Bursting into tears in the middle of a supermarket!

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I have considered moving and am still considering it, but I do like living in the countryside and prefer that to living inner city. If I can learn to drive and get a small car I will stay put, if not I am going to have to move nearer to where things are.

I am fairly good in a supermarket on my own as long as it is familiar, quiet and nothing much has moved. When with somebody else I am under greater stress, terrified of losing myself or the other person.

My real total retail nightmare isn't the supermarket, it's IKEA! Argh!

I hate grocery shopping. I've felt that same way when my best friend and I were taking an ex friend to Real Canadian Superstore every Saturday. I held myself together, because I didn't want that B---- to think any less of me than she already did.

I'm not sure what an IKEA is, but I suspect it's something like a Super Walmart or a Home Depot. Like a grocery store on steroids. Yikes. I can deal, but barely and I don't do much the rest of the day.

No I haven't burst into tears in the middle of a supermarket before, but I have burst into tears over something else when happening to be in the middle of a supermarket at the time. I had got a bollocking from some twat at the jobcentre because of not doing enough job searching (which is because I need more help with job searching but he didn't understand that), and I can't always handle being told off by someone in authority, so it took a few minutes for the tears to come, and they finally came when I was in the supermarket. Good job I was with my mum, who supported me.

No, you're not a wimp. I am a man, and although I've learned over the years to tamp down hard on my reactions, there are still times when it is a close thing.



That makes perfect sense to me. Melting ice cream and chocolate milk ruined by having warmed up too much are two of my dreads when I go shopping. If anything goes wrong that threatens to cause such a disaster, I will - at best - be on the verge of tears.



That makes sense, too. I hate being stranded. When I am, it doesn't take me long to get too upset to care who thinks what...



Well, I don't personally mind the cold too much, but the noise and the smells and the lighting are enough to drive me crazy. When it is crowded, I go into this weird "shut down" mode in which I'm basically walking through there like a zombie, trying to snatch what I absolutely must have and get out of there before I snap. Even when there aren't many people in there, I still hate going into a store.



If I'd had those three things piled on me at once, I would have been in full-blown meltdown.



I can't explain it any better than you have here, but I know exactly what you mean. I have certain foods that I must have at certain times, and if I don't, nothing is quite right. I've been thrown into a panic so many times by finding something I need is out of stock, that I've learned in self-defense to stock up as much as I can, to keep ahead. And if something I depend on is no longer made...



The noise is awful at the best of times, it makes the headaches the lighting gives me worse, and then there are the smells. Just walking past the aisle that holds various detergents and dryer sheets and so on that contain fragrances is enough to send a piercing sensation through my nose.



That doesn't surprise me, either. When I was younger, I was tested by one of my teachers in the fourth grade (I was ten) and I was reading at a college level. And understood and remembered what I read. Well before that, I was reading books meant for adults. I got labelled a "genius". But I still can't cope with the things you mention. It took me until I was about forty to get to where I handle them as well as I do now, and if anyone saw what I consider "handling them well", they'd laugh until they choked.

The world is designed for NTs, and in quite a few ways, it is hostile to many of us.