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