AUTHOR NOTE

This was originally posted on my WordPress blog, which I have deleted after migrating the blog's posts to this website in November 2025. Differences from the original are minimal and include: grammatical adjustments throughout the post, adding paragraphs to reduce the wall of text, changing the phrasing of a couple sentences to make more sense, text formatting changes, and including my Bluesky profile link as a way for people to reach me. My "things I do to help reduce their impact" are basically just communicating my needs to those around me and cognitive behavior therapy. Why did I just save you from reading this whole article? I don't know, but it felt important to let y'all know that this post barely has a point. 🤣

May is Mental Health Month, and for my first post since I got back from Hawai’i I want to talk about sensory needs. I have utilized coping techniques to adjust to my sensory issues without realizing it in the past; now I’m more self-aware and self-advocate for my needs whenever I can. Taking care of these needs reduces the anxiety induced from being overstimulated.

To help normalize what I and others go through, I want to share my own sensory issues, some things I do to help reduce their impact on my mental health, and some resources you may find interesting if you want to read more. Sensory processing disorders can spread across several different mental health diagnoses, and it can appear that you’re “sensitive” to others.

I have issues across a few different senses and some are basically chicken/egg scenarios - one will trigger another. Sounds/noise can be interesting since it depends on the level of how prickly my ears want to be. For the most part, loud sounds (regardless if I am ready for them or not) and wind blowing over my ears are the worst offenders. I can hear certain low frequencies quite loudly and they take over my hearing, sometimes inducing a panic attack if it’s low enough. I also get overstimulated by being around large and loud crowds for too long, but this highly depends on how sensitive I happen to be that day.

I can pick out sounds easily just by focusing on it and, as a side effect from my ADHD, I sometimes get distracted by what I hear. I’ve yelled down the hallway on more than one occasion at co-workers to participate in conversations they didn’t realize I could hear. Noise cancelling headphones are a must for me - I cannot go back to not having any. When I need to focus on a project at home or at work, I put on my Bose 700s (I love these things) and turn on some stream noises from my iPad with noise cancellation all the way up. If I need to block out what’s happening around me because it all feels overwhelming, I step into a quieter room by myself and put on some bangin’ music fit for my mood at the time.

I didn’t realize I had touch sensory problems until I went through the interview for my formal diagnosis. My son’s behavioral therapy helped me understand the different needs for the spectrum of touch issues - a soft pressure around the body similar to a hug helps reduce anxiety, but you can also feel that single hair tickling under your clothes and can_not_ find it driving you more mad than normal. My son has a weighted blanket because he likes the sense of pressure on him to help calm him down; other pressure techniques without a blanket can be soft squeezes down the arms or a tight squeezy hug.

I do not like the feeling of being smothered so the idea of a full weighted blanket makes me uneasy - I may be a little claustrophobic but not diagnosed - however I do have a weighted stuffed animal from Moon Pals. I sit this on my lap when I am working and need some grounding or focus.

Most of my touch sensory issues are around things touching my skin with some food textures thrown in for good measure. I really dislike most meat unless it’s ground up - the sinewy texture is awful. I dislike my hands being any form of slimy, if my hair is down you may often see me pulling it to the side to make sure all the loose hairs are removed, I adjust seams in my clothing to ensure it fits on just the right spot, and can feel my contacts on my bottom eyelids if they are too dry (gods, that’s the weirdest sensation).

The best thing for me to do in these cases is simply avoid the scenarios that cause most of these. I learned to live with constantly checking for and removing hair that tickles me and adjusting my seams - that’s just part of my autism and I will not suppress harmless ticks to fit in. I may not like a texture or a feeling on my skin but I am no longer worried about how others view me when I make small adjustments like this.

I also have visual sensory issues! My eyes are surprisingly sensitive to the sun, I need to wear sunglasses most of the time when I am outside during the day - even when it’s cloudy. The others are some pretty typical autistic qualities: if the food on my plate is a different type (wet/dry, meat/produce) it cannot touch, everything needs to be where I put it in the house, and I will re-organize an entire room if I feel like things don’t fit right anymore.

Earlier in my adulthood there was no connection to the autism for these things so we called me picky or neurotic. Now I have coping skills for all of these. I now mostly accept when food touches (you may catch me pushing things apart before I eat it, though), I don’t freak out externally when things aren’t put away or cleaned the right way, and I include my husband in my re-organizing efforts instead of just doing it without him. You bet your sweet ass that on highly sensitive days it’s harder for me to use these skills, but believe me when I say I’m thankful I practice them often.

I may be forgetting some things but this is a decent overview of my own sensory issues and a few techniques I use to cope. Hopefully this helps you recognize if you have your own sensory needs or when you see someone else using their own coping skills.

If you would like to learn more about sensory processing disorders, Understood.org is a wonderful, free resource that was introduced to me by my son’s behavior specialist. To learn a little more about infrasound and how it impacts mammals, I find this is a decent overview of why anxiety happens (there’s not much research around this in humans yet). I’m an open book, feel free to ask me anything if you have any questions, too, I’m always happy to chat about ways to reduce sensory processing anxiety. 😊

-🧜🏻‍♀️🦄