Autism and sensory processing issues

[FreeDiver]

I guess since this is the first post on this new topic thread. I thought I start off with this. I am interested in hearing from anyone who has learned to cope and managed their sensory issues, and if so? What are your sensory issues and what things have you done to manage your sensory issues?

 

[abby normal]

my sensory issues are merely irritants and not the paralyzing things that other people here suffer. an example- if I here an extraneous noise while i'm trying to hear something important like a message or a piece of music, it totally hijacks my brain and I have great difficulty "hearing through the noise." my internal noise filter seems not as powerful as that of normal people. this I inherited from both sides of my family tree who struggled with the same issues.

 

[Optimus]

I guess since this is the first post on this new topic thread. I thought I start off with this. I am interested in hearing from anyone who has learned to cope and managed their sensory issues, and if so? What are your sensory issues and what things have you done to manage your sensory issues?

Hi Freediver!

Thank you for your post! I was recently diagnosed with Asperger's which helped make sense of many things for me including sensory issues.

My sensory issues are mainly of an auditory variety. I can't stand people absentmindedly tapping, drumming, eating crunchy food, rustling a bag etc. Certain pitches and volumes of sounds can make me unsettled / angry / distracted / distraught/ in pain, such as laughter, sirens, bells, alarms, bag rustling etc.

I work in an open plan office so as you can probably imagine it's certainly a challenge there. I have noise cancelling headphones that I work with which help (though I somehow manage to hear some sounds through it or the vibrations through the floor (from foot tapping)). In discussions at work when there is other noise distraction going on then I let the colleague(s) that the other noise is distracting me and that I will not be able to follow our conversation.

Going to the cinema or to a restaurant is also often a painful experience for me with the talk of other people overwhelming me (and also light distraction from idiots using their phones and also not following the rules I had assumed would be followed lol). I tend to watch films at home once they become available on DVD or streaming.

 

[yotimbo]

my sensory issues are merely irritants and not the paralyzing things that other people here suffer. an example- if I here an extraneous noise while i'm trying to hear something important like a message or a piece of music, it totally hijacks my brain and I have great difficulty "hearing through the noise." my internal noise filter seems not as powerful as that of normal people. this I inherited from both sides of my family tree who struggled with the same issues.

Yea its weird , your brain seems to pick out that noise and tune in to it even though its unwanted. After a while the sound becomes something totally different and not auditory but almost a physical entity that you battle with . I went to a farm when I was 7 and the normal farmyard smells and sounds became so overwhelmingly that I vomited every time I breathed in

 

[toothless]

i have extreme and complex sensory issues...but have never learned to cope with them,they trigger severe challenging behaviors and i often go blind-my visual processing/perception is very impaired already anyway.
i use a rollator [a walking frame on wheels which has a seat on it] partly for my physical disability and partly for my sensory issues as i can sit down very quickly if i experience any sensory or information overload.
without the rollator i often fell to the floor if it got to much and smashed my head on the floor.

the only thing that helps for me is sleep,it helps me recover.

 

[ilovetochat87]

I too have issues with auditory issues . As a child everything everything was a problem for me and I seemed a lot more autistic than I did Asperger. I had all kinds of issues as a kid I had trouble with jeans I would have a giant cow and some chickens LOL if I would try to put on jeans so we discovered that the only similar type two jeans that I could physically wear without being overstimulated was like uniform pants that a lot of private schools make their kids wear. But otherwise I had to wear sweatpants or leggings but when it came to leggings they didn't have the leggings they do today they were the stupid kind of leggings that had the stirrups underneath which I've never understood why they bothered to have the stirrups but I would always cut the straps off . Because I didn't want those on my feet. And I totally had trouble with socks where the stitching that goes across your toe like right at the bottom of your toenails would drive me nuts and I have to have special socks with the stitching at the tip of the toe which I can't find anymore today but I've learned if it bothers me put the socks inside out genius why didn't I think about that as a kid . And I had a giant cow if I was in bed and something bothered me I would have to make the bed again I was a strange child. Thank God I grew out of that side of me alright so thank the Lord that I don't keep that side of my AS anymore. But I have mostly been bothered mostly by real people tap your fingers oh good lord that was even worse than the clothes issue. my mother has this nervous tick she does when she's stressed out . It's part of her depression or something she gets like weird anxiety from it or something along those lines and she always has to have really nicely done French manicure and she likes to flick her thumbnail and middle finger nail together and they make the most disgusting tapping sound that kind of sounds like two teeth smacking together and I always try to be patient with her but the more she does it the more I can tell that she's pissed off about something and she's getting even more aggressive with her fingernails and that's when I go "mom!" and immediately she says okay sorry I'm just nervous and I explained her that I understand that but that's driving me nuts and I want to punch something and she says okay relax I'm stopping and then if she really can't stop then she turns the radio up a little bit louder and does it kind of quietly.

 

[ilovetochat87]

Another part:
I also had the worst time growing up with people clucking or whatever it's called when people flip their tongue in their mouth and make that clicking noise. that would drive me absolutely *** bonkers if I heard anybody do it. And I can't stand screeching noises. God for bid a car screeches. Now I understand a car may screech because it has bad breaks or something and I have no idea who the person is it was down the block but I could still hear it. I can't do anything about that. but it still makes me cringe and when I cringe I make a similar motion to Tourette's so people look at me funny like what are you doing because it looks exactly like I have Tourette's but it's just me cringing my entire body because the screeching is hurting my entire body but I can feel it in my teeth . And sometimes it takes me a minute and I'll have like another five seconds where I heebie-jeebies/cringe and I'll do Tourette's motions to kind of get it off myself and try to forget that it squeak because it was over and gone by now but it still impacted me a little bit and then I have to remind myself move on.

now there are other things besides auditory like, things like touch. I don't like anything slimy . As a kid and even up until 24 I would not put lotion on anybody's back. like my dad he can't reach his back so he always asked us if we would be willing to put lotion on his back because he can't reach and I would always say sure I would try and then I couldn't do it once I did it or if I did do it I would use the back of my hands I didn't like the oily residue left behind on my palms and it was a pain in the butt to wash it out because the soap is now mixing with the oil and making it worse before it finally gets off very much and OCD that I had very much difficulty dealing with. I very much learned a lot of the things were simple fixes . I mostly dealt with the problems by mind over matter . If somebody I don't know Interpublic situation is tapping their finger or their making that horrible click sound with their nails or that same sound can be achieved by tapping a pen on the table or scissors on the table or a stick on the table or the topping silverware on the table all similar types of sound made I can't necessarily tell those people because I don't know them to stop. It's disrespectful I don't know those people . It's even weird if that were to come up with an aunt or uncle or cousin. I don't know them the way that I know my mom or dad or siblings. I would have no problem telling my mom "mom!!" if she were doing something like that or same thing with my dad or my sister . So I've learned in a public situation if somebody is chewing gum and it makes a smacking sound or they are tapping a pen on the table and it's driving me so mad that I'm like cringing / heebie-jeebies and I'm looking like Tourette's because I'm cringing my entire body and the autistic way that I cringe is to put my hands in the air and kind of wiggle them by my face and I try not to look at it I turn my face away from the object and I have to try to not think about it I just try to mind over matter if I can go somewhere else in the room and wait until they are done and then come back I do if I can't help it I put my headphones on because I always carry headphones in my purse and I put them in my phone and put on the music or if I can't do either one I just try to ignore it the best that I can talk to my friend at work talk to my family that's next so that I can focus on the conversation I'm having and not on the sound outside of my conversation. because it is extremely disrespectful to tell that stranger I don't know "would you please stop tapping" and I know better so I basically just try to follow those techniques but if it were my mom or my dad etc I would easily say "can you guys stop doing that sorry that's just bothering me"

 

[ilovetochat87]

Another part:
when it comes to being in a large crowd of people and it's overwhelming me like let's say Walmart I love to go to Walmart because they have good prices . But sometimes on the weekend it gets really crowded or on a holiday it gets really crowded and I'm normally fine but sometimes I get what I think is my own version of anxiety or my own version of somebody in my bubble or being claustrophobic if you will since I don't really have trouble with being claustrophobic or having a personal space given that I have AS and 90% of us don't have personal space but what I think is my body's way of kind of experiencing that when I'm around a lot of people the closest I can think of to me getting something like that I just try to do the best I can when that happens since I have to be in the store and I have to shop I just tried to put on my headphones while I'm shopping and of course I'm not very good at being alert so I have to extra alert myself to the people around me because I'm no longer hearing them any longer now that my headphones are on the headphones help me to go into myself if you will and I mind over matter and I focus on the music which is my mind doing that over matter which is me focusing on the music and not the crowd of people. But normally I don't have a problem with the crowds or lots of excess noise when there's heavy amounts of crowd . I don't mind that I don't have a personal space 9/10 times so I don't really feel bothered when I'm in a large crowd of people and I don't seem to be bothered when people are close to me and I don't realize when I'm in other peoples space bothering them because of that lack of personal spatial awareness but sometimes it does kind of make me feel weird and I'm not really sure if that's me having a moment where people are in my bubble because I don't have a bubble normally or if that sleuth having too much noise I don't know what it really is because I don't ever experience that so when I feel something like that I'm not sure what exactly is but the noise from that large crowd can scare me and make me go kind of anxiety attack almost so I do put the headphones on and I walk through the store with my headphones on and it's usually classical for what I like mostly is a genre called New Age which is a lot of classical type but there's some Celtic music Irish music piano music or like violins or a combination some electronic violins that are more pumped up but still considered in the classical things like that are very relaxing while I'm walking through Walmart trying to deal with all the chaos in the noise.

I have recently discovered that I have trouble with hearing things when I'm like for instance watching TV . If I'm watching something on TV where they have a heavy African accent but they're speaking English or they have a hefty Middle Eastern accent but they speak English and I'm trying to watch this on TV and my dad walks in the room and turned on the sink and is washing dishes in the background I cannot focus on the TV and I cannot focus on what they are saying so I have to rewind it or I posit until my dad's done making noise and pissing me off . He doesn't know he's doing that so I don't take offense but it does piss me off I'm trying to watch the TV and I've had to rewind that scene six times now because my dad making noise . And there's nothing I can really do about that but put on subtitles to the TV and that kind of is a way that I overcome that there's a medical reason I can't remember what it's called I think I have read a lot of things under auditory processing that seem to fit but from what I'm reading you can't just say this this and this for me so I must have auditory processing issues. You have to have it diagnosed by audiologist. but I do fit some things for it. So I've been reading if it's in conjunction with autism or ADHD etc. then it's probably not the APD but more the autism or the ADHD etc. that is causing the deficient in being able to listen correctly or focus etc. but those are a lot harder to cope with then the typical autistic sensory things but visual is considered a sensory and verbal is considered a sensory and touch is considered a sensory sound is considered a sensory so they all can be considered parts of sensory processing problems. And like I said when it comes to hearing out side noises while I'm watching TV that has people with heavy accents it's hard for me to pick up on those heavy accents and know what they are saying even though they speak English well so I have to have subtitles because my brain drowns out the TV people and it brings to the forefront that outside noise from my dad washing dishes or rustling papers while he cleans the table or types on the computer or the dog barking instead of bringing the TV noise to the forefront. so like I said I try to subtitle everything I watch even if I don't necessarily need it for every single word for every single scene in the show some parts of it I will so it's good to have the subtitles there for when I need them and want to look down at them. But again as I said before most of my issues are mind over matter.


when it comes to the lotion like I said before it kind of bothers me so I've learned the back side of my hands and if it's trying to get my back I can't necessarily use the back side of my hand because it won't reach my back the same way so I have to put it on my phone and I just tried the best I can to do it really really fast and home something or talk to myself about something while I'm really really really quickly rubbing it on my back as fast as I can and then I rub my palm on my jeans or my shirt to get the excess oil off and then I go wash the hand with soap and water. I've tried to tell my brain think about something else and go and then I really quickly rub the lotion on and I think of something else and I try to do it as fast as I can and then I'm over the situation and I can move on and then I wash my hands really fast and then I immediately within 1 ns go to the TV over the dog and immediately embrace the situation from my mind as fast as I can because even five seconds is enough time for me to overprocess and overthinking overanalyze what just happened. and I do the same thing when it comes to cooking. When I first moved out I was 22 I think or 23 and I did not like cooking i.e. I mean I love it but I don't like touching the food I like to do the easy Lazylee around cooking so that I'm not touching Rob bacon around hamburger because now it's gonna be all over my hands and slimy and not just that but I know that there's bacteria on my fingers and if I go and touched it sink handle Ordet bottle of soap and getting good bacteria that can cause Knatcal or avian flu or you never know I'm getting that all over everything and hello I know that I'm cleaning it off correctly and then I can potentially put that back on myself and I get heebie-jeebies or justice line in general give me the heebie-jeebies but I have learned get tongs and working with bacon or gloves I've even found and the same thing of hamburger put on gloves with hamburger and it get one of those circular hamburger presses that makes the perfect size patty while I'm wearing the gloves. and then if I get any on my hands I just make sure that I turn the water on before when I'm forming the patties and then I touched a bottle of soap with my dirty hands and pour the soap onto my hands and do the 32nd rule and wash them off and then I grab this soap that has my germs on it and I soap up my hands and I wash off the bottle really well and then I can wash my hands one more time afterwards just to be on the safe side. and then I can safely turn off the faucet with clean hands and the soap container is now clean and my hands are clean I just have to tell myself think about something else you can do this you're a big girl. it's really not a problem anymore because I've done it so much. And now I know if I'm about to flip hamburgers and my hands are greasy I don't want to put that on the spatula that flips the burgers. Because a)-it's partially raw meat, and partially greasy . So I wash my hands really fast before I touch the handle or if it's gonna be too quick to be able to wash my hands then I get a paper towel to grab the spatula because I don't really want to have to washed out a bunch of times because I keep touching it and what not. and then I just throw the towel out and wash my hands so that next time I approach this bachelor I have clean hands . It's all just mind over matter mostly but like I said just thinking you've got this you can do this just wash your hands or use the back of your hands or use gloves there's ways around those things . I could even use gloves when putting lotion on people that never occurred to me until just now all that time I could be putting lotion on my dad with gloves on and he would still get his lotion and I wouldn't have to touch it. and excellent idea!! How ingenious of me !

 

[ilovetochat87]

Hope these things help you. and you know, when you learn these things and you overcome the sensory problems that shows progress with AS . I have told many people that I have learned mind over matter techniques and I have learned to wear gloves when cooking and like my dad he puts a plastic baggie like a sandwich bag over his sink knobs and one over his soap and one on each of his spices and seasonings and then he wears gloves on top of it when flipping the hamburgers and then if he doesn't have gloves he can still not worry because he's protecting the outside of his seasonings and his soap and his knobs and then he doesn't have to worry because he can pull the baggies back off of the containers the way you would take a glove off of your hand by pulling it inside out to keep the germ inside and you never touch it on your hands and then the bottle doesn't have to be washed after you cooked and touched it . That's ingenious! When you learn these coping mechanisms these techniques to overcome the sensory then it doesn't seem so bad you don't feel grossed out about touching hamburger because you had gloves on and now you can cook like a pro the way you've always wanted to without that barrier in your way . You know you have these techniques that help yourself to get through the problem like headphones putting them on when you're in a large setting of people anacondas bothering you just put the headphones on and try to pay attention but the headphones will help you with the noise level when you can do these things successfully in these ways you show progress in the AS and that shows maturity, growth, I have told many professionals that I do these things and they help me and they say that's very big of me that's very mature of me that's very grown up and I'm learning and that I should teach other people because other people with AS don't know these things and the majority of people with AS our daily riddled with these problems auditory sensory touching all kinds of things being too close to someone bothers them anxieties of bugs make it hard for them to go camping and do something that they might otherwise love if they didn't have that problem and when you learn to cope with them you don't have those troubles in life doesn't get in your way and you're not stuck at home all the time while everybody else gets to go out in life and experience fun. and they always tell me talk to other people in the autistic community and show them teach them the things you do that help you overcome these problems that help you so that you can get out in life and experience fun so that these things don't hold you back from life in general because 9/10 times you'll find people on the spectrum don't know what to do all they know is there scared of things that bothered by things they have intense LCDs they don't know how to be otherwise because they just know that's the way they always have been and Celule with it but they limit themselves because they can't go outside and experience life the sunlight might bother them so therefore they never go outside work too many sounds outside so they stay indoors where it's quiet over there afraid of swimming so they never go to the lake or the beach or the park because there's water and he stayed inside all day and never get to experience life but when they have these coping techniques and these coping mechanisms they can learn if I'm outside in the sun is bright put on really dark glasses and a hat and then they can experience outside for the first time and they don't seem to be bothered because it's dark enough for them sensory wise. And they think how ingenious! Why didn't I think of this many many many years ago I've been hiding inside my house when I could've been using this technique the entire time. And it's a lot of the Asperger or autism that keeps them from thinking of the common sense and putting two and two together that if the sun bothers me put on a freaking pair of sunglasses and a hat and sunscreen and tell yourself to move the Fergon and get over it and make yourself do that Make Yourself get the Frick over it and move on you got the sunglasses you've got the hat and you've got the sunscreen so move the from on now and get over it. and it's that simple but you have to train yourself it's not an easy overnight thing to just make yourself get over it you have to tell yourself to do that make yourself do it but it's a process like an OCD make yourself stop it you can do it you just have to have discipline and you have to want it well enough like stopping cigarettes. If you tell yourself I want this I want to live I don't want to die you have enough work you have enough want the drive is there enough then you can do it. given that I'm on the higher functioning side the aspergers side I am high enough functioning that I can think about these things someone that's lower functioning wouldn't have as much common sense which is just because of the syndrome it's not necessarily their fault that they lack common sense but given that I'm higher functioning I have a lot less symptoms of ALS and more high functioning more normal when I was tested they tried to tell me I really didn't have autism and the question what my mother was talking about because I was too high functioning that I really didn't qualify as having a disorder but as you get older you less and less your symptoms and you get more normal I guess if you will and people don't really notice that you have anymore unless they spend a lot of time around you and they see little things like overanalyzing and sometimes OCD and things like that they're kind of mild but still there but I mostly have come out of almost everything so I'm very very mildly on the spectrum in like very borderline to almost not having it anymore. Because as I got older I learned all these coping mechanisms and things and I don't really have trouble with sensory as much as I used to so people don't recognize the sensory problems as much as they probably would when I was a kid they don't think about the overstimulation as much as I had as a kid my anxiety isn't as bad as when I was a kid so I don't appear as obviously on the spectrum but I still qualify but I don't obviously look it works seem that way when people around me but my family knows those little things to look for that still qualify me but if people didn't know to look for those little things they would think I didn't have it all and as long as I don't tell anybody there's no need to tell because I don't really appear to be on the spectrum to a lot of people so unless it's a situation where it qualifies that I disclose my situation and I'm not even gonna say it I learned a lot of coping techniques and now I really don't have very many problems and a lot of people on the spectrum don't think about that so they still have these problems. but I contribute all of these things to when I was in high school and I had group therapy with other people on the spectrum and we talk to each other and we learn from each other what does one person do in the group that overcomes X thing that I can do if I'm in that situation we work from each other's situations and we learn if Susan was in the same situation as me what would she do how would she handle her AS in the same situation? and we learn through each other which is really nice and I kind of used that as I grew up to create these techniques that I now have wonderfully use that help me to mask that I have AS in many situations.

I hope this all helps you.

 

[WereBear]

I get visual distortions, like steam across my vision, and that's a sign I am approaching overload. I get out into nature, which is easy where I live and work, and that helps a lot.

Also, deep breathing.

 

[abby normal]

my sensory issues are merely irritants and not the paralyzing things that other people here suffer. an example- if I here an extraneous noise while i'm trying to hear something important like a message or a piece of music, it totally hijacks my brain and I have great difficulty "hearing through the noise." my internal noise filter seems not as powerful as that of normal people. this I inherited from both sides of my family tree who struggled with the same issues.

Yea its weird , your brain seems to pick out that noise and tune in to it even though its unwanted. After a while the sound becomes something totally different and not auditory but almost a physical entity that you battle with . I went to a farm when I was 7 and the normal farmyard smells and sounds became so overwhelmingly that I vomited every time I breathed in

when I was 7 I had problems swallowing food, I would gag unless I nibbled. I absolutely could not handle swallowing pills. if I tried i'd vomit.

 

[Lifesahaze]

Yes, sensory stuff is one of the worst parts - but can also be one of the best parts, too.

My hearing is ridiculously sensitive sometimes, which is a bit odd as I'm also hearing impaired. Even when I was a child it was a nightmare - my Mum biting her nails used to be the worst sound in the world and all I could do was escape (and get in to trouble). I hate mealtime noises, so we listen to music at mealtimes; I have headphones with music at work in shared office, and try and drown out noises I can't stand. Noises on the television are kind of ok as I just turn the sound off. Otherwise I just have to leave.

Unfortunately there are some visual stimuli I hate, including those stone chip floors which look like they're wobbling around, and certain patterns. One tip: never tell a colleague his shirt makes you feel sick. Apparently that's not the right thing to do. It's hard to avoid - sometimes you just have to look at the floor (or something else that's not so bad).

There are certain things I hate to touch, although I'm getting more adept at identifying them. I wear only clothes I am comfortable with, which is thankfully much easier nowadays as the 'cheap' jersey clothes are perfect. Can't touch terracotta, which means that everything in the garden has to be glazed (but that's not a huge problem).

I think the main thing for me was identifying what the problem is, and in which situations. Some I can deal with, and some I have to make the decision to avoid because they're too difficult to cope with.

 

[Mary Terry]

I too have issues with auditory issues . As a child everything everything was a problem for me and I seemed a lot more autistic than I did Asperger. I had all kinds of issues as a kid I had trouble with jeans I would have a giant cow and some chickens LOL if I would try to put on jeans so we discovered that the only similar type two jeans that I could physically wear without being overstimulated was like uniform pants that a lot of private schools make their kids wear. But otherwise I had to wear sweatpants or leggings but when it came to leggings they didn't have the leggings they do today they were the stupid kind of leggings that had the stirrups underneath which I've never understood why they bothered to have the stirrups but I would always cut the straps off . Because I didn't want those on my feet. And I totally had trouble with socks where the stitching that goes across your toe like right at the bottom of your toenails would drive me nuts and I have to have special socks with the stitching at the tip of the toe which I can't find anymore today but I've learned if it bothers me put the socks inside out genius why didn't I think about that as a kid . And I had a giant cow if I was in bed and something bothered me I would have to make the bed again I was a strange child. Thank God I grew out of that side of me alright so thank the Lord that I don't keep that side of my AS anymore. But I have mostly been bothered mostly by real people tap your fingers oh good lord that was even worse than the clothes issue. my mother has this nervous tick she does when she's stressed out . It's part of her depression or something she gets like weird anxiety from it or something along those lines and she always has to have really nicely done French manicure and she likes to flick her thumbnail and middle finger nail together and they make the most disgusting tapping sound that kind of sounds like two teeth smacking together and I always try to be patient with her but the more she does it the more I can tell that she's pissed off about something and she's getting even more aggressive with her fingernails and that's when I go "mom!" and immediately she says okay sorry I'm just nervous and I explained her that I understand that but that's driving me nuts and I want to punch something and she says okay relax I'm stopping and then if she really can't stop then she turns the radio up a little bit louder and does it kind of quietly.

Have you tried socks designed for diabetics? They are soft with minimal stitching.

 

[WereBear]

It was the sensory stuff that tipped me off. Since babyhood I would throw fits over itchy lace, annoying seams, and overstimulating pantyhose and tights. I was the Princess and the Pea; able to detect small changes in my immediate environment.

When I read Journal of Best Practices, the author included two pages of how his sensory issues guides him getting dressed in the morning. And I said to myself, "That's like me."

It only took days for me to explore further and say, "That is me."

 

[ms grey]

I have issues with some types of clothing - I just do not wear it if it pokes, itches, or whatever. It needs to be soft.

Foods. I was a picky eater as a child and forced to finish my meals. Now I am retired and eat what I like. I am returning to my native picky. Most pizza smells and some spicy food smells make me ill. Problem here is my husband loves pizza and spicy, smelly foods. I figure if that is the only issue, we are OK. I don't eat it and sometimes can escape by going to another room.

Sounds: loud and/or shrill cause anxiety. I try to avoid this but there are those inevitable trips to Walmart. I make a list for Walmart and try to go during times of less traffic. Same for the grocery store.

Unreasonable fears such as fear of spiders and fear of heights such as climbing a ladder. The fear of spiders would put me in a screaming terror fit earlier in life is now subdued in an internal dialog of reason. Climbing ladders is the same with a focus on one step at a time.

Fluorescent lights in old classrooms bugged me but I have not been around them for a while. If I did not get along with the work lighting, I would either make a reason why I needed an extra incandescent light at my work space or try to get near a window.

Open office plans: I got a choice of where to sit so I chose the rear corner by a window. It was still a challenge.

 

[JoyChaos]

i also have auditory issues. if there are too many noises i cant hear, i know makes no sense but i cant concentrate on what someone is saying to me whos right in front of my face but i can hear the customer 4aisles down scolding her child... i also hate the fabric made for sweaters and i cant stand socks. tags annoy me. i have holes in a few shirts from ripping th em out midshift in frustration. felt i hate cuz it catches all my rough skin the wrong way.

I do remember a time a fly flew really close to my ear and i freaked out for a good 5minutes while my customer was looking at me concerned lol

I went a long time in my life just avoiding certain things or adapting to them. forcing myself to try and get used to things i just couldnt. when i started reading about autism about a month ago everything EVERYTHING made sense

 

[WereBear]

i have holes in a few shirts from ripping th em out midshift in frustration.

I worked into an office, so I'd grab a co-worker and a pair of scissors to drag them into the ladies and cut them out right there.

 

[fairy_girl]

Car noises in general are the worst so I put on my headphones with my favorite music but I can hear everything around me so as long as I pay attention it's all the better. I hate the feeling of pantyhose, it itches and the feeling of my skin just sent jolts up my whole body. I'm so glad that the fad has gone away for the most part! Feeling a strappy heel straps across my foot like a fancy heels just rubbed my skin so I wear tennis shoes with laces. I cut out any tags that are inside of my clothes since they itch my skin badly when I was a kid and now on. I don't like the feeling of things on my hands so I wash my hands if I can't smell it or I don't feel it on me, I don't wash my hands to the point where my hands are raw so it's not an OCD thing just kind of.

If noises are too much I will scream to get my point across or if things are stressful I will make a sailor blush (or so I've been told for my whole life) to tell them to knock it off. I truly don't care if it comes off as being rude just get the hell away from me if I can't handle the beeping noises or anything. I've found that if I don't get enough sleep then that's only when it gets really bad.

I don't like people touching me, poking pinching and just generally touching to get my attention gets my fight/flight response going and honestly makes me want to punch someone. I have hummed and glared at people if they even try to do it out of spite. I wave to people instead of shaking hands (having my hand crushed isn't my idea of fun, macho bs imo) or I feel that I can trust someone then I'll shake hands but then I'll quickly get my hand back before they touch my hand for too long.

People that talk down to me or try to trick me by talking to me in circles, I wish that people would just get to the point and then I will ignore you if I choose. I hate fake people, it annoys me to no end.

 

[Mattymatt]

I guess since this is the first post on this new topic thread. I thought I start off with this. I am interested in hearing from anyone who has learned to cope and managed their sensory issues, and if so? What are your sensory issues and what things have you done to manage your sensory issues?

Wish I had some magical solution but it took medicine for me to overcome a good bit of my sensory issues, and even then, it's not perfect. I hear that marijuana might be fantastic at relieving this and I am looking into it further.