To those diagnosed later in life: aware of sensory issues?

Post Reply New Topic

I like that screen name--KAOS. Reminds me of "Get Smart." I'm not in CONTROL, though LOL.

Nope....sensory issues are no joke!

The worst things are the ones that are dangerous--like when I have to park in a mall parking lot. If I'm not REALLY careful, I could really hurt some one and/or cost myself lots of money.

I do it, anyway, because I have to--but I dislike it intensely.

I´m 61 and was dxéd Sep 2013.
I have had a marked sound sensitivity all my life. Went into shock by strong sounds as little. All kinds of sounds bothered me and I´m still sensitive. It can vary from oversensitivity to normal speech to "closed ears" sensation.
My mouth/teeth were allways supersensitive and still are.
The memory of a foul smell could haunt me for a month or longer. It got stuck in my brain.
Lights don´t bother me much, but the perception can vary a lot.
As a kid I had to have tags removed and wear cotton under wool and hated seams - and didn´t notice, when I got a scratch/wound/black mark. But as a teen I managed to wear an icelandic sweater right on my skin, because I would look thinner with nothing under
Lots of little things come to my mind when I read read this thread:

Good question. The answer for me is that I also wasn't aware of sensory issues but I have always has sensory issues.

I know what they are now. Sound, light, touch, and smell.

I did have particular problems with my sense of smell when I was a child. I couldn't go into a perfume shop without nearly choking to death. But it was just passed of as if it was nothing (as I suppose it would be in those days anyway).

I've always had really sensitive hearing as well, so much so that my ears have been known to twitch to certain pitches. Never really thought twice about it though, I just thought it was funny (and so did everyone else).

Anyway...

I wasn't aware of most of my sensory issues until I discovered Asperger's. As a kid, when ever I brought up my sensory issues, I was told either that I was weird, or that I was a wimp and needed to suck it up and push through it. I was hassled so much about it that I learned not to say anything, even to myself. In the end, this just became another ASD issue that I hid from myself in order to prevent the relentless teasing that kids and people in general do.

As recently finding out about aspergers the sensory issues are one of those that suddenly clicked with me,before I knew about this I thought I was just being a baby or too sensitive like many people have called but it's funny that a few of you guys mentioned sun sensitivity if I stay out too long I get really tired or drained and also get headaches,as for other sensory issues I hate any noise when I'm trying to sleep at night like I mean anything especially if someone has the TV going while I'm trying to sleep and most of the time I need to wear ear plugs but yeah It never made sense why I was so sensitive to this stuff until now.

I'm not sure.
I always knew my senses don't work the same way as senses of others but I assumed there is no single pattern of how senses work. I have had my own problems such as need to cover ears when a train was stopping, closing one of my eyes toward the sun (the fun thing is I could stare at sun with the other eye...) or inability to stay in true wool sweaters but my mom couldn't stand different clothes than me and liked loud sounds as well as spicy foods, dad liked tasteless food and could hear everything, aunt was constantly complaining about people talking too loud, grandma didn't like being touched and grandpa could go outside in winter in only his underwear and not feel cold. Sensory issues run wild in my family so it was a norm.

As a kid I had problems with bright lights and sounds. Like being in a store and coming out into the sunlight basically blinded me. Hated camera flashes with a passion. And I loved seeing fireworks but absolutely hated the bangs. This was the case well into my teens for the light and twenties for the sounds. I basically didn't realize that anything was different from anyone else so I gritted thru it and learned to cope. As for touch I was never tactile defensive but kinda close, and for sure I don't like irritants on my clothes like tags (my wife cuts them off for me). But lately I have noticed an increased sensitivity to sound again. Like when my wife is putting away the dishes I have to leave the room.

Cheers, Dave

I didn't know I had sensory issues before I was diagnosed, but I've had that "uncomfortable in my own body" thing going on for as long as I can remember. I was plagued by itchy skin with no apparent cause, I was very sensitive to heat and cold, I often felt slight nausea, I couldn't stand still for long without getting an overwhelming urge to sit down and slouch, and I found it hard to focus when there was background noise or sudden movements. It was never possible to definitively demonstrate anything was wrong because I often had none of those symptoms when I was pursuing some obsessional goal or other.

I often used to describe myself as "subclinically ill." I thought my problem with background noise and sudden movement was down to plain intolerance on my part, possibly due to my coming from a rather quiet family. So it was quite a relief to start seeing it as autistic symptoms. It meant that I wasn't really a sociopath and that my physical symptoms were unlikely to be due to any undetected, dangerous physical illness.

I always figured I just had sensitive hearing compared to everyone else. For instance, back when tube televisions were still a thing, I could tell when my parents were watching TV upstairs at the other end of the house simply because I could hear the difference between the high pitched tube noise of the RCA TV upstairs over that of the Zenith TV I was watching in the living room.

I also joked that I came from a long line of prey because, "I hear better behind me and I can run fast."

My assumption was that everyone else had the same issues but were much better at ignoring them.

After my diagnosis, stuff liked this just made sense. I just figured everyone had these little sensory idiosyncrasies before. Now, it fits perfectly with sensory overload. Like today, where I woke up to my house reeking of feces because my dog had a seizure in his crate overnight and lost control of his bowels. I'm sitting in my office 3 hours later and everything here still smells like cleaning materials. It's as though my nose is over-smelling everything right now to compensate. "Hooray! This isn't poop smell! Let's take it AAAAAALL in!"

Yeah. Until a short while ago, I just figured everyone dealt with those issues.

I was diagnosed in my late forties, and I am AMAZED at the stuff I've read / learned on this site. I, like most others on this thread, just thought I was more sensitive to certain things----I didn't know there was a REASON. When I got my Aspie dx, I had already gotten so many other dx, that I was just like: "Fine----whatever----just throw it on the heap, with the rest of 'em". I've learned more about myself in 7 months than I have in all my 53 years. I mean, I've always known I was weird----always known that I did all these things----but, I just didn't know it could all be "accounted-for", so-to-speak.

Yeah, I wear sunglasses (with side parts) even when it's raining / overcast. I, pretty much, only wear 100 percent cotton----except, when I get dressed-up in heels and a skirt----but, even my "knock-about" dresses are all-cotton. There's several other things, but I can't think of them, right now.

Probably the most surprising thing I've learned about myself, is that I stim. I don't rock back-and-forth, or hit myself in the head, or flap my hands, etc., so I didn't know the things I DO do, are stimming.

Oh, I thought of another one.....

I don't like shaking hands with someone who doesn't have a firm grip. I've actually shaken hands with people who had a really loose, and / or soft grip, that made me feel like I was gonna throw-up or have a seizure.

The weird thing is, now that I AM thinking about these things, I notice things quite frequently that I can't recall if I ever did before, as the only reason I noticed now is because I'm looking hyper aware.

Like I never noticed how much chaotic or loud noises can bother me, I always figured I was just easily annoyed. But a while ago I was talking to my friend on the phone, but I was also trying to do something on my computer so I wasn't really listening. His family was being really loud in the background, and he started saying my name repeatedly in the same tone of voice, and I freaked out a bit for a second, and said something like, "Aaaugh, just hold on, I'm trying to get something done!! ! And tell your family they need to stop yelling!" Then I realized that the whole time I was saying that, I had started rocking back and forth and hitting the bottoms of my hands together. It felt so natural at the time that I almost didn't notice. I definitely don't remember ever doing that before, but it makes me wonder how many times I've not noticed things like that in the past.

I think I assumed that people experienced a lot of that input the same way that I did, though by my teens I realised that some things affected me far more, and in my thirties a hearing test showed that my perception of high frequencies was far more acute than 95% of the population.

I had never really compared the way I handled things like light, noise and texture to the way other people did, so I wasn't aware I had sensory issues. I also wasn't aware that my stimming was out of the ordinary in any way.

I was diagnosed at 45 yrs old. I always had sensory issues but I had no idea why. I thought I was prone to hayfever and simply didn't really like social activities (unless completely inebriated). I'm now almost 47 and my understanding of these things has been revolutionised. The trouble with late diagnosis is that we develop ways of dealing with issues and as a result we have difficulties with differentiating what we have learnt to cope with, versus our original difficulties. We learn to "hang tough" to the extent that we believe our own "bs". As older aspies diagnosed later in life we have a fair challenge unravelling the nature of the challenges we face.