It is hard to believe that in over 4 years of writing blog posts that I have never shared my experience with sensory overload. Sensory overload is something that I frequently experience that can be quite overwhelming and daunting to manage. And as hard as it has been throughout my life, in recent years it has gotten better to manage due to education.

Sensory overload is one of the trademarks of being autistic. It is when something experienced through one’s sensory system becomes just too much that at times one can overreact to excessive sensory stimuli in a negative way. This was the case for many years even before my diagnosis over 25 years ago. There was a great disbelief that I could be autistic because I had such a high IQ to be too far to be intellectually disabled that I went without services for 9 years because of not knowing that there were mental health services for children for which I was eligible.

Nonetheless, all while suffering from sensory overload that caused many disturbances, not only myself, but my peers and family at the time just dealt with it until services were once gotten again and eventually the path began to secure what was then known as Asperger’s Syndrome. Even then while the facts of sensory overload where known, ways to aid in the process back then were very limited and professionals at the time were very limited in their scope of knowledge, but eventually, I worked on things that worked on my own to avoid sensory overload and even at times when it was too much I just got through it and unwind later because it was easier to go though things than to explain something that many people did not understand.

Eventually, more education came forth, but I was out of all the education systems at that point and therefore I had to work on finding things that worked for me in my own way. Headphones eventually became my friend and are helpful to this day. It is in my honest opinion that the world is becoming more accepting to autistic individuals and their sensory challenges. This has made me at a very late age more willing to accept that it is OK to do what I need to do to prevent myself from experiencing sensory overload and that it is perfectly acceptable because people know my vibe and accept me for my challenges, for that I am very grateful.

Sensory overload works for each autistic person in their very own way and when things get too much, it is perfectly acceptable to take a step aside and do what the individual needs to do to regroup themselves from  a situation that can be too overwhelming for them. When an autistic individual says something is too much for them, please believe them because they know themselves more than anyone else does. Sensory overload is a very real thing that autistic people experience day in and day out and can be challenging if they let it get to them, but if they work at it, it can be quite manageable.