How sensitive are your senses?

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It should be easy to prove that you hear "impossible" things in a hospital. One standard test is with a tuning fork, which makes a steadily decreasing volume. Have someone hit a fork, and tell you when they can't hear it anymore. You still can, so you invite them to wait a while, and then, where you can't see, pinch the fork to silence it. You will be able to call it every time.

I have sensory processing disorder.

I am hyper sensitive to sound, light and smell. Certain light and sound frequencies manifest as seizures.

I am hypo sensitive to bitter taste and I am particularly fond of bitter tasting food, such as very dark chocolate, bitter beer and the like.

I am both, hyper and hypo-sensitive to touch, depending on the part of my body being touched, and the material or matter I am touching. I cannot bear the feeling of mushy or slimy foods in my mouth. eg. the textures of pear, applesauce and raw shrimp, among other similar textures.

I am diagnosed with auditory-language processing disorder, resulting from sensory processing integration dysfunction.

I have absolute pitch.

I experience several different types/forms of synesthesia.

I experience ASMR, as the result of specific sounds/sound combinations/musical notes/runs/chords, visual effects and witnessing others good deeds unto others (as strange as that might seem).

Hello, Lost-dragon. I hope all is well in your world.

Wow, reading these reminds me that people do exist who sense the world like I do. Maybe not exactly like I do but way closer than any non SPD person.

Sight: I have always been extremely sensitive to bright lights. In the day, time when I’m home alone, I have all the lights off because the lights are blinding to me. I don’t think I’ve ever had a migraine from it, it just effects me like “turn the light off! It burns! I can’t see!”. Strangely enough, my preference for dim light is odd considering my night vision was the first to go when my eyesight started degrading in my preteen years. Natural twilight, I’m blind; dim house light, I’m fine. I actually used to have unusually sharp night vision before my genes decided I wasn’t allowed to see without glasses anymore. My family used to joke around that I was a cat or something, that’s how good it was.

Hearing: Mine is about like bunnyb’s in sharpness. I actually consider a curse because I hear so many things I wish I didn’t hear . I too am often gaslighted. When I hear someone say something about me and then bring it up, the people present “know” that there is no way I heard it so they easily put on a performance. Instead of getting an apology, I get called a liar. If I didn’t know better I would think liar was the name on my birth certificate. It took me a while to figure out that other people didn’t hear the things I thought were so obvious. I love music and I listen to it all the time on my headphones, whenever I try to share it with someone else at the same volume, I am told “I can’t hear it, is it playing?”. I butt into conversations about me to defend myself from all the way across the house through a closed door and then hear them talking about how I can hear them. It’s little things like these that made me realize no one else hears all the little watches clicking away in the drawers, no one else goes crazy listening to the neighbors constantly shutting their car doors. No one else was bothered by the high pitched noises either unless they were very high pitched, at that point I would be almost in shutdown mode.

Smell: Ugh chalk this one up to curse with a dash of useful. I ascribe textures to all smells. I think this is what makes it the most horrible. Even EXTREMELY subtle smells that no one else smells are super strong to me. Perfumes/Colognes: Awful, the worst it’s like acidic sand paper decided to crawl up your nose and suffocate you with it claws. All I smell is the abrasive chemicals burning. There is a VERY short list of artificial scents that don’t scream at me with it’s burning acidic sandpaper. Each of these smells has a different grain of sandpaper as well. Cleaners have the highest grain mostly because they are pure chemical not trying to be something else. Cologne has the lowest grain. If you don’t know what sandpaper grains are, ask the internet. I always pull my shirt over my nose and mouth (or my sleeve if I’m wearing a jacket or long sleeve) at any whiff of it. When I absolutely have to be discreet, I hold my breath until no one’s looking and then take a filtered breath through my clothing. I am very good at identifying smells too. Here is where the useful comes in, besides the few times I’ve caught myself before almost accidentally poisoning myself (once I caught a whiff of bug poison over the smell of my chocolate milk, someone hadn’t done a good job at washing the cup after a spraying). I cook by smell. I am told I am a very good cook. I usually take recipes loosely follow it while improvising. I managed to recreate an awesome recipe I had one time six months ago just by getting the the smell right. The downside to this (or upside?) is that no one else can cook anything I make because there is no recipe, I just go with my nose. That is a very hard thing to do unless I can rip out my memory of the taste and smell of something and give it to someone else. This somewhat ties into...\/

Taste: I have very long taste memory which means I unfortunately remember disgusting things but mostly good things. This helps me cook too. Most of my problems with food are actually texture. I mostly hate slimy things like Okra and mayonnaise to name less than .25% of my food hates. I do love salt and parsley. Parsley is the herb that solves all food problems . Salt, besides my love of adding salt to a lot of things, I require extra sodium in my diet because of POTS.

Touch: I often feel bruised at just moderate touch and hugs make me very uncomfortable but slightly less so if they are particularly firm. I do enjoy pressing, like weighted blanket kind. It makes me feel less jumpy.

Temperature: Now this one makes me particularly odd among my family. I am extremely heat tolerant, in my hands and only with water. I’ll be washing dishes in hot water, feels fine to me (my hands are red) and someone tries to just wash their hands real quick, the instant they touch it they jump and go nuts like i tried to kill them or something. When it’s my mom, she yell out a cuss word. Along with the other behavior. My hands are also the first to feel effects from cold weather, and I often lose feeling in them rather quickly in cold weather and the lose their dexterity, it’s like trying to type with frozen hotdogs after 10 minutes in 40 degree weather.

Vestibular: sometimes I’m super balanced and others, not so much.

Proprioception: definitely above average there, I am very good with this. I can eat food with out looking and write on note book paper without looking too (developed that back in elementary school to keep up with the teachers).

Interoception: well I think it about average. I’m not sure. My understanding of this sense is limited.

It has been, for the most part. Alas, the occasional misfortune, but yeah... I'm doing alright.

as an officially old man all my senses but one have dulled somewhat. presently with some vision issues. my hearing is still sharp enough to hear faint things like snow falling and the shuffle of feathers rubbing together on birds on the wing.

You have a beautiful way with words. Your vision may not be as good as it once was but you can certainly see the good things. I tend to hate my super-hearing. I think I need to cultivate an attitude more like yours.

thank you you can use your hyper hearing to better appreciate nature and also appreciate the silences. my hearing is marred by tinnitus, so the silences are not quite silent.

I have a slight suspicion that I have above average taste. People always wonder how I can eat stuff like plain rice and pasta and ask "don't you put on any flavor?" Even though there's already enough flavor.

you might be a supertaster. yes, there is such a thing. they are very rare. you genetically have a higher concentration of taste buds and/or more powerful brainparts that decode flavors and aromas.

I feel like I can't quite connect to an object without smelling it. This means I often have urges to smell things so I can feel comfortable with them and know them better. I know it would look odd so I am somewhat conscious of doing it in public but at home I do it a lot. My wife just laughs at me.

Is this a typical aspie thing?

^^^ very interesting question, Biscuitman I am reminded of the behavior of animals in this respect, they smell things to get a better mental picture of them. do you have an exceptional sense of smell?

I am not sure I would say my sense of smell was any more powerful than anyone else's, but smells certainly affect me a lot in both good and bad ways. Good smells really captivate me and I have to keep on smelling them, bad smells are too much to bear. Overall though I would say it is wanting to feel a connection to things, I sometimes do the same with feeling things, If I can't smell or touch something then I feel I can't judge it at all tbh.

Example - we are getting a new kitchen at home, my wife brought home a small square of granite the other day and aksed what I though of the colour and pattern for a new worktop, I took it from her and immediately placed it against my cheek and then smelt it. That is the first thing I naturally feel the urge to do to get to know it, once I have done that I am then in a position to look at it and decide if I like the colours etc, without doing it I would feel like someone was asking me to give an opinion on it without having half the info.

Is that an aspie or oddball trait?

coming from another odd duck [moi ] I would not say it was odd but I would say it was curious. how old were you when you remember the first time you did this?

This is me too. I sniff stuff all the time. I can't eat something until I've had a good sniff. It used to drive my Husband nuts but he's used to it now. I do try to not be too obvious about it in public but if I don't like the smell I just can't eat it.
I sniff clothes before I buy them. If I don't like how they smell, I don't buy them. and I also get stuck in the laundry aisle at the supermarket. To me it's just heavenly. I could stand there all day just soaking in the scents.

not sure, but I was a very 'fussy eater' as a child, even when pretty young, and I put a lot of that down to the smells of things I didn't like. Textures too, but mostly smells, something wasn't quite right? then it ain't getting near my mouth!

it wasn't smell for me, but if the food was too bulky I choked instead of swallowing it, which irritated the HELL outta my folks