Noise, Noise, NOISE!

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First post to this forum in a very long time, but i need some help here...

First, aspie mom is becoming deaf so when she watches TV i can hear it from the other side of the house, then there is her voice which she bellows out at a loud 70db (measured at 4ft distance), she has always spoken absurdly loud but due to the hearing loss it has gotten louder... Add to this a NT brother who loves movies, but i cant stand movies.. why? They seem to have lost the ability to get audio right, im either straining to hear the voices or being blown across the room by an explosion. The days entertainment is usually youtube cos TV, its agreed, is garbage. It has audio problems as well (understatement of the century) but the volume control can be adjusted between videos..

Then it finally broke me, mom pulling dishes out of the sink in a co-effort dishwasher load and the noise of the clanking, banging and grinding of glass and metal made me want to vomit...

As i get older i seem to be getting worse.. while i know my mother is getting louder (deaf as a post) so is the rest of the world it seems...

And noise cancelling headphones? Ha! Tried that but its not useable, why? I cant tell what anyone is saying, this goes for people wearing masks these days as well...

What on earth do i do? This is wearing me down by the day and, i cant.....

Help????

Also, if this is the wrong section of the forum for this, please forgive and redirect me...?

Do the ear defenders mute all sound then?

sorry for the delay...

the 'ear defenders' mute all sounds equally which makes it to where i cannot understand what is being said.
the masks that many have to wear in this 'new age' i can often not understand even with nothing on my ears...
can i hear them? yes but its just noise inside other noise...

tho i honestly havent tried them in the home... i didn't really think of using them indoors since they weren't needed in the past... its just that... things are getting louder the older i get...

does the 'sensory overload' part of autism get worse with age?!?! i ask that as someone who is knocking on 40.

There are protective earplugs for musicians, AFAIK some claim to be tuned to allow certain frequency like speech, I don't know how true these claims are.

I've ordered plugs with custom fit mold from local hearing aid company and use them when I attend loud events like concerts and weddings. It reduces levels to bearable and usually I can still talk to people without removing them. Not sure if this solution would work for long term use.

You can try to create sound proof zone in your room, similar to portable audio recording setup, it doesn't really need to be big, can be as small as a large bucket only for your head to work very-very well.

Definitely: you need someplace safe you can go to get a sensory break--perhaps both someplace outside and someplace inside. Try communicating how important this is to your mom, so she might understand when you say you need a noise break elsewhere.


I'd recommend captions on the TV, but I know lots of folks don't like that.

You could also try talking with your mom about not shouting (although I guess you've tried that.)

At the very least, everyone needs a safe, quiet place. (I liked the library.)

Sorry if this response is a little late.

We had problems with the TV volume exactly as you describe. Our solution was to get Dad some wireless headphones. He now has the TV muted and uses them all the time.

Right now I'm listening to music on my computer and he's listening to the TV with his headphones on...no idea if this would solve your issue though.

We did buy a second set of the same headphones for the TV in the dining room but this didn't work. These are now sometimes used so two people can listen to the living room TV with it muted.

I have a few pair of over the ear (gun range type) hearing protectors.

Canisters of Regular foam earplugs.

A special (quite expensive) ~10db reduction attenuated ear plugs. (Mine are Eargasm brand).

I change what I use depending on my needs at the moment. I am very sensitive to sound, and yes the world at large does seem to be going deaf

I have also noticed that elevated levels of dopamine seem to reduce the sensitivity, whereas low dopamine levels make it worse (this may be unique to me, but I thought it worth mentioning in case it had some universal application).

Sounds like you lipread to supplement for auditory processing issues. It's pretty common among autistic people - one of the reasons for avoiding eye contact.

As learning to lip read won't help much right now, what trying sign language instead?

on a serious note I hope things get better for you.

Great question... I'd like to know if sound sensory sensitivity getting worse with age is common or not, too. (I've only recently realized I'm sound sensitive--mostly when my 2 1/2 ADHD kids get randomly rambunctious or incessantly chatty about minecraft. )



This sounds very plausible to my life experiences--as little as I recall--in that at least my emotional reactions and mental logic are worse the more I'm stressed.
-excited play as a kid =
-sleep deprivation w/ kids + crying babies =

A couple more comments:

i) I used to listen to talk radio a lot in my commute. I was constantly turning it up one notch (e.g. 12, 13, ... 16) more around the highway noise over time. Around the same time as I began noticing this trend getting worse, I was working for ~3 months around very noisy machinery. In reading the Environmental Safety Criteria for testing noise hazards, it seems that collective sound over time--not just brief loud noises.

I set a limit of volume 8 on the road and 11 on the highway, while I also was able to stop working around the machinery. My hearing has definitely improved (though isn't and hasn't always been great).

My first point is: could your mom's hearing loss be worsened if she's blasting the TV? (Again, I highly recommend closed captions, if she'll try them.)

ii) In a similar manner, could your increasing sound sensitivity possibly be exacerbated by any of the following:
-sleep deprivation (especially over time)
-stress (again, over time)
-exposure to ever increasing and long periods of loud TV, your mom, etc.

Hope you can take frequent sensory breaks, walks outside, get good sleep, and de-stress in many ways.

Maybe take a walk with your mom on a daily basis? (Perhaps she'll be a little less likely to yell out in public? And, exercise is good for everyone.)

Yeah, there's no free lunch when it comes to hyperacusis and trying to limit it but also hearing people talking in the face of louder noises. I'm partially deaf in my right ear, but also experience hyperacusis in both. I'm alright with talking, but anything over that and the ear muffs have a chance of coming out. It's also frequency related for me, so some noises that might be loud but low frequency don't bother me as much. Hammering is bad for example. Funnily, cars don't bother me too much, though I often just put the foam plugs in halfway there (the same for most things that don't bother me much).

Sound sensitivity tends to increase if the insult continues at whatever is your new "damaging" level. It hurts because that level of noise is above the threshold of what your ears find comfortable, which can sometimes raise again back to close to normal, but I've seen many try and not get anywhere there (sound exposure therapy). Sometimes there's an underlying chronic inflammatory issue which the initial insult caused or from some other condition. There's a lot of causes and things involved. Muscles, bones and nerves. Tinnitus usually accompanies it. Autism's hypersensitivity will be a few things and might overlap with the others in some ways, and the auditory processing disorder can have hypersensitivity to sounds, yeah.

I can't recall having such from my autism. I just have trouble singling out sounds in a crowd there. Too many gunshots from a handgun indoors without hearing protection on did my hyperacusis. I kinda messed up my right vestibular apparatus there too, so if I close my eyes and put my feet together (heel to toe) I'll fall over to that side.