How do you deal with sensory issues?

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I don't like wearing noise-block headphones because I have sensitive ears and they irritate them. I really want to know some other ways to deal with these sensory issues. My mom doens't seem to respect them when she's sitting their blowing up a raft in the hallway, by my bedroom, with this super noisy air pump that makes a loud whirring sound. I was plugging my ears and I could STILL hear it. I have such a hard time dealing with louder noises.

How do you guys cope with this?

In the last hour I have snapped at my husband for a) chewing too loudly and b) tapping his foot on the ground; these things just sounded so damn LOUD!! ! (though I suspect that for a "normal" person they would have been entirely tolerable, especially the foot tap as he doesn't even have shoes on and it's a thickly carpeted floor).

He stopped, and I became much calmer. So my first method is always to see if I can stop the annoyance!

After that, I go for a) headphones/earphones with my latest "play on repeat" song , if appropriate b) humming - sounds really loud in my head even when to others it is quite quiet or they can't even hear it, plus I am in total control of it which is helpful or c) leaving the environment (going to another room, or going for a walk).

yeah. it sucks if you live in ghetto where you have to call the police every-time one of these a**holes wants to play his music real loud. or the banging around from neighbors in their houses.

i'm considering getting some custom in ear monitors. if you got the money look at jhaudio and if you're in europe spiral ear.

i find headphones and non custom in ear monitors uncomfortable.

if regular ear plugs are comfortable to you you may want to look into etymotic.


me, i mostly just think of all the wonderful things i could have done had a merely had a quiet place to sleep and study all these years. all that time wasted just because of noisy a**holes.

anyone else envy the deaf?

Get as far away from the noise as possible.

I sympathize about noise-cancelling headphones hurting your ears. Me too. Especially if you're referring to the ear-bud type.

Lucky for me I only have 1 sensory issue, which is sound. The sound I mostly can't stand is toddlers screaming. It just cannot be ignored. My ears and brain absolutely hate the sound.

I hate sudden noises aswell. I hate it when cars bib as they go past me. My worst fear is seeing an ambulance coming towards me with it's blue lights flashing, because I know then that the siren will suddenly turn on at any moment without warning, and the closer it gets to me the more I panic, and my mouth goes dry and my heart thumps so hard that it hurts my chest, and I just hope - so much - that the ambulance doesn't turn it's siren on as it passes me. If it's already on, at least I'll know that it's not going to make me jump, so I can still be cool with it, but when I know that there is a 50/50 chance it might suddenly turn on, it makes me feel very upset. Sometimes I just have to put my fingers in my ears, just in case. I just have to not care what others think. As an Aspie, loud sudden noises are such a big thing for me.

Also, I had serious problems with the bells at school. I know people say, ''but you knew what time it will ring, so there's nothing to be afraid of'', but that is really not the point. I just hated being under them when they were to ring. Say if it was going to ring at 10 o'clock, and I look at my watch and it says 10 o'clock exactly, I'd be standing there thinking, ''well come on - it's dead on 10 o'clock - is it going to ring or what?!'' Then about 10 seconds later it suddenly does ring, and I jump out of my skin. Not only that - I seem to have a funny reaction when I jump, like my arms will involuntary fly up in the air, or I'll choke or something, and having other teenagers seeing you do something like that isn't a good thing, because it encourages teasing. I never wanted to put my fingers in my ears either, because that also encourages bullying. So I just had to try and hang about and wait 'til the bell goes, then get to my lesson (and I always arrived a couple of minutes late). But I think I know why I hated the bell so much. It was probably because I wasn't talking to others much, so when I was just standing about on my own I obviously took in noises more, and was always looking at the time, and my fear of bells grew, the older I got. Other children were always chatting to one another and so never gave themselves time to think about noise and time, even when they were on their own.

I've always been afraid to admit that I hated the bell. NTs always either laughed or thought I was weird, so I stopped telling them.

First of all I live alone in housing I carefully assessed for potential noise from neighbors. I run fans and/or tune radios to the static between stations. If outside noise is really bad I use music or the TV, on the principle of better my noise than their noise, but these are annoying after awhile. Reading seems to calm me down and take me out of myself when nothing else will work.