Noise and lights: what counts as sensitivity?

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On another topic, whalewatcher wrote:

I never thought of myself as having sensory issues. I see a specialist soon, and they will probably ask. How would I know? What are the clues, for or against?

Sound: I avoid company and generally have a silent room (no music on, or sometimes talk radio if it's interesting). So sound is not something I have much experience of. I find loud music uncomfortable - when I am forced to go to a disco or hear amplified music on stage I have to put tissue paper in my ears or leave. Is that not normal? Also I then got tinnitus in my 30s. Would that be related to sensitivity or is it just bad luck?

Unexpected sounds: I never react to loud bangs. Others would jump and I just register it as data. In contrast, an unwanted gentle touch is unpleasant.

Light:, I never felt the need to wear sunglasses when others did (though possibly because they never fit my large head), and even find 3D movie glasses give me a headache. And I always had excellent eyesight - I could read signs that others could not. What counts as sensitivity? I am assume I don't tick any boxes there.

What are the signs of sensitivity, for and against?

Last edited by trappedinhell on 26 Dec 2011, 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm hypersensitive to noise - it distracts me too much, causing irritation.

I am not hypersensitive to light. In fact I'm the one who leaves all the lights on in the house.

Saw that post myself and have been thinking about it all day lol. My senses....

I have very few problems with audio stimulation - in fact I quite like loud music, so long as it´s a good quality sound system and not actually hurting my ears. Sudden noises will make me jump but I don´t think any more than anyone else. I find being in a room full of noisy people irritating but usually tolerable in small doses. I am terrible at listening to more than one thing at a time.

As for vision, have always been slightly sensitive to light - used to wear photochromic glasses in my teens, long before I had even heard of AS. I love vivid primary colours, and lack of colour depresses me to the point where I have moved to a sunnier climate and don´t enjoy going home, where it´s grey about 250 days a year.

Touch/taste - generally sensitive, almost translucent skin but not much problem with clothes or anything like that. I totally hate most veggies - more for the texture than the taste - can at least tolerate drinking vegetable juice even if I don´t love it but eating most of them as-is will make me retch.

Smell - I´m a lifelong smoker until very recently so sense of smell has long been pretty poor. Stopped smoking for 2 and a half years before and smell didn´t improve significantly. Whatever, don´t ever remember having any abnormal issues here.

I have no idea which of the above relate to AS and which are just me tbh. Point is, I don´t think there is any such thing as a typical aspie any more than a typical NT.

I'm very sensitive to the dark but not to the light. I have to have a few LED nightlights in order to be able to sleep.

What bothers me most with sound is complex and busy environments; fairgrounds, packed bars, places with bad acoustics that echo such as swimming baths. I cannot differentiate between sounds and tend to withdraw into myself, though any thought at all can be difficult.

I don't like fireworks or sudden bangs, sirens or motorbikes. All those will trigger the fight or flight adrenalin rush.

Loud music is usually ok as long as it is my own! I rarely go to rock gigs or clubs any more but often the sound in such places will leave me confused or sick feeling (especially so with heavy bass that you can feel).

I don't think light is such an issue for me, or at least I can't think of any specific examples at the moment.

Sound: I am severely distracted by background noises. I have almost no ability to filter out background noise. Frequently, I need to leave a situation because of it. At home I always have fans running for white noise. White noise does a decent job at filtering mid & high frequency background noise. I can't sleep at all without a fan.
I find vacuum cleaners EXTREMELY unpleasant, almost to the point of physical pain. Sirens & babies are also very unpleasant sounds for me.
I do enjoy loud heavy metal music though. Probably because it has a lower range of frequency than other stuff. I'm most sensitive to high frequency noise/sound/music. A violin to me is like having a knitting needle shoved in my skull.

Light:I have excellent low light vision. I keep my home dimly lit with blinds closed. I rarely go out in sunlight. Too much sunlight makes me feel sick and hurts my eyes.

Smell: many smells bother me, particularly alcoholic drinks, especially wine, gin & scotch. I can't be within 10 feet of anyone drinking those things. I also don't like excessive food smells, I could never work in a kitchen. I tried a day and a half once at a burger king, it made me ill.
Everything I eat has to get past my nose first.
I actually think I smoke as a barrier to other smells. Cigarettes are very good at overpowering all other smells. If I am in a smoke free environment, I have to put up with all the other unpleasant smells around.

Taste: it's tied in with smell & touch. My food decisions are based on how something smells or feels in my mouth. I really don't like unfamiliar tastes. I rarely experiment with food. I eat the same things all the time.

Touch: I can't stand light touch, I have to train girlfriends not to touch me lightly on the back of my neck, it makes me want to jump out of my skin. Also I only wear soft fabrics that breathe like cotton. Clothes have to be loose fitting so I don't overheat. I never tuck shirts in. I also will cut the tags off most shirts.
I am quite sensitive to all activity in my body. I feel the food I digest all the way through.
I am also insanely ticklish, my older sister used that as her greatest weapon against me. But I have to admit sometimes it was fun. But other times maybe she pushed it too far, she'd get me so worked up, when I was little, she could just point at me and make me jump & squirm.

I am usually bugged by people being too close to me. I am protective of the space within 2-3 feet of me. And I only hug people I know very well. I am not a "touchy" person. I will jump a little if somebody touches me unexpectedly. Sometimes I will flinch even if I am expecting it.

@OP: Do you experience sensory overloads and shutdowns and meltdowns in response to sensory overloads?

I think that this is the best way to tell if you have sensory issues that interfere with your functioning. A lot of people don't like certain sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, a whole nasty sensory profile unique to each person, but that is not the same as sensory issues that screw up your brain for hours or days at a time.

Based on what I've read about many people's experiences, it seems that the sensory issues most indicative of autism are the sensory overloads that cause shutdowns and meltdowns, that significantly diminish a person's cognitive functioning. Shutdowns cause you to not be able to think and feel and do at all. Meltdowns cause you to lose control of your thoughts and feelings and doings.

For me, all kinds of sensory stimuli cause shutdowns and less frequently meltdowns. Eating noises are a special kind of sensory stimuli that cause massive anxiety instead of shutdowns and meltdowns.

I don't think so. (EDIT. MAYBE?) But is that dependent on whether you feel in control?

I ask because I was raised in a very religious environment where everything felt very safe. Also I was tall, intelligent and had a great family around me, so I breezed through school, no bullying, no stress. It all felt like a dream that I was watching from somewhere else. I was always able to avoid bad situations and always felt in control of my life (in hindsight this was an illusion!) Are meltdowns always unavoidable?

The only time I ever felt scared or out of control was when I was pushed into joining cub scouts at age 9. I changed from an always happy child to an always worried child. It wasn't noise and lights in particular, but just the chaos that I was not used to. I can vividly remember the noise, but it didn't strike me as significant at the time. It was just a situation I really didn't want to be in.

When I became an adult and started to question things then I felt less in control. Then I suppose there was more possibility of meltdown, but as an adult I was again able to avoid the worst. I remember being asked at a church function to give a microphone to a visiting speaker when he arrived. I ended up outside the building crying. I was in my mid 20s. Not really a noise and lights thing, but I suppose it counts as a meltdown.

I had a near- meltdown when I ran a church in a remote village, and I could see a mental breakdown approaching. I had to leave the church completely, after 34 years. It was the only way out. It led to the divorce (we only married because of the church). Now it feels like standing outside the city that kept me safe all my life, because it no longer kept me safe. but now I am in a desert and don't know how to survive.

Finally, I had to leave work with depression, to avoid panic attacks. but again it was not noise and lights.

It's a funny thing. When I was very religious I sometimes lived in cities and liked it. Since then I have always lived in the remote countryside and now the noise and lights of cities scare me. But maybe that's normal? There are so many variables. It's hard to tease out what's really happening.

Last edited by trappedinhell on 26 Dec 2011, 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am sensitive to unexpected sounds, too. Like if I am out for a walk and I hear the bark of a dog, screeching brakes, the sound from a fire truck, or a loud bang I immediately sort of jump and my heart starts beating quickly.
My house is quiet a great deal of the time, too, and I don't have company very often. But I must have some kind of noise so that I can sleep..I have the TV on all night long. I tried the radio, but I find it keeps me awake because a song comes on that I haven't heard in a while, and I begin singing along and jamming to the beat.
I am sensitive to smells as well. When I was working, some smells annoyed the heck out of me, like the lady who wore too much Perry Ellis 360 cologne - that doesn't smell good on anyone. Or those co-workers who microwaved popcorn every hour on the hour or some stinky fish for lunch. Or those co-workers who had severe morning breath/sinusitis/halitosis that were all up in my face discussing my work. I mean, seriously?!

@OP: Here are a few of my sensory overload incidents. Maybe you'll be able to find a match for these within your own experiences.

One of my worst meltdowns was at a photography studio when I was around 5 years old. It must have been the bright lights and flashes that set me off and made me scream and flail the whole time that I was there and go running out of the studio to run around screaming down the street outside while my father chased me and tried to calm me down to no avail for hours. No pictures were taken that day. This was an example of a meltdown with a very clear sensory cause. I remember nothing of this incident, and it is common for me not to remember the details of what happens during meltdowns.

Fast forward to me as an adult sitting in a chair watching a video on the computer while a bright incandescent light bulb is shining directly into my eyes. This shut down my brain so quickly that I forgot that I was hypersensitive to light and should get away from this light bulb before it shuts down my brain. I didn't move away until my mother turned off the computer, so this light bulb was shining in my face for at least half an hour. Afterwards, I had a shutdown in which I couldn't think straight for a week.

An incident occurred on the subway in Boston, and I think that it was an example of a significant drop in cognitive functioning. I had talked to several people that day and walked around a lot on the busy city streets, so I was quite overloaded from the sensory stimuli and the social interactions. On my way to the airport, I forgot where I was and where I was going, and I ended up getting off at the wrong stop three times in a row, each time utterly confused about what was going on and not knowing what I was doing. Like a zombie, I just got off the subway every time it stopped. Then, I had to wait for the next one to get back on. Normally, I know where I am and what I am doing there and where I am going. That time, I had to think very hard about these things just to figure out these basics.

Thanks. I have had nothing like those first two experiences. The third event is easy to relate to, but I have never had it that bad.

Thanks again. I think it is clearer now.

As far as sound goes, it goes beyond just loud noises for me. There's also an element of misophonia, when even relatively quiet noises can ruin my day.

ASD sensory stuff seems to be an umbrella term for various things.

There's hyperacuasis, which is basically pain from normal-level stimuli. I have that somewhat with light, but it's not a big deal. As far as sound, I do jump from backfiring cars and such, but loud sounds are just as fine as quiet -- as long as it's consistent. IOW, loud music is fine and silence is fine, but a jackhammer that goes off for 5 seconds every 3-4 minutes is hellish. I once lived near a highway where a car would go by every few minutes at night. It wasn't loud at all, but it made it really, really hard to sleep.

It can also mean "superpowered" senses. Say, being ablt to hear a soft conversation on the other side of a house, behind 2 closed doors. (I did that as a kid, but now my ears ring a lot so my hearing's not that good, anymore.) Another is being able to see tiny details of objects from a distance. I.e. being able to see individual hairs on a bee's back, or a single grain of salt on a table from several feet away.

And there's sensory 'processing' problems. A few days ago I had to go to Costco and it was packed with people (and bright lights, etc.). All the varied movements, colors, sounds, and smells of all those people made it incredibly hard to think. I ended up feeling like I was going to lose sense of where I was and what I was doing and what I was supposed to be doing. Later, when I got home I was (mentally) exhausted.

There's also "central auditory processing disorder," which basically manifests as difficulty turing speech sounds into words. A common thing seems to be people needing to mentally loop the sound in their mind in order to find the words. (I do that.)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

My mother has several sensory sensitivities that fall into the category of hyperacusis. She hates watching movies in movie theaters, because the volume of the sound is painful to her.

Sometimes, even in the absence of painful hyperacusis, perceiving too much detail through every channel can cause overload by itself. Ack, why are there so many individual wall dents and carpet fibers on the walls and floors?

When I was a kid I remember seeing peoples' hair -- like each individual strand -- all at once. Holy crap. I experience that less nowadays, though. I guess it's a benefit of having bad eyesight, now.

Noises that most people see as quiet and unnoticable can easily irritate the crap out of me. Other than that, I don't think I have any other over-sensitiveness to noise and light. I have a good attention to detail, but that's a different thing entirely.