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I want to share something deeply personal: my lived experience as an autistic person with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). I hope that opening up about my internal world might resonate with others, offer validation, and help people understand the diverse ways neurodivergent brains function.

While autism and ADHD shape my focus, interactions, and energy levels, my sensory differences add another layer, primarily affecting my visual and auditory senses in ways that can be difficult to explain.

The Overwhelming Wall of Sound

When people think of auditory sensory issues, they often imagine finding things "too loud." For me, it is rarely about volume alone. It is the amount of simultaneous audio information. My brain struggles to filter it, like trying to tune in to one specific radio station while dozens blare at once. It becomes an overwhelming wall of sound.

The Visual Storm

My visual sense is perhaps even more complex. It is linked to my thoughts... thinking about something triggers vivid visual imagery. When I hear music, I don't just hear it, I see it being played, from the instruments to the finger movements. As a child, I wondered if this was my brain's way of helping me decode music faster by tapping into that strong visual connection.

However, this visual intensity has a challenging side. Overload feels like blasts of visual information hitting me. It is not a hallucination, but rather persistent remnants and after-images spinning and exploding in front of my eyes. Imagine holding your fists twelve inches from your face, and suddenly they are blasting rapidly changing, overwhelming patterns of light and colour that blur into incomprehensible noise. Closing my eyes does not stop it; it is like being plugged into a high-speed presentation flashing twenty abstract slides per second.

Navigating Childhood

This has always been my reality. As a child, I lacked the vocabulary to explain these experiences, which led to immense frustration. Well-meaning adults...SEND teachers and educational psychologists would often try to reframe my experience, but they were almost always wrong. It is important to remember this...when talking to a neurodivergent child, understand that their "normal" is the only one they know. A confused teacher making sense of my normal with, "is it this, ah yes, so it's that". was always so far off the mark!! 

My first inkling that my brain processed things differently came from watching adults observe me. While in infant school, if my friends and I were colouring or writing, adults would glance over... their interest would intensify. They would watch me closely, and I consciously remember their comment to each other, "Ooh, that's very interesting, I've read about that," while I was, for instance, meticulously copying a story but writing it perfectly upside down on my page.

The first time I tried to verbalise sensory overload, I was about six. Overwhelmed and distressed, I sobbed to my Nana, "Nana, I just want to poke my eyes out! Make it stop!" Those tight, grounding hugs from her or my Mum were often the only things that could soothe the visual and auditory storm.

The "Hardware" vs. The "Software"

My visual overwhelm sometimes manifested as tunnel vision. It was/is not a blackout of peripheral sight, but rather my focus narrowing so intensely that everything outside that narrow cone ceases registering. The childhood scars on my forehead from walking into lampposts are a testament to this. School staff were once so concerned that they suspected a brain tumour, leading to three-monthly specialist eye examinations for almost my entire childhood. Every time, the report was the same: "Eyes are perfect." What wasn't being understood was that the issue wasn't the hardware (my eyes), but the software and how my brain processed the visual input. Too much processing power, maybe!

Music and Numbers

When busy, loud playgrounds were challenging, I would often retreat into my head, focusing on numbers and music. The guitar was probably the most important thing that saved me. Because my overwhelm often led to meltdowns, I was frequently excluded from the main classroom. My headteacher, Mr. Watson, intervened by taking me into his office, giving me a guitar, and dedicating hours each week to teaching me chords and talking to me about music.

Numbers were my other sanctuary. I developed a fixation on the number six, seeing it, counting in sixes, thinking about it, which made me feel safe. Around age eight, I switched my favourite number to three, logically half of six. Music reinforced this; I was already into heavy metal and classical music, and the rhythm of triplets and double triplets was everywhere.

The Limbo State

At age 12, I faced a memorable realisation. I was placed in a small class with children who had significant intellectual disabilities. I thought, "I am not like these children; I can think critically." Later, I was moved into a mainstream classroom where the children were quiet, copying from the board, and not interacting. The realisation hit me again: "I am not like them either." I felt completely adrift, stuck in a limbo state, unable to relate to either group.

Adulthood: Finding My Flow

Looking back, I realise my brain has always operated on an "on or off" switch with very little middle ground. At school, my brain wanted to be "on," but the environment wasn't always stimulating enough, so I retreated into my special interests.

Living with this combination of autism, ADHD, and SPD is a continuous journey of self-discovery and adaptation. Understanding my neurology has been the key to finding strategies and environments where I can not only cope but genuinely flourish. Today, I can generally detect when I am becoming overloaded and utilise mindfulness techniques to pause, giving my brain the space it needs to process the world.

Written by John Hugill 

May 2023