Worst sensory issue?

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I don't know if this will help you at all, because this might be just a weird personal thing, but I find that I deal with blood being drawn from the veins on the top of my hand much better than from the elbow pit. The needle going in hurts more on the hand, but the 'sucking' sensation is a bit more minimal; for me, at least. I now always request they use my hand, and the nurses always give me the strangest look and say "you know that it hurts more, right?" - haha.

I am most sensitive to sound. I find it difficult to listen to someone who is speaking very loud; and I really hate the sirens of police/ambulance cars (but on the other hand I know that those sirens need to be that loud).
Also, I can hardly understand someone if he or she is talking to me in a loud environment: It's difficult for me to filter the things I want to hear from the things I don't want to hear.

I'm also quite sensitive to light (I don't like flashing or very bright lights) and smell; and I absolutely don't like being touched if I'm not expecting it.

Two groups:

I'm sensitive to:
1. Smell (at least I can hold my breath for pretty long time )
2. Sound (close second, though my issues are primarily with prolonged unwanted input and understanding speech, not intensity)
3. Touch (I still only tolerate handshakes, family kisses, I can't stand romantic kisses and I have issues with that thing too)

I'm only lightly sensitive to:
4. Light (the weird thing is that I don't like sunglasses at all, they distort my view unpleasantly)
5. Taste (I had more issues with it when I was younger)

I'm really not sure what I'm the most sensitive to out of that list.

I would say that touch and sound are the top two. I dislike being touched and I also dislike loud sounds and I can hear a lot of things most people don't hear/don't pay attention to.

I'm also very sensitive to smells. I can smell when my mother is cutting a watermelon all the way in the kitchen and my door is closed.

I'm not super sensitive to taste like I am to touch, sound, and smell. I am more sensitive to the texture of food as opposed to the taste, I think.

Light isn't something I'm particularly sensitive to unless I'm trying to sleep. Even the light from my alarm clock or the moon bothers me then.

I feel faint just watching someone get the blood taken.

We hold a blood drive at work every year. Last year, my boss received a phone call, so I walked into the room where they were drawing the blood to get her, and I immediately got tunnel vision and my entire body went hot. My boss looked over and saw me, and yelled out for me to look away. I covered my eyes, relayed the message, and ran out of there as fast as I could.

About four years ago, we were doing blood typing in Biology class, and one of the girls sitting across from me had a bandage on her inner elbow from giving blood earlier in the day. I was feeling sick from looking at it, so when it came time to prick my finger for the blood test, I guess the combination of the blood flow and bandage on the girls arm was too much...I passed out, fell off of the lab stool, and hit my head on the hard floor, which resulted in a nasty concussion that has left me with severe vertigo issues ever since.

Most Severe
Smell
Sound
Sight
Touch
Taste
Propioceptive (hyposensitive)
Vestibular
Least Severe

None of my senses are normal, and overall I deal with severe sensory issues.

Sounds are the worst for me... Atleast in todays world.
Car horns - I can hear them blocks away and they cause a mental pain. Stutpid remote door locks...

Smell, I try to clean up when I get to work as best I can. I know there will be some smell with bicycleing or running. But it doesn't bother me when other smell. What really annoys me is car exhuast. It make me sick.

Bright light - I use to waer sunglasses. but in South Florida many wear them and most of them are unlikeable. I stopped wearing sunglasses because I didn't want to be anything like them.

Farm smells - I have lived in many different places, including farms. Those smells don't bother me.. But They seem to bohter most everyone else...

Kids and "normal" life sounds - for some reason they don't bother me too much.

Right up there with car horns - Skin crawling or feeling as if something is crawling on me... It seems to be worst when I can't pace or wave my hands...

The most sensitive? A tie between my sight, hearing and sense of touch. I need to shut out either sounds or field of view to venture outside. I can't stop feeling my clothes, my hair and whatever happens to touch me or brush me after all, so the other two are the ones that have to go if necessary/"take a holiday".

Hah, I can't count how often I was told to look at what I'm doing as a kid while I had to look elsewhere to be able to process things correctly and do what I was doing.

Smells can drive me insane, completely wreck my ability to think coherently. But since I like/enjoy lots of pleasant smells, it's not as bad as it could be. I got lucky there, even if I'm breathing in something thickly sweet and really need fresh air, I'll still survive for some time simply because I approve of the smell.

So it really could be worse. I know someone autistic and non-autistic who both absolutely can't seem to tolerate most smells because they don't seem to like about anything and will wrinkle their noses even about smells they themselves describes as unproblematic (sensory-wise) and weak but "icky".

My sense of taste is probably the only thing that's only minimally heightened and hardly a problem on its own. I only eat certain things to begin with because others don't taste right. Though rather than merely being a routine, this could be a sensory thing... no idea.

my order of sensitivity:

1. Light
2. Touch
3. Sound

4. Smell
5. Taste


regarding my sensitivity to light, this goes only for artificial light types like fluorescents and LEDs… these make me really feel sick and nauseous.

i hate to be touched, shake hands, give hugs etc. .. this is only possible for a (potential) partner.

i hate certain "wrong" sounds… background sounds (hard to concentrate), crowds (hard to understand what goes on! too much input), eating noises, but also sounds like a guitar sightly out of tune etc. (more or less perfect pitch related - although i don't have a perfect pitch!) and many other sounds

regarding my sensitivity to smell and taste, i don't have much of a problem, even both senses are rather sensitive.

note to the taste part though: i do have a problem with textures of things i put in my mouth...

Definitely sound - I always have to plug my ears in the presence of train horns, police/ambulance/fire sirens, leaf blowers, cars without mufflers, etc. I don't really like being around LOUD people or groups of people. In fact, every time I've gone into mental shutdown, the common thread is always the overload of auditory stimuli.

I have a sensitivity to light but this usually doesn't cause me too many problems. I do have to have DARKNESS in order to sleep, & no matter what time I go to bed, I always wake up at first light.

I used to be sensitive to the touch of certain fabrics & other things on my skin, but this seems to have passed in adulthood. I'm not really keen on being touched by people, but it depends on the person, context & situation. Strangers, no way; good friends, usually ok, though I'm not really into hugs & kisses. Making love, that's complicated - I'll save that for a separate thread.

As a kid I was an IMPOSSIBLY fussy eater, but I seem to have outgrown that in adulthood. Nowadays I can eat just about anything. Good thing because I love eating. Nothing in the realm of taste or smell ever makes me gag or vomit - my stomach is cast iron.

Whoops wrong thread! X3

But this is relevant to this one.

Mine is mainly noise.

Some noise I don't mind such as running machines except for really high pitched machines like air pumps and the like. I can't stand people or crowd noises, I really really really HATE loud crowd noise in a stadium setting like cheering and such so I avoid them at all costs.

Last edited by Zephri on 04 Mar 2012, 10:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

1. Sound. Especially sounds people make, like coughing. If someone has a coughing fit near me I go into serious freakout mode, I have to clamp my hands on my ears and mash them around to create a block for the coughing noise. If music sounds "sad" to me (my opinion on what sounds sad differs from everone else I've ever met) it sends me into a sad mood for a long time. So if I hear sad music I have to make it stop (if I'm not in control of turning it off, sometimes I panic and people laugh because it's 'just music').

And of course the usual loud noises (sirens/shouting/crowds) just being generally overstimulating, but those two things are the worst!

2. Touch. But really only when I'm not expecting it, or if someone I don't know is touching me.

3. Smell. If I smell something I don't like, it makes me not like what I'm looking at/listening to when I smell it. I associate it with that thing. Sometimes it's a person, and it takes a long time for me to stop associating that person with a bad smell, even if it wasn't them that smelled bad. Sometimes it's a song that gets ruined by a bad smell. Sounds so weird when I write it out...

4. Sight. I don't know that I have any issues here (can't think of any!)

5. Taste. I can't really say that taste has a big effect on me at all, if any.

Hmm, I'm having a hard time deciding on a 'favorite.'

One thing I only recently realized is that I'm hyposensitive w.r.t. taste. I'm always drowning my food in hot sauce, mustard, salt, and etc. Sometimes I take 'shots' of Tabasco onto my tongue when I'm watching TV. (It helps relieve the dry-mouth from some meds I'm on, so there's my excuse.) My sense of smell is also pretty weak.

5. Taste

4. Smell

3. Sight -- I start the morning with sunglasses on or the shades drawn. In the supermarket I also need them, along with a ball cap. (Why they need to keep it so bright that you could get a sunburn in there I don't know.)

2. Touch -- The air temperature and humidity affect pretty strongly how I feel. Whether that's an ASD thing or not, I don't know. I like tropical climates (i.e. southern part of USA) the best. Also, I don't like being able to feel the air passing over my skin when I'm walking or moving.

1. Sound -- this was much worse when I was a kid. The classic thing with fire alarms and such metaphorically ripping all of my skin off, leading to instant shutdown. I feel like I've spent my whole life practicing how to fight down that effect/response to loud noises.

Wow, I'm the only one to vote taste.

Eating vegetables(especially green ones) is excruciating for me, so I can't eat them except for corn(which actually isn't a vegetable) and maybe carrots. I gag on them if I don't eat them really fast. The same goes for pills. Beer and wine taste like gasoline to me. I think I'm a supertaster.

All of them but taste are very bad,
I put sound because though it is by far my most well managed, it is also my most severe. Even if it isn't a problem right now.
Smell is the one that right now affects me the most and is nearly as severe as the sound, just more situational.