The Search For Silence Continues

Sometimes I'm quite amazed at how sensitive hearing can be on the spectrum. Years ago I was convinced I was going crazy. Now I know that I'm highly-tuned. But this doesn't make coping much different.

The day has been fine. In the afternoon myself and workmates went to an external meeting. After the noise and chatter settled and it became one speaker in a large, high-ceiling room, I quickly felt sick. I winced and covered my ears, trying not to look too...aspie. 

The sound of the lights, some twenty feet above me, sounded like hair clippers held directly beside my ears. It turned my stomach, made my palms sweat and wanted to vomit. I began to panic as I could no longer focus on the meeting. More frightening is that looking around, no one else appeared bothered. I began to rock gently on my chair.

Come the break, I legged it out the door for a cigarette. When I had to come back inside the buzzing room, I felt my eyes get hot and wet and I feared a meltdown was coming. I slipped over to my manager and asked to be excused. She laughed and said, 'You're not in school. You can just go.' I tried not to cry, grabbed my bag and ran out even as I heard someone call my name.

I didn't recognise town and just turned right and walked straight until I found myself back at my workplace. 30mg of diazepam took 30 minutes to kick in and I didn't want to go foetal in the street. 

Ironically, I went to see the psychologist after work. The rooms are thin-walled and I flinched for fifty minutes at cleaners dragging tables around in other rooms. When I left the room, I gagged and covered my nose at the smell of bleach.

My sensitivity is already high, but I feel like my tolerance is getting worse. I don't know exactly why. I don't think sensory issues can be progressive so perhaps it's stress-related. 

I get home and try and relax. I smell toast cooking through the terraced, but very solid walls of my neighbours' house. I know I'm not going insane. But this feels like a very mad way to be trying to live. 

Could Everything Be Less Noisy/Less Smelly/Less Itchy, Please?

I met for a 1-1 with my ASC worker recently who is referring me to the newly-qualified psychologist on the team (so new, I'm sure I can hear braces on her teeth) to help my 'well-being' and to help with social skills and sensory difficulties.

Social Skills is going to be a very hard one to work on because I've gotten very good at 'passing', however I know that what I'm saying is completely without feeling and is invariably copied from TV or the radio. In fact, the things people laugh at are just quotes from films or sitcoms. When I get really, really comfortable with people I will 'pass' less i.e. I will feel able to be more like me. Unfortunately, where I feel most like me, most comfortable is around the emotional age of 14. It's like my cognitive reasoning kept maturing, but my emotions didn't. So, when I'm happy around people, I will run around, blow raspberries, swear, wear silly t-shirts, giggle and then eventually make what I'm told are inappropriate comments such as, 'Are you limping because you fucked last night?'

The plan is for me to either work on passing (which I very much hate doing) and understand that sometimes you can't tell people how many times you've had sex this week or that you think some people are completely irredeemable thundercunts, without getting into trouble. I don't think that's an honest way to live, but apparently it's correct. 

Or I just say that I really don't care what other people think of me. Maybe that's worth a go.

The other issue is sensory difficulties. Reportedly of all the people that have been assessed, under Sensory Difficulties I've come in as one of the lowest scorers (1-2 (most people are coming in at a minimum of 5)) and have been the topic in supervision, mostly because I explained how I can hear electricity or bubbles popping in a glass of Coke from 14 foot away. 

For years, psychiatrists thought I was hallucinating. I thought I was hallucinating. But it appears I'm very in tune with sound, smell and light/colour. For example, my 1-1 was in a different room. I was about 4 foot away from a small wooden coffee table. It stunk. It smelt like untreated wood and that it had been stored in a musty second hand shop and previously owned by smokers. I asked my worker if she could smell it. She couldn't, but dutifully put her nose on the table and only then could she smell what I described. I could smell it freely in the air from a distance of at least 4 feet. 

It's no surprise then that I'm constantly jumping around my house and workplace trying to work out noises that are deafening to me or smells that seem to be taking over, but don't bother anyone else. That's a lot of energy spent chasing intangibles. 

Maybe just watch this video from NAS about a kid in a shopping centre and imagine that that level of noise is normal and makes you feel like the world is about to explode, you will implode and everything will cease to make sense unless you scream your noise over the top of it and move your body to shut out other people's noise and pointless information.