its too big, I hadn't worn a crop top much at all over my time off so it felt weird and uncomfortable even painful. My workplace is full of smells, pigs ears, bully sticks (dried out bulls penis), dog wee and poo, Josh's aftershave (love the boy but by fuck his aftershave makes my guts churn and my nose burn), and the odd customers perfume, bad breath, pit stench or stale cigarette smoke. Lots of movement, people coming and going and movement all around you and even touching you. It can be noisey, dogs barking, phone ringing, customers and team members all talking at once. And if you need to pee you have to hold on until you can leave your post and go. My tolerance of my sensory issues varies. I have my good and bad days. If I am stressed over something my tolerance is naturally less. If it is just one sensory thing bothering me it's not so bad, but imagine if your ultra sensory sensitive and your nostrils are filled with the rank smell of pigs ears, two dogs are barking at each other, the owners are shouting at their dogs, the phone is ringing, your pants are rubbing your lower back as they fall down (because you can't tolerate the sensation of a belt) the seam of your t-shirt cuff is rubbing your upper arm, there are people moving all around you your trying to listen to the customer asking you for help on dog food for their dog with digestive issues, your lips and throat are dry.........and you need to pee. On the outside you would have no Idea how I am feeling as I smile and nod my head (hopefully at the right times) and calmly direct my customer to the premium food aisle away from the chaos where I can expertly, professionally and passionately communicate my advise and knowledge. On the inside I am screaming with my hands over my ears as I feel disorientated, suffocated, overwhelmed, trapped and in pain.  This is NO exaggeration and how I regularly feel in my occupation. It's actually funny how just typing this out has made me even more aware of the impact these things have on me, I'm sitting here thinking "no wonder I'm such a mess most of the time", and no wonder I was so much mentally healthier during those blissful 3.5 weeks at home. Before I knew about ASD or Sensory issues I often found myself crying in the warehouse, an anxious mess, no idea why I was feeling the way I was feeling. Blaming it non existent problems at home, problems I think I had created in my head so I had something to blame for the way I was feeling or perhaps the problems did exist but they were minor and I was blowing them up, dramatising them so I could account for my extreme anxious emotional feelings and outbursts. Now I have an understanding of these things I can at least understand WHY I feel and react the way I do, and I am learning how to manage it so I have less meltdowns, and less crying fits in the warehouse.

Navigating some of life's simplest pleasures, like going to a cafe, can be an absolute nightmare when you have ASD and Sensory Issues. Perhaps that will be my next blog post. "Going To A Cafe" The culinary adventures of a Sperg. 

Stay Tuned.
P.