Autism and Sensory Overload
We were never so horrified but to see this picture of the adult teen. While it is great to take her out in the community; it is not great to take her to places like the “Medieval Times” where sensory overload is guaranteed to happen even for a non-autistic person.
You can find the original photo here.
Her face, her fingers in her ears and stimming say it all. She did not love the show. It was too much for her. We never would have subjected any of our children to this torture. They are plenty of other venues that would have been much more autistic friendly.
People with autism are often highly sensitive to their environments. That, of course, means different things to different people on the spectrum — but in general people with autism have unusually sensitive “sensory” systems, meaning that their senses sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste can all be easily overloaded.
Even more challenging, it can be difficult for people with autism to “just ignore” sensory information as it comes in.
So, unlike people with typical sensory systems, people on the spectrum may not be able to, for example, notice a car alarm going off and then decide not to listen to it.
Sensory Challenges to Autistic People
Some of the environmental challenges that can negatively impact people with autism include:
- Florescent lights which flicker and/or buzz
- Smells from cleaning supplies, new carpets, perfumes, certain foods, and cologne
- Fluttering curtains, posters, and other wall hangings
- Persistent sounds such as landscapers mowing lawns or blowing leaves, babies crying or even cooing, dogs barking outside, ticking clocks, dripping water, traffic noises, etc.
- Foods and materials with specific textures (these vary from person to person, but slippery, goopy foods and materials such as glue, gels, etc. are often problematic)
Surprisingly, the opposite can also be true: some people on the spectrum are “hypo-sensitive,” meaning that they have a low response to sensory input and, in some cases, crave physical sensation.
This can lead to “stimming” in the form of flapping, pacing, etc.
Even more surprisingly, many people on the spectrum can be hypersensitive in some ways (can’t bear loud noise, for example), but ALSO hypo sensitive in other ways (need to feel motion or physical sensation in order to feel calm).
Sensory “regulation” — the feeling that one is experiencing just the right amount of sensory input — is important to physical and psychological comfort.
In fact, according to many studies, sensory dysregulation is one of the major reasons why people with autism — even high functioning people who are able to handle many forms of stress — tend to “meltdown,” or find themselves unable to manage a perfectly ordinary situation.
Sensory Overload: How People With Autism Experience the World
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