I might have SID (SPD)--looking for your perspectives

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I had this exchange with my therapist via email today (some info removed).

Me describing my symptoms:

Hey, I was just wondering whether you knew anything about sensory issues. From the start I've suspected that anxiety isn't the whole story behind my episodes, with sensory overload as the potential partner in crime. My problem, though, is that I become a lot more sensitive to sensory/physical stress when my psychological reserves are low, so I don't know if they're just another symptom. It's still hard for me to shop and used to be a lot worse, though, I think because of overload. Also, my family has often complained about how when we go to a restaurant or other place I'm not super familiar with, sometimes I just hunch over and try to shut out the noise and the visual stimuli and can't do much but mumble and scowl. I think over the winter break when I went home I had an incident of this where I'm sure it was because it was an unfamiliar place--I begged to go somewhere more comfortable/accustomed to me, even though I'd been to this particular place (which has a lot of bold clashing colors in the decor) a couple of times--it was always very straining for me, and when I went there I was in the state I described, and I think my brother, who had fought against my choice of restaurant and for this one, got the "I told you so" message. On the other hand, I've had the sensation of becoming thoroughly comfortable in a once very stressful place simply through familiarity.

It seems like with my sense of touch, especially, I'm either unable to feel or the sensation's unbearable. I can't stand velvety things, even though people commonly enjoy such textures and like to share them, "Here, feel this!" Me: *recoil and attempt to weakly smile after touching it* Sometimes I wear long sleeves because the air on my skin is unbearably distracting. I used to sleep over at my ex's wearing layers with long pants and long sleeves because I couldn't stand being touched more often than I could--and usually when I could, it was because I was shutting it out and not really feeling anything. On the other hand, I remember a bio lab in high school where we were testing the sensitivity of different areas of skin via taking scissors and touching them to our skin with both points close together, then farther out, until we could feel two points. I could never feel two points.

I have bad balance a lot, especially when I'm stressed or over stimulated or whatever. I've been known to walk face-forward into walls, and when I lived back at home I was always running the part of my body to one side of my neck into doorways, so much it wasn't worth comment. Physical things that are obvious to most people aren't to me. It took me MUUUUCH longer than even people who had never danced before to learn a new dance (like, they could start picking it up in one session and I might take five and still not have it in muscle memory)--although this is dependent on psychological state: in one magical mood, I learned a dance the first time around, and I often felt HUGE psychologically-based shifts in my dancing ability.

People think I'm drunk sometimes. Not only does my balance deteriorate sometimes, so does my ability to modulate my voice, keep it in a normal tone, or monitor what I'm saying. I've repeated over and over in a loud voice while looking tipsy that I don't drink, which surely was not good for my social chances. Other times, I babble on in fanciful nonsense that's amusing to me for various ironies and can fall over giggling at it.

I thought I'd mention all this because it doesn't necessarily come out in sessions. I looked up sensory integration/processing disorder online and it gives the impression that people with that problem have it ALL the time, and are seriously bothered by the tactile sensation of their clothes, the visual overload of a bright or flickering light, and background noise, but I obviously don't have anything to that severity. I just wondered if it could still play a role in my overall tendency to be rendered immobile by stress.

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Therapist's reply:

I think this is all relevant to figuring out how to best provide you with relief. Yes, this is all consistent with a sensory integration concern, and it doesn't always have to be consistent. It can worsen with stress, or just be an intermittent symptom. I think the psych testing will help sort this out. It is often considered a developmental disorder as in "you are born with it". Many people with autism or asperger's may have this symptom. Good thinking and data collection.

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What do you guys think about all this? I know I should wait for the psych eval, but I think that's taken on kind of a mythic status in my therapist's mind--I'm unsure it'll ever happen due to insurance stuff. Also, I don't think my therapist's suspicions that I have ASD are justified (she's mentioned it several times before, not just in the above quote), especially since I've been hanging out on WP and have taken a couple of quizzes that are supposed to give some indicator of whether you're NT or Aspie. I've always felt kind of halfway NT and halfway Aspie (or at least have for a few years), but I think the sensory integration issues would be enough (along with my anxiety disorder and intellectual giftedness) to explain why I sometimes seem aspie. I was worried that maybe I just didn't have insight into other features of autism that I might have, but I have less and less reason to think that's the case. Not that I think it's a bad thing--just that I have different problems that overlap in some areas but not in all.