Vestibular & Proprioceptive Sensory Issues

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I seem to be hypersensitive to taste, to the point of having similar food avoidance issues to supertasters, and tasting various foods and beverages as extremely bitter when others don't seem to find them particularly bitter at all. However, I also seek spicy and sour tastes, even though I am sensitive to them. I found it interesting that my niece and nephew can barely perceive sour flavors, but seem to have a similar or possibly lower tolerance for sour foods than I do, even though many things they do not even register as sour, I do register as sour.

I was very much into seeking vestibular sensation and I would get dizzy as a child. I hate some perceptions such as being in a vehicle when it makes a turn and I am forced to move, but I love swings, spinning, etc. I think I am hypersensitive in some ways and hyposensitive in others. I'm not really sure. I just remember I rode Space Mountain multiple times a day when I was visiting both Disney World and Disney Land.

Proprioception is for me hyposensitive and I don't normally seek it as a sensation. There are situations where I need to ground myself with pressure in order to cut down on my anxiety and frustration - say being in a crowded store. People seem to move randomly and somewhat violently without any warning whatsoever and I feel like people are likely to crash into me at any moment, even if they're not nearby. I found with shopping carts I can lean on my forearms and the pressure makes it easier for me to judge where I am relative to people, and thus cuts down on the anxiety and frustration.

This is not restricted to crowded areas. I recall being in a room when someone else is tidying makes me fairly nervous, and being in the kitchen with another person often results in me leaving the kitchen until they're done, or at least used to. Ever since I identified this particular issue, I've made more effort to continue what I'm doing despite the other person, and things seem better than they had been in the past.

I have similar taste issues (although I love salty things, so obviously details are different).

Have you heard of supertasters (link)?

This section was of interest to me:
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I don't fit into this 100%, but I have rarely seen so many foods I dislike for being bitter grouped into one list. I love carbonation though (and crave the sensation of drinking carbonated drinks), and I eat chili peppers whole sometimes. I found it interesting that my niece is far less sensitive to spicy heat (capsaicin) than I am, in that she thinks cheddar and jalapeno cheetos are not hot at all, but I find them hot enough and prefer the flavor over flaming hot cheetos which are just basically really hot with little flavor. And yet, when we go out to eat for Chinese, I have barbecued pork with hot mustard as an appetizer and General Tso's Chicken for dinner, and eat the peppers themselves, and she can't tolerate this level of heat.

On the other hand, there are some dishes marked as spicy on restaurant menus that register as barely spicy to me. Er, anyway, I thought you might find the supertaster stuff interesting.

Yep - and supertasters are associated with a particular genetic thing that you can test with simply whether you can taste a particular chemical or not. Not everyone who can taste it is a supertaster, but not everyone can taste it at all. I remember tasting that in high school, and have no memory of what it tasted like, but I remember it having a disgusting taste. Other people who can taste it who tasted it similar time periods ago can't imagine how I can't remember - I explained how this sort of overly strong reaction is entirely normal for me for all my senses.

But yeah, I'm definitely a supertaster. I also love carbonation. I'll eat cabbage, but definitely it has something that I'm supertasting in a negative way in it. Alcohol is another interesting thing for me - I taste the alcohol no matter how low it goes if its meant to be an alcoholic drink (even when you're not meant to taste it), but at the same time, I can drink it no matter how high proof it goes. Some alcoholic drinks, like most wine, also have the thing they seem to be referring to here. Coffee, grapefruit...yeah, this list is accurate. I like the smell of coffee, the taste is way too strong. Soy doesn't bother me, just textures of most of the things that end up made out of it. Olives definitely. Salt very much so. I very much supertaste salt. It's going to be an interesting challenge having me who can basically eat dishes with no salt added and people who can eat salt straight in the same household eating the same meals.

I've read about the chemical but I do not recall ever having taken the test. However, I know I taste things in ways that others don't.



I can taste alcohol no matter what also. Hard alcohol is the most palatable for me. Wine, beer, and ale is virtually undrinkable - so bitter as to be horrid. I see people drink glass after glass of wine, but a few sips and I hate it. I have hated olives all my life but at this point I do not even remember what they tasted like. Salt, I used to add a lot of salt to my food as a child, but I don't do so quite so much anymore. I love pepper, though. I hate hate hate black coffee, and the coffee I drink I forgot to mention I'll put all kinds of other things into it to alter the flavor. One favorite for awhile for me was pepper and cinnamon (spiced coffee). I loved that. Grapefruit, spinach, and cabbage are disgustingly bitter to me. I can't stand drinking much grapefruit juice or eating grapefruit. I never could understand how other people could eat these things.

Can one be both hypersensitive and hyposensitive at the same time? For the same sense?

As an example: interoception - I'm bad at feeling my heart beat (unless I do strenuous effort), but I'm hypersensitive to anything that happens in my GI tract (I have IBS too); hearing - there are sounds that I simply cannot stand to hear (somebody shouting or screeching), but I also listen to loud music, in order to seek stimulation out of it; smell - I usually have a bad sense of smell, but there are some smells that seem terribly strong and aversive to me...

Thank you for posting the checklist :o Apparently besides my hypersensetive with touching and sound and smell too sometimes, i also seem to be vestibular o_o I never knew that there was a dysfunction for that, well i learned something new, apparently i also have poor tactile perception, i don't know if that counts too in this thread? I can sort of cope with sound now thanks to my medicine also apparently, i don't think it actually wears of when i grow older, because before my meds i would go crazy near a building site, now i can put it into the background more :) You know i'm seeing my therapist today and i'll discuss with her what i discovered thanks to you ^^

Yes. It seems to be particularly common for these "other" sensory systems for whatever reason. Maybe because they are more complex in nature? I personally seem to be both hyper- and hyposensitive in the proprioceptive and interoceptive senses. And while I'm hypersensitive to bright lights and such, I have terrible visual descrimination abilities. I don't really know how all to describe my vestibular sense. I clearly am hyposensitive and crave/seek vestibular sensation, but I also am extremely clumsy and often lose my balance.

I like roller coaster but they have little effect on me (got told off as I was upside down, doing x miles a hour and pointed out my mates car as we went past). Used to be clumsy and fall over a lot but got better through practice (although still no good on ice).

My strongest sense is smell/taste and I am addicted to pepper as well as hot/spicy food (love Indian/Thai) also I can taste 'tasteless' alcohols even in very small amounts (Usually followed by the comment 'Oi a little more in here please') but put an olive or lychee in a dish (even at homeopathic proportions) I can taste it and reject it.

I've a hypersensitive vestibular sense. It's very annoying, relatively small movement sensations make me dizzy and throw me off balance. I do yoga and when I lift my head from being upside down I have to do it extremely slowly or else I feel like I'm being knocked backwards. At theaters when people press their feet against the back of my seat and suddenly remove them I get startled because I feel like I'm going to fall. I do like jumping up and down on trampolines and jogging though so I'm not sensitive to all movement.

I'm not quite sure how to classify my proprioceptive sense but I know it's not quite normal. I think it's mostly under responsive, which I find odd because I am over responsive in every other sense. I have 20/20 vision yet I still bump into things and knock things over frequently. I've lived in the same room my whole life and I still bump against the wall when walking through my bedroom door on a daily basis- I just can't seem to judge how close I am to it. I've made a fool of myself on more occasions then I care to admit by struggling to put on jackets and sweatshirts; I need to be able to see the sleeve and move slowly in order to get my arm through it, I also can't button properly without looking at all the buttons. However, when I go to crowded areas I get very anxious and feel like people are going to bump into me, also during gym class or when on playgrounds as I kid I'd always feel like balls and stuff were going to hit me even when they weren't. I don't know if that counts as proprioceptive sensitivity or visual sensitivity, or a little of both.

I think that I have interoceptive issues like this. I can sense my heartbeat (and may be hypersensitive to it given this is where a lot of my panic attacks start...), but I have trouble telling the difference between the ambient temperature changing and my body temperature changing, have issues properly locating internal pain, etc. This combined with undiagnosed fibro led to a lot of ER visits.

I love when WP makes sense of something in my life. I figured out in that heartbeat topic and reconfirmed in this link that I have awful interoception. The idea of feeling my heartbeat from the inside without intense concentration (I have to sit still in a quiet room, hold my breath, and clear my mind) was foreign to me not long ago.

But I think I have super proprioception. I am always super aware of my muscles and ligaments. I am always stretching because I can't stand the feeling of being even a little stiff. As a child, I would throw myself onto the ground at speeds high enough to send me rolling when I hit. I would jump off of things and land either shoulder first or with just enough foot contact to not hurt myself as I crumpled and rolled. Pretty much everything on that list that I don't do is related to my natural desire to not touch people. The only thing I don't do in that list for no reason is grind my teeth. I hate anything resembling a roller coaster. I can't take it. The best I can do is clench all of my muscles and position myself so that I feel like I have some degree of control, but I still hate the way it feels to move that fast and get slung around like that. It's not even proper fear. It's just terrible.