How to know if I have sensory issues?

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Sensory issues are a main sign of autism, right? But how do I know if I have sensory issues? Is there some sort of game or quiz or something online, that maybe throws a bunch of sounds and distractions at you? Any ideas on testing for sensory issues?

Um...if you had sensory issues, you would most likely know. Maybe carry a diary with you and list the things you find unpleasant throughout the day (sound/texture/smell) and try to extract from memory if it impedes on your everyday living.

Edit: here's an example of sensory issues (I'm editing because it just happened and I want to write it down while it's still fresh in my mind). My dog just shook his head once, and the single flap made by his ears felt like a mallet to my auditory bubble even though he was on the other side of the room, and the sound is still going off in my head even though it happened five minutes ago.
Do you get driven in a rage by certain noises? A rage or distress so intense that you can't sit still and simply must do some repeated body movements to cope?

I agree - if you had sensory issues you would probably be aware of it.

I know I experience sensory issues because they interfere with my daily life a lot.

I can't wear some clothes without cutting off tags/ribbing because they keep bothering me.
I also have to close my eyes a lot when I am outside during a sunny day because the light is really uncomfortable. And I can't wear sunglasses because I can't stand the feeling I get when they are on my nose.

But worst of the worst is that I can't hear what someone is saying or even read if there is a sound in the background, even a really silent one.

For example I couldn't understand what office lady asked me for because another office woman suddenly took a piece of paper behind my back and the paper rustled slightly. It wasn't a loud or unpleasant sound - just a normal sound you can hear almost everyday. But the rustle made me loose my focus, mixed with the words I was hearing and made me hear something along the lines: "bebhgbdbt". I had to prompt the office lady to repeat what she just said to me.

I think this could give you some idea about sensory issues: http://sensorysmarts.com/sensory-checklist.pdf

Echoing what others have said, you'd def know about it.

Not so much an issue now for me since carpet is no longer that fashionable, but I had this thing as a kid where whenever i wore socks on my feet and walked on carpet, it made me feel like my feet were suffocating, which in turn made me frustrated and flustered and my teeth hurt. I couldn't stand the feeling and it made me want to crawl out of my skin. My mother also tells me that I was particular about the underwear I wore, because some designs had stitching across the seat that I couldn't stand the feeling of, and so refused to wear. She cut all of the tags out of my clothes, and I hate crop tops and 3/4 length trousers. I hated stiff denim and I despised corduroy.

I still have issues with some tags, and many fabrics are still an issue for me. I don't wear socks if I can help it.

Sounds are another type - and depending on how sudden or loud they are, they can send me quite quickly into a panic. If they are not sudden/especially loud, they will make me very irritated, and will be all I can focus on for a while after they've bothered me. If they carry on (as in the case of today, when my colleague was doing this thing where he'd hit the enter key REALLY hard when using his computer) I have to remove myself from the situation because I cannot think of or do anything else. If the noise stopped, I become obsessed with it possibly starting up again.

Smell - I smell a lot of things that others apparently cannot. A lot of offensive smells in public are a real issue for me, and much like persistent noises, I will have to either cover my nose or remove myself in the case that I am in an enclosed space and cannot escape them.

Jumpscares (images and sounds) are very tough for me, and ever since the jumpscare email era of 1999/2000 I cannot watch a youtube video without scrolling to the end and reading the comments first. My reaction to them is always very severe, and it's a reaction I would rather avoid for as long as possibly can (not sure if this counts as a sensory issue???).

Other random things I can think of is that it's almost as if I can (well I can) hear a frequency hum in my ears when I'm in a room with the tv/lights on. I'm very sensitive to light (it doesn't hurt or anything) it just makes my eyes feel overloaded? For example right now I'm looking over to the wall (it's cream) and I can swear it's basically just awash with lots and lots of little colourful dots. I try not to eat food with my hands, and if I have to, I keep a stack of tissues nearby because I can't stand to have any residue on my hands, and wipe them off after every bite.

This is getting on a bit (my ADHD meds have worn off) but I hope you get the gist. These are what I think of as being some of my sensory issues. Some are more problematic for me than others.

Not sure if it's common, but rough textures like paper and canvas type material feel "amplified" to me --especially in winter with dry hands. If I have to touch these I have to distract myself or the sensation can be so overloading I feel like yelling/crying.

The other thing is some sounds that are sharp/crisp cause pain even if it's someone 20 feet away setting a glass down on a desk or similar. I can handle that a lot easier than the touch thing though.

If stress is involved, add an exponent. I assume everyone finds peoples' perfume gross, so I won't count that.

Are you Misophonic? I am. It sounds like you might be as well.

I don't think it's possible to have sensory sensitivities and not know you have them. My sound sensitivities make me have huge meltdowns. My texture sensitivities make my skin burn or feel like ants are crawling all over me or make me feel actual pain. Visual overload can make me really weak and has even caused me to become catatonic. If you are not experiencing impairing effects from sensory input, you don't have sensory sensitivities.

I've suffered from sensory problems from birth, but I didn't know it until a year ago. And they're pretty severe, too. I would have meltdowns at the mere sight of some textures as a kid, couldn't eat foods if they were brightly colored, and was often sent into severe shutdowns. Heck, I was totally agoraphobic at one point because of how overwhelming I found almost every environment. Yet I was still oblivious to the cause. I knew that I didn't like certain things, like artificial lights and colored icing, but I didn't know why. Strange as it sounds in hindsight, I never thought about sensory input being the problem. For me, it was hard to separate the sensory aspect from the thing itself and to recognize the fact that the discomfort I felt was connected to it. I'm not very good at recognizing emotions, and I think that contributed to the problem.
It was also complicated by the fact that when I thought about "sensory problems," I didn't think about everyday sensory input. I thought about unusually loud noises and bright, flashing lights, because that's how movies depict it. It did not occur to me that my daily discomfort was in any way related to that. To the OP, I suggest that you read about the sensory experiences of autistics here. If you have sensory problems, you should find that they are affecting you on a daily basis, perhaps in ways that you never thought to consider before.

I've always been bothered a lot by loud noises (had people comment on me putting my fingers in my ears etc, find some sounds-particularly people chatting in close confinement-almost painful to the point of being rage inducing) but I don't think before I started to join the dots re: thinking I'm on the autism spectrum, I recognised that those things might not be 'normal'. I guess I thought, well, everyone has things that annoy them, and rationalised it with a host of other reasons, without really paying attention to the trend or the extent to which I was bothered. I'm also only recently beginning to think that I have some sensitivity with my clothes and again, I knew seams and labels etc could often drive me crazy, but I think I'm so used to it, and so used to ascribing 100 different reasons for it (my skin is dry, the label is lying funny, it's just this cardigan/pair of jeans/etc.) until I started to pay attention to how often I found myself feeling like some part of my clothing was viciously stabbing or chafing me, I didn't realise it was basically constantly and basically all my clothes).

I don't think something has to make you have a meltdown to count a a sensory issues, and people are very good at ignoring things even if they are bothering then a lot. So yeah, definitely think it's possible to not be aware your sensory issues are sensory issues or to realise the extent to which they bother you.

I would say, if you think there are things you're bothered by but you don't know if it's 'normal' or not, start to pay attention to how often and the intensity to which you experience them. There are annoying clothes, and annoying lights and annoying sounds that would try anyone's patience, but probably if you're having issues a lot and getting more annoyed than other people seem, then it might be you.

If the OP still hasn't found out if they have sensory issues after 3 years it's probably safe to say he has none

It's possible not to know.

I often thought my sensory issues were character flaws until I was diagnosed. I had real problems with leftovers of some foods. A three-day-old chicken or bread made me nauseous. There are starving people and poor people eating out of garbage cans. Everybody else just seemed to grin and bear it, what was my problem? My conclusion was that I was a spoiled wimp.

Acting like I had been shocked by electricity when somebody touched my neck or bro slapped me, same thought process.

I wonder if alexithymia applies broadly enough to explain situations where sensory issues can go unrecognized.

No. They're not a main sign of autism - they're an elective. Pretty much the only "main" sign of autism is deficits in social communication and social interaction .

The four electives are:
1) Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech
2) Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns or verbal nonverbal behavior
3) Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus
4) Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in sensory aspects of the environment

The diagnostic criteria says that one has to have at least two of the four electives, but that you don't necessarily have to have them now - the psychologist can observe these in you currently or by history.

Also, at level 1, the electives don't have to be severe. It lists the following as a possible level 1 manifestation of the electives: "Inflexibility of behavior causes significant interference with functioning in one or more contexts. Difficulty switching between activities. Problems of organization and planning hamper independence."

The fact that it states "In one or more contexts" means you don't even have to have the elective all the time - it can be as little as in one setting.

As for me, I'm sure I don't have severe sensory issues, but there are a few things that I've got that I'm not sure whether they qualify.
1) When I was young, I was scared of the fire alarm. It's not as bad now, but I still haven't gotten over it completely. I definitely have an exaggerated startle reflex.
2) Tags on clothing bother me. I have had to cut the tags off of many articles of clothing, but it does seem to depend a bit on where the tag is and what it's made of. There are some tags that bother me more than others. I also absolutely *have* to have a shower after a hair cut, because the loose hair on my neck will drive me nuts.
3) I hate the squeeky sound that green beans and pickles make in my mouth. I like the taste of both, but the squeeky noise is enough to almost ruin the experience of eating them. I know that several others on this forum have expressed similar issues with pickles and green beans, but don't know anyone in real like who has these issues.

As you can see, nothing on the above list is particularly debilitating, and I wouldn't know for sure whether they classify as a sensory issue at all.

In any case, I do have a level 1 ASD diagnosis, so either the above do count as sensory issues, the psychologist found something else by history when talking to my parents, or the psychologist decided that I meet the criteria in the other electives.

A very interesting point. When my alexithymia was explained to me at my autism diagnosis, the psychologist actually described it the other way around. She explained that the emotional parts of the brain don't always talk to our conscious mind directly - we are often supposed to work out our mood by reading changes in our body that happen because hormones and neuro-transmitters get released into the bloodstream (for example, an "adrenaline rush" from fear or excitement.)

My last therapist, who was well trained to deal with autism, could read what emotion I was feeling when I wasn't aware of it myself; because the physical changes to my voice and movements let her know my state of mind. She taught me to read these signs better, which has made my alexithymia a bit more manageable. So, alexithymia could be partly caused by difficulties with perceiving interoception and proprioception; the senses which tell us about the state of our own body.

It is interesting that we very rarely talk about those senses on threads about "sensitivities", but they are just as likely to be affected as any other - as are things like pain, balance or temperature that aren't from the classic school-textbook list of only five senses. Some of my sensory sensitivities have been very obvious to me since childhood, but others I only discovered very recently because my idea of what a "sensory sensitivity" is was too narrow to include them.

Lots of people in this forum seem to all say that you can’t have sensory issues without knowing...but I honestly didn’t know I had them for awhile.

Like, I knew I had sensations that caused me severe upset and impeded my ability to do things, but I had assumed that EVERYONE felt like that, at least with some things. (I believe that assumption came from adults in my life yelling at me for ‘overreacting’ and telling me to ‘get over it.’ So I thought that they had the same issue and simply learned to deal with it.)

So, in a sense, you CAN not know that you have sensory issues, I guess. Or at least have misperceptions about them.

I'd say sensory issues, like anything else ASD related, are a spectrum. People who have severe issues almost certainly know it.

But people with less severe sensory issues might think they're no different from anyone else since they have nothing to compare to.