neroswim.blogg.se - Sensory overload meltdown

Like many things with my high functioning autism, I was under the false assumption that everyone suffered or had the same problems as me. Like my other sensory overload issues it causes me to become tired, upset, not in control (if I cannot escape or reduce the noise) and sometimes angry.

I can shut out noises sometimes, but other times I can’t which affects me a great deal. Such as a crowd of people talking or when my youngest son cries whilst my older son is shouting or talking loudly.

A mixture of loud noises is also a trigger for me.

I will cover or block my ears if the sound becomes too loud, at the expense of looking odd to people around as it is too painful. But the negative is that loud sounds are even louder causing me discomfort that normal people do not experience until the sound gets much louder. This means that I often hear things in the distance that other people do not.

I have a greater sensitivity to sound than other people.

I ‘m always startled by an unexpected noise (especially if it is loud).

I try my best to follow one of the conversations, but cannot filter out the other and then lose track of what is being said. I get so confused by it that I stop complete stop communicating until I can process it all. Especially when more than one conversation is happening at once so there is a criss cross of information.

Conversations with more than two people also causes me sensory overload.

At one point I stopped drinking out of glasses and used plastic cups instead because I hated breaking glasses so much.

I can easily have a meltdown if I drop a glass as this triggers emotions immediately (without fail) such as panic, being scared, not knowing what to do and anger.

The ways in which noise affects me the most are below: I always thought that I was quite unaffected to noise overload with my high functioning autism (Asperger’s Syndrome) but the more I have thought about it the more I have realised that I am very affected by noise and always have been.