Blog - AS/HSP: Sensory stimulus stress

_posts/2017-09-29-as-hsp-sensory-stimulus-stress.md

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+---
+layout: post
+comments: true
+title: "Autism or High Sensitivity: Sensory stimulus stress"
+category: [english]
+tags: [irc, english]
+---
+
+*Sensory stimulus stress (aistiärsykestressi) is a word that you hear from
+ me often if we are any closer. I have been planning typing this for some
+ time now, so people would hopefully understand me better.*
+
+I have no idea how I should type this post, so I will just go to how I feel
+like typing this, so I will start from my events of 19th, continue to 20th
+and jump to today before trying to explain what is sensory stimulus stress
+without examples.
+
+I guess that before I do that, I should explain the beginning of the title.
+
+I am an autist (I have diagnosed Asperger's syndrome) and a highly
+sensitive person (HSP) and while over (and under) sensitive senses are
+associated mainly with autism, they are also part of high sensitivity
+and I cannot separate what causes which trait for me. They have some
+overlap and some conflicts that are interesting to me.
+
+* * * * *
+
+2017-09-19
+
+There isn't much to say of that day, I had a dental operation under local
+anesthesia. In the evening I was somewhat ill and had to disable some
+lights and even then fridge light hurt my eyes. Interestingly after
+vomiting my senses were like they usually are.
+
+2017-09-20
+
+Regardless of being ill on the previous night, I found myself from my
+politics hobby and agreed to be someone from Young Pirates at Metropolia
+University of Applied Sciences term starting sports party MetroSport.
+
+I started by quickly visiting our office to fetch Pirate vests by taking a
+bus and hopping onto metro. From there I continued unfamiliar route using
+[Moovit] to reach tram and then to bus stop where I would reach the bus
+taking me to Vantaa and the event.
+
+[Moovit]:https://moovitapp.com/
+
+Being a sports event it naturally happened at sports hall where I had to
+start by wearing ear fillers and sun glasses as it was so loud, because
+of the amount of people and different music from multiple sources and there
+were bright lights.
+
+I spent a few hours there with another Pirate activist before leaving for
+open doors of Helsinki Pirates which later turned out to be a mistake.
+
+We walked to train station from where I took a train and later a metro to
+the office again. At first there were only a few of us activists before
+other people started appearing and then we possibly had a record on the
+amount of new people who were interested about the party.
+
+I had had too much of draining events, so at some point I left quietly
+explaining to activist outside how I was leaving as I had had too much
+of sensory stimuluss streaa and I possibly started crying at that point, I
+am not sure.
+
+I am sure that I was crying when I encountered another activist going to
+the open doors at metro station where I said the same things.
+
+*I don't know how much it would be OK for me to say, so I am saying barely
+ anything about the people involved. I don't know if anyone of them
+ understood what I meant, but at home I thought more about finally typing
+ this and wrote it down onto a piece of paper.*
+
+2017-09-29 (today)
+
+Last night I slept a little worse than usually and I have been tired and
+my senses more sensitive than usually, but not as sensitive as if I was
+ill.
+
+My mother was visiting me and that made me be affected by the world more
+than usually.
+
+First I took a bus to the nearest *open* metro station and went to
+Central Railway Station to fetch her, we visited library and returned to
+my apartment. Later we ate at nearby salad bar and I escorted her to
+tram stop where she continued elsewhere with my grandmother.
+
+Returning home I had again had too much, this time I didn't cry, but I
+think panic attack was close as I was using a full bus which I reached
+through full shopping centre that was havomg some sort of a shopping party.
+
+I survived by focusing on my breathing and listening to music with
+wireless earbud/microphone as it wasn't so long bus trip. And then it's
+typing this blog with some distractions.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Now I have typed some sort of a introduction to this post and some events
+on three days, I think it's the time to say why, which I think might
+be the most difficult part of this post.
+
+*I think I should disclaim that I am not a mental health professional or
+ researcher or neurologist or anything (I do have vocational qualification
+ on business information technology though) and this is based on my lived
+ experience (even if I only heard of highly sensitive people this year and
+ was told that I am one by my therapist) and what I have understood from
+ talking with professionals, reading books, watchine documentaries etc.*
+
+When I previously talked with my therapist on the subject, I explained that
+it's like there is a battery that is drained by sensory stimulus stress
+and breaking down crying is one sign of it being critically low and
+requiring recharge. Typing this I guess that panic attack might be
+short-circuiting the battery?
+
+And now I finally get to the point (if I wasn't in the point all the
+time?), what is that *sensory stimulus stress*? It's everything that is
+sensed, regardless of whether it's positive, neutral or negative. I think
+positive might drain the battery slower than negative would, but it will
+drain regardless.
+
+If you have any knowledge about autism, you probably know that people on
+the spectrum need time to recover from social interactions. Do you know
+why? Yes, sensory stimulus stress is behind it too, hearing other people,
+hearing own talking, background noise, looking anywhere, colours.
+Especially maintaining eye contact is a good way of draining.
+
+If I return to the first day/night that I talked about, I was ill, so my
+senses were a lot more sensitive than usually so even the fridge light
+hurt my eyes while often I might not be mindful about it being there.
+
+On the second day, there were the people, the buses, the trams, PA systems,
+escalators, metros, music (that I listened during transport to drain more
+slowly), lights and everything. As with illness, stress also causes faster
+draining and stress is easy to get by going into a new situation at new
+place with new people and being hungry makes highly sensitive people
+horrible.
+
+On the third day, today, there were other people (naturally, I live in the
+capital of Finland), bus, escalators, metro, musician between central
+railway station and the metro station, PA systems, talking with mother, 
+grocery store noises, being at my apartment with mother having tea and
+talking, during lunch there was also some machine keeping noise etc.
+
+I think this is the place for the *do you hear sounds that other people
+don't hear* joke. *Yes, I do, as my family is half-deaf and we have family
+joke on how I should share some of my hearing* even if how good and how
+sensitive hearing is are two separate things.
+
+I think this post is finished with the exception of one thing which I am
+not sure if I wish to type. However I feel that my typing finally started
+flowing well after hours of trying to get this into words and I think
+it would be unfair from me to say that everything is draining, so I think
+I should type some of the methods that I discussed with my previous
+therapist to ease the situation.
+
+*I must again disclaim that this might only apply to me and not to you
+ (when did I make the reader another aspie or HSP?), and I should
+ probably say that my senses are mostly oversensitive except that my
+ sense of touch defies logic and can either make me feel "hug deprived" and
+ wishing that someone would touch me or send me into panic attack from
+ someone accidentally touching me from behind...*
+
+* General: Pushing the wall with strength for around 15 to 30 seconds.
+* Hearing: Music that you like from earbuds or similar, preferably
+  something that reminds you of some very good experience.
+* Seeing: pastel/pale colours.
+    * I would like to add that bright colours are especially bad and I hate
+      stripes and balls and dots and prefer my clothing to be single colour
+      while I might wear clothes that I would dislike seeing.
+    * I think we talked something about black being a neutral colour that
+      isn't draining while it might not help easing sensory stimulus stress
+      either. I recommend using dark themes on phones and everything that
+      has the option for it.
+    * Smell: leaving the situation or avoiding, but it might also help to
+      get a pleasant smelling lip balm that could be stealthily smelled
+      while applying it.
+    * Sense: massaging with a (stress) ball.
+        * I would very often like a hug or to be touched, but when I am
+          asked if anyone can do anything to help me, I will lie and say
+          nothing as I am often ashamed of having undersensitive sense of
+          touch (if I can say that, as I said before, it defies logic and
+          all rules that I try to put on it to explain how it works). I
+          think it's this Finnish culture.
+            * I think sense of touch might be some kind of a inbuild
+              recovery method andchoring me to this moment or giving me
+              strength to continue from overwhelming.
+                * And I naturally forgot something important, overwhelming
+                  is how *The Highly Sensitive Person* calls the situation
+                  with too much sensory stimulus stress ane need for
+                  recharging. Before encountering *high sensitivity*, I
+                  used words "soft limit" where warning signals started
+                  appearing about coming panic attack or having had too
+                  much sensory stimulus stress and needing rest and if I
+                  borrow the term from ICT, why I wouldn't call panic
+                  attacks as hard limit?
+                    * Finns, this overwhelming is the same thing as
+                      *ylivirittyneisyys*.
+                        * and now I probably said more than I wondered if
+                          I wanted to say above. I wonder how horrible will
+                          this post look at on the blog while this looks
+                          this funny in Vim which I am using to type
+                          this...
+* Motion: calm/slow moves
+    * If I recall correctly, there was some reason why the previous
+      therapist wanted to put motion as a sense, but I cannot remember
+      what the actual reason was. I think I haven't ever had an issue
+      with motion other than having the motorical clumsiness that I think
+      is part of diagnostic criteria from autism.
+
+And now I think I am actually finished with a few hours spend typing this
+and just moving onto the 209th line in Vim. In the end I only want to say
+that remember that you aren't alone, 20% of the population are estimated
+to be highly sensitive people and while I don't know the percent for
+people on autism spectrum, there is at least one of us in mostly every
+IRC channel that you can find.
+
+I think I should also link to
+[Wikipedia: Sensory processing sensitivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivity) and [HSPerson.com](http://hsperson.com/) and
+why not to [their self/tests](http://www.hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/)
+in case you are like me and haven't encountered it before or haven't
+thought that it has anything to do with you.
+
+I trust that you have heard something of autism or that you are able to
+find information about it easily while High Sensitivity is very unknown.
+
+Oh, the *Highly Sensitive Person* book didn't comment much on on autism
+or that one person might be both, so I want to link you to their blog
+[About High Sensitivity, Autism, and Neurodiversity](http://hsperson.com/about-high-sensitivity-autism-and-neurodiversity/).
+
+And now I am finally going to end typing this at 230 lines, I hope that
+this post was any help or at least not negative or including misinformation
+or anything, but if that would happen to be the case, please do tell
+me [by opening an issue!](https://github.com/mikaela/mikaela.github.io/issues)