Does anyone else experience this?

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Usually people say that sensory processing disorder effects a specific sense but mine is random. I also experience hypo and hyper sensitivity at the same time?

My symptoms:

*When I was younger I would go into sensory overload every time I had my hair brushed, and sometimes when I saw the colour yellow. I have since out grown both of these things.

* When I walk into a “busy” area, (busy can be anything from a concert, to walking down the street, to just cooking something in my kitchen,) I get really anxious, and stand on my tiptoes to “pull myself in from the bustle,” (hypersensitivity?)

*During this, I also experience (hyposensitivity?) where I become very clumsy and bash into things and ignore people by accident. If you’ve ever seen one of those videos, where something is in plain sight but you don’t see it because your brain thinks it’s irrelevant and blocks it out, that’s what I experience in extreme all across the sensory board.

Has anyone else had similar experiences?

I hate having my hair and head touched - my wife is the only person who can do that.

And definitely the last one, so much. I have surprisingly good fine motor skills and coordination (this one was cultivated) but become a total disaster if I'm very stressed or overwhelmed. Things slip through my fingers, I don't estimate distances properly, bump into things or stumble on my own feet etc, to the point that sometimes people think I'm drunk

A couple of times, during extreme overload I couldn't understand what people were saying to me: I could hear the words but couldn't process the meaning. It's a horrible experience.

I can relate to most of what you two have said. The hearing words but not interpreting them like they were a foreign language. In crowded areas I overcompensate by needing a lot of space around me as I walk or I have to stop. I appear drunk while in a partial shutdown etc.

I love having my hair / head touched or stroked - but only by certain family members

However I can identify with the clumsiness in crowded places or social situations. I often trip over my own feet, knock things over or walk into things - on occasion when I turn round to face the other way I cant stop myself from doing a complete 360. To the amusement / bemusement of others.

I don't have those specific manifestations, but I have synaesthesia. Lots of experiences evoke unrelated phenomena (e.g., you seeing yellow). I also have extreme hypo and hypersensitivity at the same time. I was tested for sensitivity in my ASD assessment and I was off the charts in both directions with each one of my senses. It's not uncommon. For example I have misophonia and can't stand small sounds but I can go to rock concerts and listen to very loud music. I can also tolerate sounds like a baby crying but I can't tolerate someone crinkling a piece of paper. I can hear a bird breathing a mile away but I can't locate the direction of sound (spatial hearing), etc.

I do bash into things and I've been told that I appear drunk / stoned many times. In contrast I have excellent fine motor skills and I can knit, draw, or do needlepoint. Go figure.

When I was younger and not at all self aware, I was terrified of the sound of zips opening and closing and motorbikes.

It was not so much just sensory sensitivities when younger, it was sensory interrogation to sound and smell in particular. I had frequent overloads and meltdowns but I kind off grew out of it and learnt how to process it through sensory seeking (and I was took too noise therapy), by the time I was in primary school, in or out of school, I would take any chance possible to sit near the railway, close my eyes, and hear the sound of the train going past behind me, with the smell of river too. It was soothing and stimulating.

When mum took us to cinema, that made me anxious, the sensory aspect of it and people being there and not knowing how to get out of the situation using words. This type of experience in a whole was/is difficult in almost all situations. At the time, I did not know how to tell people that I was struggling, sensory and social wise, so I just avoid it now.

I am sensitive to t-shirt tag material and the outside of sleeping bag material. It is almost like being electrocuted, the feeling of it travels/shivers through my body.

Light sensitivity used to be sensitive but now the sensitivity is fluctuating. Light sensitivity is not something that bothers/bothered me so much, it was a contributor to making me anxious in public but apart from that, when alone, I quite enjoy lights of all shape and sized.

Now smell and noise sensitivity is actually under-sensitive, smell under-sensitivity likely to be because I started smoking, noise under-sensitivity likely because I learnt how to enjoy it. Light sensitivity fluctuating because I am able process it or it increases when under stress.