Autism Senses: My Experience
Apr. 12th, 2018 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
child_of_the_airA note: as well as being on the autism spectrum, I have OCD. It's hard to tell which of my sensory things come from which, and it's likely that some of what I'm describing in this post is a consequence of each.
It's really hard to know what anyone else's sensory experience is like, and honestly, I'm not at all sure I entirely know what mine is like. However, I do get the impression that mine is rather different from the way neurotypicals experience the world, and that the ways it is different are perhaps interesting.
A lot of the time, my senses sort of feel like a penumbra of my mind is expanding to fill a space, and feeling out its edges. I see a surface and feel its texture like I'm pushed up against it, even if it's meters away. When I see things that aren't arranged right, or that are ajar, they push up against my mind until I fix them: I can't just ignore them once I know they're there, and just looking away doesn't make them vanish. (To be clear, I don't think this is synthesia: I'm not experiencing other sensations as touch, "touch" is just the closest word I can find for "feel like they're pressing against my mind".)
As a consequence of this, I've had to learn to avoid looking at things that I expect to look wrong to me. People with facial piercings--unfortunately very common in the trans community--are an example of this. If I see the piercing I'll feel it pushing up against me for half an hour or so, so I need to avoid seeing their face so it won't hit me. Likewise, things that I know are disordered in painful ways, but that I can't order, I'll do my best to look around, if I can.
Although I've been focusing on visual things, it's not just them; it particularly can happen with sound as well. And I think the best way to understand sensory overload for me is that even if my mind is pressing up against my surroundings, it's still connected to a limited and fleshy brain that can't handle so much input. Being in a familiar, closed-in, quiet environment where things don't seem to change can be a big help for this, because there's a lot less new surroundings for my mind to go exploring and keeping track of.
To be clear, this isn't always unpleasant. It's also how stimming works for me a lot of the time: some feelings on my mind feel really good, and it's nice to be able to relax my mind by letting it bathe in them. It also seems to be related to what it feels like to hyperfocus on some of my special interests, especially maps. I feel like I'm reaching out with my mind and, instead of taking in sensory stimuli, taking in facts and information and spacial arrangements of things. It can be an almost rapturous feeling of oneness with whatever I'm focusing on, which I'm not sure I can really usefully describe to anyone who hasn't experienced it.
I think that that feeling is something other autistic people experience in the context of their special interests: in particular, I'm thinking of reading John Elder Robeson's descriptions of how he looks at electronic circuits and "sees" how they will operate. As I think I've said before, one of my dreams, which I don't think I can ever achieve--I'm not convinced it's humanly possible--but which I would love to be able to do, is to be able to "see" a whole city in that way: to just spread my mind over it and understand how it's arranged.
It's really hard to know what anyone else's sensory experience is like, and honestly, I'm not at all sure I entirely know what mine is like. However, I do get the impression that mine is rather different from the way neurotypicals experience the world, and that the ways it is different are perhaps interesting.
A lot of the time, my senses sort of feel like a penumbra of my mind is expanding to fill a space, and feeling out its edges. I see a surface and feel its texture like I'm pushed up against it, even if it's meters away. When I see things that aren't arranged right, or that are ajar, they push up against my mind until I fix them: I can't just ignore them once I know they're there, and just looking away doesn't make them vanish. (To be clear, I don't think this is synthesia: I'm not experiencing other sensations as touch, "touch" is just the closest word I can find for "feel like they're pressing against my mind".)
As a consequence of this, I've had to learn to avoid looking at things that I expect to look wrong to me. People with facial piercings--unfortunately very common in the trans community--are an example of this. If I see the piercing I'll feel it pushing up against me for half an hour or so, so I need to avoid seeing their face so it won't hit me. Likewise, things that I know are disordered in painful ways, but that I can't order, I'll do my best to look around, if I can.
Although I've been focusing on visual things, it's not just them; it particularly can happen with sound as well. And I think the best way to understand sensory overload for me is that even if my mind is pressing up against my surroundings, it's still connected to a limited and fleshy brain that can't handle so much input. Being in a familiar, closed-in, quiet environment where things don't seem to change can be a big help for this, because there's a lot less new surroundings for my mind to go exploring and keeping track of.
To be clear, this isn't always unpleasant. It's also how stimming works for me a lot of the time: some feelings on my mind feel really good, and it's nice to be able to relax my mind by letting it bathe in them. It also seems to be related to what it feels like to hyperfocus on some of my special interests, especially maps. I feel like I'm reaching out with my mind and, instead of taking in sensory stimuli, taking in facts and information and spacial arrangements of things. It can be an almost rapturous feeling of oneness with whatever I'm focusing on, which I'm not sure I can really usefully describe to anyone who hasn't experienced it.
I think that that feeling is something other autistic people experience in the context of their special interests: in particular, I'm thinking of reading John Elder Robeson's descriptions of how he looks at electronic circuits and "sees" how they will operate. As I think I've said before, one of my dreams, which I don't think I can ever achieve--I'm not convinced it's humanly possible--but which I would love to be able to do, is to be able to "see" a whole city in that way: to just spread my mind over it and understand how it's arranged.
