Sensory processing, Ruling in or out

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I've always had trouble with the human voice. But I also have other sensory issues and was wondering how common these may be:

1) Auditory in general. Volume is never consistent with me. Some days I have the TV up to 12 or more and other days can listen comfortably at 3 or 4. Sometimes even have to adjust while watching. Not the adjustments when the commercials come on. That's just annoying. This is in a quiet apartment and no other distractions of sounds. I haven't had headphones on or had any outside noises to desensitize the hearing. Sometimes even when I come in from the subway, been out in the city and have the headphones on to drown things out, I can still have the TV way low.

2) Glare or bright lights: I see like a bat in the dark. Hate the sun and bright lights in general. But really, really like twinkly lights and neons and light show type of things, lasers...just pure tones of light against dark, where the dark is the primary color.....if that makes sense. But glare or bright lights make me very sleepy. Always have.

3) Taste. Some tastes are just so pungent. Everybody else seems ok with it, but it'll turn me inside out sometimes or make me wretch. Don't even get me on some textures.

4) Can't stand to find blemishes or bumps or any of those natural things that makes the skin 'not smooth'. I have to do anything I can to get rid of that. Makes dry skin a real pain to live with. It's not a dirt thing. Dirt and germs don't bother me at all. It's the imperfection of my skin that gets to me. Fortunately I have decent skin or who knows just how marred it would be by now. When I lay down, I have to have my hair all sorta in one direction. I just can't lay down most times and let it be. I have to move my head around to get the hair going the way it should be. Same with arm hair and hand hair.

5) I am a completely visual person. but I have an extra special fascination with moving water, ripples, reflections and fire. No, don't wanna start 'em. But I loved to sit and watch the fire in the fireplace as far back as I can remember. I could just get lost there. Could get just as lost with water motion and reflections. I take many photos of that. Can't get good photos of fire though. Anything that has that sort of fluid, chaotic motion with a sense of luminosity to it or reflections. Also totally fascinated with reflections of any kind.

6) Touch. This is weird for me because I see a lot of people talk about cutting off tags. I get bothered if the tag is on or off. On, it's a pain to deal with and a lot of them are scratchy. Off, I always get them turned around and I REALLY can't stand to have anything against my neck. So, the neck thing wins against the scratchy thing. Not phobic against being touched, but do not like people coming up and invading my space with that overly friendly kiss and hug greeting or goodbye. So, I do love to get my feet massaged. Get the right person who actually knows the pressure points and I can feel things going on in my body when they hit certain spots. If they hit a spot on my left foot, I will feel things somewhere on my right side. I've even asked them what the corresponding spot was. They would reply like, "That was heart," and I would say I felt it in my right trapezius. Then they would look at me strangely. I would feel it all over on the opposite sides of my body.

7) Internal Sensations. When I was young, I would hate to run. If I ran past a certain point I would feel as if I was breathing through my collar bones. My lungs wouldn't hurt or burn or feel anything negative. But my collar bones felt like air was whooshing through them. There are other strange internal sensations that don't make sense like that.

Or am I just whackadoodle?

Hi zkydz,

1) I'm pretty stable on the TV volume. However, somedays it seems my brain is better at understanding the TV dialogue if that makes any sense. For me, hearing is not enough. I need to see the words as well. I've gotten in the habit of turning on the CC for a lot of programs.

My big issue with sound is people eating (misophonia). Smacking, finger-licking, forks hitting or scraping teeth, silverware clinking on plates or bowls all makes me incredibly angry.

2) I hate bright lights and I do not enjoy sunny, clear days. It's just too overwhelming. My office at home has one lamp with a low wattage bulb. Sometimes I turn that off and just work by lava lamp light or ambient light during the day. I like neon lights as well. They are awesome. I also love Christmas lights in a dark room. I am all about mellow lighting in my house.

3) I hate olives (texture and taste). I also have trouble with coconut cream pie (weird texture). Apple pie freaks me out as well. Too gooey. Mayo just has an alien texture to me. I can eat it in small amounts. I love butter, though. Ice cream grosses me out when it melts. Milk also grosses me out. Tartar sauce is disgusting.

4) I do get a bit flipped out by bumps on my skin. I've got a mole on my chest that drives me a bit nuts. I also get the occasional bump behind my ear that the doc will freeze off for me. Skin tags are a drag. While I find these things irritating I can live with them if necessary. I think that's mainly because I hate going to the doctor.

5) Love watching a good fire or throwing stones into a pond and checking out the ripples. I also love watching candles burn.

6) Tags bother me. The tactile sensitivity, I believe, was much worse when I was a kid. I used to wear the strangest combination of clothes to school apparently. I like massages but when people touch my feet, shoulder, or neck I immediately start laughing because I'm so ticklish.

7) I have some weird internal sensations as well but more related to pain. I think a lot of them are due to stress and my stomach acting up.

Yeah, it's weird. Although the TV example was just a value that could measure when my hearing would be more sensitive or less sensitive.

Sigh.....love the bright twinklies in the dark. Christmas lights, ornaments and tinsel all hit those visual pleasure buttons.

I am lucky that my auditory processing does not have nearly the difficulties that yours does Boo.

I have laughed when getting a foot massage. It all depends on the person. A really good reflexologist will be able to compensate believe it or not.

The gut thing...well, mine is starting to knot up knowing that my classes start tomorrow. Gotta go meet new people, blah, blah, blah....sigh......

The simplest way I have of explaining an auditory processing disorder is like dyslexia, where people report seeing the letters moving and mixing up.

All I hear are separate pieces.

I am thinking of a Brainetics infomercial. It's a memorization game, involving a small group of people. They are recalling nonsense syllables, not pieced together, into useful concepts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO8iM0QQQn4

Meaningless trivia, but they are accurate.

I oftentimes feel like I have to solve a puzzle.

For instance, imagine having those plastic, magnetic, refrigerator magnets, which are shaped like letters. Or, there are flashcards, with phonemes, thrown in front of you.

And, you have to make a conscious choice. You have to try, to arrange those, in a meaningful fashion, to suit whichever situation. So, let's say you're Forrrest Gump, sitting at the bus stop, or (sorry) Karl Childers, fixing a lawnmower. You hear disjointed word fragments, and have to decide what someone just told you.

Part of my difficulty, in writing this, is punctuation. If I try to write smoothly -- as in more than one syllable at once -- there are far too many many spaces, periods, commas, or dashes. Letters and words are repeated as I am breaking things up, grammatically. It looks like the pronunciation guide, in the dictionary, to me.

As well as information, you can get your physical senses mixed up. For instance, someone touches you, gently enough, but you can't remember how sharp, hot, or cold feels, at the correct moment in time. You're piecing it together, after the fact, trying to figure out what has happened.

I think, when I see a savant, playing complicated music from memory, or drawing an entire cityskape, just from seeing it once, he is only dealing with a single iota of information, at a time.

Emotions come at the wrong time. Yesterday, I was confronted, in a somewhat physical fashion, while I was quietly fixing a machine. A visibly-upset neighbor delivered social commentary, with strong language. I itemized what he was saying. I answered flatly, and in perfect detail, I was perfectly calm, until after he had already turned his back on me and was walking away. I wasn't emotionally-present, during a critical juncture.

What seems to be a problem with timing has probably kept me out of plenty of unnecessary trouble; I am unusually strong, but people have failed to get a rise off me, on the spur of the moment.

At least, I'm not the only one, then.

There's probably no good way to make someone understand, who isn't going through that.