mikaela.github.io/blog/_posts/2017-09-29-as-hsp-sensory-stimulus-stress.md

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title: "Autism or High Sensitivity: Sensory stimulus stress"
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_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.

_UPDATE: Asperger's Syndrome is being removed from the diagnostics manuals
leaving only Autism Spectrum Disorder._

---

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 stress 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 having 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, watching 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.

_Addition: the TL;DR of the above list could probably be put into one word.
Stim!_

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](https://hsperson.com/) and
why not to [their self/tests](https://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](https://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)