Too loud, too bright, too fast, too tight

Santa brought me a t-shirt that says:

"I am not crazy. I am sensory defensive."

and on the back, it has big letters saying: "Shhhhhh!"

Santa knows.

Really? That is a surprise to me.


I bet it's what the thread was about, eh?

I don't recall seeing it before.

Clever mythical being to understand you too well!

Oh, glad I read this. Great thread.
Did the exercises etc help Dagglepuss?


I know occupational therapists do a lot of work with this issue.

I can almost never stand loud music. Got driven out of a work do the other night by the extremely loud talk in a very hard surfaced room.

Can't stand lots of fabrics.......but nothing like some of you. Must be tough.

exercises and shower with sensory stimulation (which really just means scrubbing down with a rather harsh scrub, but nothing torturous) really do help a ton...if one has discipline and finds time.
what helps most is sleeping enough- than one has energy to exercise and is not irritated so easily. right now it is between semesters, so it's not that much of an issue. but when i'm stressed and tired, oy.

but what helped ME most was actually knowing the diagnosis. knowing i'm not crazy...but sensory defensive, like the clever t-shirt says. than i know why i'm irritated when i am and i try to avoid or cope with the situations. before that there was a lot of anger and guilt. it's easier now. a bit.

Yes.....I get that.

I have a problem common to people who have had a lot of chronic pain. Your system becomes ridiculously sensitised and you can have periods of a couple of weeks where every bit of skin, bone, joints, nerves and muscle in your body just hurt and hurt quite badly.

I knew about this issue, but didn't realize it could affect your whole body. Now I know what it is, and that it doesn't mean I am ill or degenerating in some terrible way, I find it way easier to deal with.

I have no idea why I haven't posted on this thread before. I doubt I'm anywhere near as sensitive, but spinning in particular really bothers me. Me spinning, something else spinning - it does not matter. I loathe amusement parks and pop-up ads or any Internet with too much flash.

I'm reminded of the hook for a Seven Mary Three song called Cumbersome

Too heavy
too light
too black or too white
too wrong or too right
today or tonight

That's interesting. OT's use a little spinning thing that you sit on while it spins to help diagnose something or other to do with sensory difficulties.

i love spinning :-)
and amusement parks. i'm scared of heights, but that don't stop me. i guess i like being terrified, too.

Glad this thread popped back up.

I'm dealing with someone right now that makes constant little "hmmphs, urps, mmmmm's" etc. Interspersed with with random "HAHAHA's", random comments, stupid questions, stretches followed by a little "ow" (weird, because this is a 46 year old guy)

Fortunately, it's another temp worker, and my assignment is over on Friday.
Been dealing with this for 4 or 5 weeks. I've been fantasizing of the last day, where I bop him over the head.

a good friend of mine has the exact same colleague. Drives her NUTS, and she's not sensory defensive. She giggles, comments on everything, asks the stupidest useless questions, won't listen to the answers, steals ideas and claims success that is not her own doing- those are more serious. But mostly it's the giggles and the sounds she makes that drive her up the wall. I witnessed her for five minutes. I think I would have killed her or myself by now.

maybe if you tell him, with a very grave face, to turn the sounds down, because you have been diagnosed with a severe case of sensory defensiveness, that might help :-)
it sounds so serious and doctorly.

Great thread!

Mr B and M both have significant issues with bright lights, sounds and colors. I've seen them both nearly faint in grocery stores after being bombarded by all of the displays and choices. The two of them went Christmas shopping together last weekend. I was trying to picture it but couldn't imagine they'd do very well. They ended up leaving a cart at the grocery checkout because the line was too long and they had to leave or pass out. The next stop was at the pet store to pick up a gift card for K's cat. Blissfully short and they only had to stand at the checkout for the card - no aisle walking required. The final stop was at the bookstore. They picked out a couple books for me from the best sellers table and quickly left.

M doesn't eat anything I cook because it has "taste". She's the plainest plain Jane eater I've ever seen. K was the one who was overly sensitive to touch (seams, labels, fabrics) and sudden movements/noises (barking dogs, popping balloons, etc). Mr B wears sunglasses whenever he's outside in the daylight, even on the dreariest of days.

This really was a revelation for me, thanks again to Dag for bringing it up. It connected so many dots. I've talked about it a lot since.

Sozlet's a lot older now, she seems to have mostly escaped it. She hates clothing tags and must remove them, and has a definite reaction to overstimulating environments. She really dislikes shopping for example and particularly gets hyper/ off when there is really loud music (that she doesn't like anyway, she's fine with some loud 70's rock for example). The combo of loud music, bright lights and eye-grabbing displays really sets her off. (She can't stand most of the stores geared towards kids her age, Justice and Claire's and such.)

On a related note, she seems to have cyclic vomiting syndrome, which is a variety of migraine. Patiodog's account of vomiting after working under the truck fits with that exactly.

But except for loud noises, sound doesn't seem to bother her too much. Most of the time (OK, maybe she has more of this than I thought). Every once in a while there will be some sound that drives her insane, and she really hates sirens (even distant ones).

I tend to fall more into the pd spectrum of not being able to filter out white noise. The little computer fan that whirs beside me all day long is a constant irritation. I can't work and listen to music at the same time.

it's true about shopping. last week a husband killed his wife in the supermarket here in slovakia day or two before Christmas, during the shopping peak. They had an argument in kitchen appliances isle. Stabbed her with a knife. I can almost understand...I would not set a foot in a store during the week before christmas.

luckily we celebrated christmas on the 17th :-) because...why not. went to the mountains and were spared of most of the craziness. was great.

Oh God Dag, thanks for the laugh. I'm taking 5 right now, and have to comment.
Yes, it must be the same person.
Actually this guy reminds me of someone I worked with for years, who fortunately had her own office.
I had described her here before like being one of those dolls with the string in the back of her neck that makes her talk.

Once the string was pulled, via anyone else saying something, or even doing something like sighing or sniffing, NOTHING could get her to STFU until her string retracted completely...which could take a long time.

I've been listening to him for the past 2 hours tapping his foot, making random comments to his computer screen, making bodily function noises (urps, which are quiet burps), finishing typing something with a flourish at the end (you know, banging that last key loudly so everyone knows he's done)

Walking towards the office building this morning, I caught sight of him from the corner of my eye, and I could tell our trajectory would have us meet at the door. There was no avoiding it.

We both got on the elevator, and he says to me "I got the stuff" indicating his duffle back.

um....I said.

"You know, the vinegar and the spray bottle"


Oh God, that was the running theme yesterday. The carpet in his car got wet, and believe me, it was the end of the world.

"do you think I should crack the windows while I'm trying it out?"

me (thinking) "only if you want it to dry you f#cking moron"
me (out loud) "yes"

sorry for the digression....I'll get back on topic now.

"yes, you are the center of the universe" is the correct answer.
on the other hand, a small part of me (depending on how much sanity i have left) feels sorry for this type of a person. the constant craving of attention must have its reasons. probably not a happy life behind it...but who knows, some people may just be annoying and that's all there is to it.

Hey, I just discovered a way to deal with him!

I just pretend he's a pug, bulldog, boston bull, or one of those other breeds of dog that always make slurping, snorking, fart like noises.

I'm good to go.

Memo to chai2 - make sure you pick up Snausages on the way to work tomorrow.