The other day, my dad and I were in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, waiting for my mom to finish her appointment. The receptionist, in a rather mean and snippy tone of voice, was telling someone on the phone that they were “overdue” for their annual physical, and that they needed to come in so that the doctor could determine whether they were on an “appropriate” level of medication for their high blood pressure and diabetes.
This made me feel angry, even though this situation didn’t really have anything to do with me. I felt that the person’s right to bodily autonomy, their right to decline medical intervention, was being violated. No person should be told that they have to schedule a medical appointment on any particular time frame, or at all, for that matter. It’s their body, I thought to myself, and they should have the sole power to make decisions regarding it. I’m fortunate enough not to have any significant medical conditions. But what if I eventually get high blood pressure and/or diabetes when I get older? I wondered. Would I, like this patient, be told that I had to schedule a doctor’s appointment, whether I wanted to or not? Would my right to bodily autonomy, my right to decline medical intervention, be taken away? These are fundamental rights that should apply to everyone; they should not depend on being free of significant medical issues.
As I was thinking these angry thoughts, my dad started talking to me about a funny picture that he saw on his phone. I muttered a monosyllabic response, hoping that would be enough to end the exchange so that I could finish my thought process. But my dad kept talking, thereby drowning out the rest of the phone call.
Having two sources of auditory input at the same time – the paternalistic and authoritarian phone call plus my dad’s talking – made me feel so overstimulated that my brain physically hurt. I became sullen and non-responsive and was unable to explain to my dad (and later, my mom) why I was so upset. The feeling of physical pain in my brain lasted for hours.
Finally, I regained my ability to think coherently and was able to explain what had happened. And while mulling this topic over, I was reminded of other situations in which I’ve experienced sensory overstimulation.
Like most people on the autism spectrum, I have sensory sensitivities involving sounds and noises. But unlike most people on the autism spectrum, I don’t have any problem with crowded, busy places such as supermarkets, trains, buses, airports, or stadiums. In fact, I work in a grocery store that often becomes extremely crowded and busy, and this doesn’t bother me at all.
The thing about my sensory sensitivities is that when a sound is constant, it doesn’t bother me. A chaotic din, the buzzing of a crowd, a dull roar of noise, none of these things are any problem for me at all. It’s predictable, it’s consistent, and there’s nothing startling about it. What bothers me is sudden noises that come of out nowhere. A door slamming, a horn honking, a loud cough, a burst of laughter, or a dropped object clattering to the floor are just a few examples. These noises startle me and hurt my brain. They come out of nowhere, and I’m not expecting them.
I don’t have any problem with sirens, because they start out relatively quiet and gradually become louder as the fire truck or police car gets closer. But honking horns definitely have the potential to startle and anger me.
Bruins games, Celtics games, public events that draw huge crowds of people… none of these things faze me. But one of my biggest pet peeves while in college was the sound of a person suddenly coughing in a hushed lecture hall while the professor was speaking. And I still cringe when looking back on the excruciating mental pain that erupted in my brain when my parents started talking amongst themselves during the TV broadcast of the opening ceremony of the Olympics.
Despite not being bothered by the aforementioned noisy grocery store, I found myself frequently stressed out by noises back when I worked in an office. I was startled every time someone’s phone rang. Additionally, to my chagrin, something about the hinges of the doors made them predisposed to slam loudly, causing me to jump out of my skin every time someone closed the door of their office. I also found my co-workers’ conversations highly distracting. My brain couldn’t help but attempt to follow what was being said, making it impossible for me to concentrate on my work if anyone was talking anywhere in my vicinity.
During the years of my 9:00-5:00 office job, I commuted via the train, which was packed during both my morning and evening commutes. Being surrounded by hundreds of noisy, chattering people didn’t bother me at all. But now, my work shifts end at 10:00 pm, and during my commute home both the train station and the train itself are quiet and deserted. Somewhat ironically, I’ve noticed that on the rare occasion that there is a person or group making significant noise, it really irritates me. A group of teenagers joking around and roughhousing, a sudden peal of shrill laughter, a young woman calling out to her friend a few feet away. Even the noise of a wheeled briefcase rolling along the ground felt loud to me after a particularly tiring workday.
And continuing on the subject of my current job, I find that the most overstimulating part of the workday, in addition to the evening commute, is my break. The constant roar of noise in the store itself is perfectly fine… but you know what isn’t? The sound of the microwave door opening and closing, cupboard doors slamming, utensils clashing against plates, and people banging on the handle of the paper towel dispenser in the otherwise quiet break room.
It’s something about the unexpectedness of a sudden noise in an otherwise silent environment, that startles me and hurts my brain. And there’s something about people talking in the midst of an otherwise quiet space that makes their voices impossible for my brain to filter out. I think this is what was going on with the two conversations in the doctor’s waiting room. The space was silent except for the receptionist talking, and so when my dad began talking as well, I couldn’t filter the phone call out. The effort involved in having to process two sources of sound simultaneously caused my brain to crash. Whereas the dull roar of a crowded stadium, train, bus, or grocery store is something that I can tune out easily.
So that’s it. There’s nothing particularly profound about this post; I just wanted to share about my sensory sensitivities and how they’re similar to, and different from, other autistic people’s. If you’ve read all the way to the end of the post, I hope that you have found it interesting.