Category Archives: sensory overwhelmed

A Taste of Sensory Bombardment

Here is a PSA that is trying to give a taste of sensory overload in autism. It is very hard to depict but it does give a hint of what it is like when too much information is coming in at once.

Emotional Self Regulation and Autism

In autism there is so much work to be done by professionals, by parents and by those of us with autism. I myself struggle daily to do normal things. It isn’t easy to deal with an environment that is visually and auditorally stimulating to a painful level. So my work is on enduring the environmental challenges while appearing cool, calm and collected. The never ending challenge for someone with  a fragile sensory system is that ordinary activities may take extraordinary effort to navigate successfully. Getting oneself able to do this consistently is a big deal because living fully is the goal. Clearly  practice is how one’s tolerance for situations that are challenging improves, but this can be more than tough for parents who have to walk into a behavioral minefield again and again not knowing what will, or may, set off their kid because  outbursts may be consistent or not clearly consistent in cause.

Professionals guess quite often why a person who has autism is acting in a particular way. Guesswork is natural but it is not reliable. This is because the forces that are at play in autism are still not known. So, the guesses may help or they may make things much worse. Nevertheless, working on self regulation and tolerating a wide variety of settings is much more essential than many other goals in autism treatment.

Sensory Processing Issues in Autism

In autism so many things are our of whack it’s a pretty full-time job just making it through the day. I’ve described the motor problems, especially between mind and body. Now I’d like to address some issues related to sensory processing.

We have the major senses of sight, hearing and touch. I love taste and smell, but obviously they are not the primary senses. Soma includes kinesthesia, or movement, as a kind of sense. It includes body awareness. Normal sensory processing is generalized, meaning it is adaptable and can cope in a variety of contexts. It is what you do automatically. For example, if you converse in a noisy room you automatically tune out the background din, but a person whose auditory processing is global is blasted equally by all sounds. Then processing become overload. On the other hand, a person who micro processes might get locked into tuning  into the same sounds over and over. Sometimes people who are overloaded due to global processing  may try to cope by obsessively listening to micro-selective, familiar tunes.

The same applies to sight. You focus near, far, or on what’s necessary while ignoring non critical sights. The TV program, Brain Games, showed how normal brains are fooled easily in visual processing. We call it optical illusions, but it’s really proof of our processing selectivity. In fact, our brain is selective to protect us from overload. But when our brains can’t control the overload, which can happen with autism, we can be overwhelmed or scattered in perception or alternatively, we can pick a minute visual target to distract and comfort us. I am guessing you know people who have watched the same movie or cartoon thousands of times to cope with sensory overload, though it may be beyond boring.

I do believe these skills improve with practice. Mine have  very much, but it is a lot of work to change this kind of neurological pattern. However, I have hope in neurological plasticity and in the determination to improve.

Struggling for Self Control in a Sensory Overwhelming World

It is the most intense feeling when I get overwhelmed. How do I describe it in polite terms? It is like the need to vomit. Do you think you have the ability to hold that in? Like it or not, the vomit insists on being released. The need to purge is stronger than manners, or place, or doing what is appropriate. The body defeats the mind’s wishes.
My response to strongly overwhelmed senses can also be an explosive outburst that comes like a tidal wave. Staying away from overwhelming situations helps but I can’t hide from the world. Sometimes I may be in an environment where the background music may be at a volume so loud as to be really agonizing to a person with sound sensitivities. That same environment may be so visually stimulating it is like a kaleidoscope whizzing at a fast speed. In the struggle of sensory blasts, we with autism struggle to keep it together. I think you can’t imagine the challenge of some environments. In the past I wrote how I felt overwhelmed by the crowds and visually blasting images in the rides in Disneyland. Many times there I get the feeling like I must escape instantly because my senses are overwhelmed, but these feelings can happen in many other environments as well.
Even after leaving a tough environment the effects may linger. I wish I could do more to stop the bursts inside because I may behave in a way I regret outside. The choice is to fight the intense feelings inside with so much effort (like fighting back the urge to vomit), or to have the feelings burst out. If I could figure out how to calm my system in these challenging moments, I would because afterwards I feel wretched and regretful. Thankfully I generally have good control now despite these moments that are so overwhelming. But this is still a great frustration for those of us with autism, as well as those who are with us when it happens.

Experiencing Heightened Senses

Here is a link to a site that tries to show how it is to have the heightened senses of autism in regular environments. I know if I don’t wear headphones in a restaurant, I go nuts internally from the noise.