Sensitivity to Light, Smell, and Sounds?

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Hello! I'm new and just recently have been educated about Asperger Syndrome. After much research, I am pretty confident this condition of being wired a little different is what has made me not fit in and causes me difficulty in my professional environment. I do not make eye contact with people unless I force myself to, but then I just lose focus in my eyes and am no longer really looking at the other person's eyes and just looking through them.

My biggest issues are light and smells. A number of years ago I went and had my eyes checked and they came out okay (R: 20-20 and L: 20-25). This was after experiencing so many problems with lights, especially fluorescent lights, but generally ANY light in front of me or above me. I am extremely sensitive to smells, especially coffee and tobacco smoke, causing great discomfort and burning in my eyes. I also hear high pitched sounds quite frequently that nobody else ever hears.

These are the physical manifestations, but there is also the long time inability to connect with other humans. I've always just found myself to be superior intellectually and that other humans get too caught up in minor trivial things like mannerisms, etc. I've always just wondered "why bother?" So, of course, I just came across as an arrogant wanker, but hey, it's just who I am.

My obsessions I suppose are collecting Star Wars toys, I started in 1977 and haven't stopped, and recycling. When I say recycling, I mean everything I can. I actually drag things across the globe when traveling for work to make sure I find the proper receptacle. Makes for fun when packing my bags.

I am a Physicist, Mathematician, and Computer Programmer. I suppose I spent nine years in college to avoid the "real world". Since I've been out, I am finding many of my past issues to be difficult to deal with because I don't have as much control over my environment.

I don’t really know if I want to get diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. It would help me in some of the issues I have at work, but I fear it would be used against me in other aspects of my life. I’m hoping Wrong Planet will help guide me with some of this.

Anyway, I am interested in how many people are also as affected by light, smell, and sounds. I disconnect the lights above my desk at work, wear a hat and glasses in doors all the time, have to leave when someone is drinking coffee, and on and on. Some of the research I've been reading about talks about these kinds of things, but some mention them little (if at all).

I'm very affected by lights, sound, and smell, and touch. My senses become worse at night.

I can often hear very high pitched sounds that no-one else appears to hear, the same with some smells although not all of them are always unpleaseant, just that few people seems no notice these things either

well i have problems with loud or high pitch noises. they cause me to feel like im about to get sick and i have problem processing what some people say if they talk to fast. i hate when people speak real fast when they give their phone numbers, i cant hear the numbers they are saying. then im sinsitive to bright light and the light from computer screen. bright light hurts my eyes and computer monitors some times give me bad head aches and nausea(sp). although puting the monitor to high refhesh rate took care of that.

Very sensitive to noise if it has a pattern, esp voices tv or animals (there is a seagull nesting on my roof that i am going to evict tomorrow). Feels like I am being attacked - has to do with my history of being attacked.

And bloody police sirens and car alarms - jesus. When I am on the street and a police car goes by i put my fingers in my ears - no one else does! What is wrong with everyone else! ... I often think that if you brought an american indian across time into today's world and dropped him into Oxford Street, he would have an instant heart atttack with the noise.

Some smells like burnt toast really screw me up too.

And very bright light especially if it's intermitent like on a cloudy but sunny day, is painful.

All three. But light and sound more than smell.

All three.

thank you, that is the best discription of what happens when an Aspie looks into other's eyes I have ever read! To look into someone's eyes causes loss of focus in one's own! Of couse! oh, and hello Trigger11, and welcome to WP. I'm Merle.



Yes, I experience the same, like a short wave radio you can't quite tune in, a sort of blue light focus shift. "Half beamed down," if you catch my drift.



Thanks for the warning, Trigger. If a man warns me he comes off as an arrogant wanker I certainly take him at his word!

-Snip-



If you mean give you a DX certificate to wave in their faces and make them back off, yes, perhaps. But if you also mean if you produce the documentation will that make you look like a freak to your friends and family and will that change the way they feel about you? Yes to that too, my friend. As Roger N. Meyers once said " you are fearful to diagnose because 'somebody might find out', believe me, my dear, they already know something is up with you! Having a DX would formalize it and then the chips will just fall where they may."
your milage may vary.




Yeah, Aspies can be a real pain in the ass to neurotypicals. . Once I was so photosensitive I wore a huge brimmed straw hat swathed with scarves with gloves and sunglasses and a long dress to an academic picknick in July, the sunlight was so bright! I rage at young men with jetpacks on their back blowing leaf blowers, too, just so rude to make all that racket! It happens to all of us, Tigger11.

I would say you are home, now.


Merle

Loud music and flashing lights set me off. I don't go to concerts, dances, or pubs.
Glare and bright sunlight trigger migraines. Loud persistent noises like the machines where I work
leave my ears ringing all day. Certain smells can make me gag, and I can smell cigarette
smoke from 100 feet away.

Yes...I can smell cigarette smoke from over 300 feet away while driving in my car. Seriously, someone can be in a car way ahead of me smoking and I can smell it from that far back. It makes me ill and burns my eyes. I live in redneck country where it seems 40% of the population still smokes. When I go to Europe for work it is frustrating too, because so many people smoke there as well. Nobody ever believes me!

Working in a professional environment where I am at high-level meetings and even have to present my program for approval in an extremely formal setting is frustrating. It's not socially acceptable to where a hat and sunglasses indoors. Back in graduate school I had a meeting with the Dean to discuss my PhD. program. I casually walked into his office from off the street wearing my hat and sunglasses and without even introducing himself he kicked me out of his office because I was sooooo rude! I was dumbfounded as to why someone would care so much about how I was dressed. This wasn't even a formal meeting, just a planned chat. SOme of the people I work with now are like that and it is frustrating. I can't sit in a conference room with bright lights all day without constantly rubbing my eyes and closing them. Plus I will get a headache if I am in this environment too long. Getting an official diagnosis would allow me to wear my hat and sunglasses without fear of retribution, but some people in my personal life would use it against me to blame everything on me since I would be the "psycho".

Another thing I do is drive in the left lane (fast lane - might be the right lane in your country)...all the time. At night, I have to due to the headlights. The other choice is to turn my driver's side mirror down, but that would be too unsafe in my opinion. During the day, too many cars have daytime running lights now, which also still hurt my eyes. So I have to during the day too.

So...from just a few hour of replies to my posts I guess I really am not crazy. Woohoo!

Does anybody else constantly look for patterns in numbers and words? My mind NEVER stops and is constantly calculating the most bizarre things. Sometimes numbers, sometimes convoluted social situations like, "What if someone said or did this? What should I say or do?" I have prescriptions for sleep medication for when I have bad nights and really need to sleep. Lunesta helps to shut down my mind for five or six hours when needed.

Now maybe that stuff makes me crazy? This is fun!

ah, don't fall into that trap, Trigger11, just because you get corroboration from your fellow Aspies is no proof we are not crazy, too!

My astonishment at your symptoms is that you some how feel you are entitled to your idiosyncrasies and others should be inconvenienced rather than yourself! Life is suffering, and yes, it seems that somehow reasonable accomodation might be extended by others around you, however I find that in the real world that only happens in very limited situations. Most of us make our residences that 'Fortress of Solitude' and are only able to dictate what goes on around our person in that small sphere.

Good luck if you want to carpet the world, so to speak. I have learned to wear carpet slippers so I don't have to constantly ward off the social set backs my own sensitivities cause.
but don't stop having fun!

Merle

I find it extremely illogical for society to make rules about such personal things that make an individual comfortable, like weraing a hat and/or sunglasses that do not in ANY way affect others except that they have a mental hang up about it. That is what I want...to not be persecuted because I do things to make my personal physical well-being more comfortable. I would prefer the ligths be turned off, but that is not going to happen. That would be controlling others. Me wearing a hat and sunglasses is not. I want the coffee machine removed from my workplace and to ban drinking the stuff in my workplace as well, but I know that is not reasonable and would be unfair to all the addicts. So...I leave the building when its brewing and at its worse.

An example is an old person with cataracts can wear those funky cataract glasses indoors and nobody would have a problem. But some younger punk like me does and I am being rude and insensitive. I'm sorry, but I have a right to be physically comfortable so long as I do not cause physical discomfort to others. Wearing a hat and sunglasses does not cause physical discomfort to others...only mental discomfort. The insensitivity and closed mindedness of others is not my problem. Life is too short to spend it caring about such trivial and illogical things.

Welcome to WP!

Tim

Sorry you are disturbed by what makes NTs disturbed. I guess you don't understand to an NT anyone looking 'different' by wearing a hat and glasses IS a physical assault to them. It just is, dear, they can't help it, they were BORN that way. And the insensitivity and closed mindedness of others IS your problem when you try to buck the system. In their best defense, an NT is no more able to 'turn off' their reactions to someone being odd in their presence as you are to enduring coffee being brewed.
and no one is going to over come their gut reaction by it being logically explained to them! LOL

OK, OK, I guess you have been sheltered and even coddled against the big bad world and I suppose you are not to be blamed for that. But it is humorous to read your righteous indignation about what the rest of us have had to knuckle under to for years!

good luck with that!

Merle

_______________________________
Illiud Latine dici non potest.

1} I'm not sure if it effects me or not, relevant to what?
2} welcome to WP!

I'm pretty sensitive to lights, odour, sounds etc, but not as bad as some others. My mom has it worse and sits alone in the dark for hours. She jumps out of her skin when the phone rings. Me, I couldn't work in a bank or under flourescents or in a noisy factory or warehouse. So I drive for a living, really liking the independence and control I have in a "mobile office". My IQ indicates I could be an editor or manager but I don't do workplace politics. I need to be on my own and in control. Like some of you I hear a high-pitch whine but all the time. I have to use external noise (white noise I call it) to mask it, but sounds like sirens and loud engines stir panic in me and I often have to turn away or hold my ears too. My sensitivity to light shows up most at night when I can more or less see a constant halo around everything that no one else apparently sees. May have some TLE mixed in with AS to account for that because sometimes at night I become quite catatonic and cannot sleep properly either.