I never really understood what "sensory challenges" were despite having them many times in my life. It wasn't until Simon that I could see what it was, as sometimes certain amounts and kinds of sounds would cause him to cover his ears. In more extreme instances, he would basically melt into a puddle on the floor covering his ears, and boy would that trigger some Papa Bear instincts in me.
After my own ASD diagnosis, I would eventually come to recall instances where I felt the same. In adulthood I have largely developed coping mechanisms to roll with it. As is the case with Simon, I can't easily predict what might be difficult, and even the same circumstances on two different days could yield different results. But now I've had two episodes of being sonically overwhelmed, and I'm angry about the way I feel. I feel like I'm less, and I shouldn't.
I don't know what the experience is like for others, but the best way that I can describe it is that it's the auditory version of being in a room with a bunch of asynchronous strobe lights that never stop flashing. It's like someone stabbing your brain, which is too abstract, but I don't know how else to describe it. Maybe for a neurotypical person it would be like standing in a fire station where the truck is blaring its siren.
My previous situation was only a month ago, on our last cruise. Aboard the Wish, one of the dinner nights is in a Frozen themed restaurant with live music. I've generally enjoyed it, but this time we were very close to the stage, and the lighting was also in my eye line. Despite wearing noise-cancelling ear buds, I found it overwhelming, and I just kind of shut down. Diana saw that I was struggling, and encouraged me to leave.
Then tonight I was out for dinner with an arranged group of people that I don't typically work with. The restaurant was extra noisy, an old building with no soft surfaces on the interior. On top of that, they had loud music, which might be fine if it was music I knew and I wasn't trying to hear people talking at the table. (Also, they didn't have the one dish on the menu that I would eat, and the waiter was kind of a dick about it.) I found myself involuntarily holding my ear, and I stepped out to reset for a minute. I was back in for about five minutes before I just couldn't take it anymore. I apologized for bailing, and I bailed.
I felt embarrassed, inferior and high maintenance, even though I logically know that this was a reaction to the way that my brain processes stimuli. I can't explain why even the night before, I had no issue in a noisy bowling alley/bar/arcade. Maybe it's lighting, sound frequencies... I don't know. My emotional response is that I don't want to be limited in any way, and this felt like a limitation that I should be equipped to handle.
If there is a positive, it's that I recognize the situation. Even four years ago, I would only know that I had an overwhelming desire to run, and I would chalk it up to other feelings of discomfort, like social things, and attribute that to personality instead of something truly physiological. Even being able to give myself that grace, it still doesn't feel good.
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