I don’t talk about this often, but I am autistic. I wasn’t diagnosed officially until a couple years ago, (even though in hindsight I actually displayed some HUGE warning signs in school, but I went through the school system before kids really began getting diagnosed) but I have been dealing with issues related to it my whole life. One of the biggest of which is issues with noise. I just had a pretty severe sensory overload episode at my sister’s Christmas dinner, cus lots of talking, TV and guitars being played all at once around me, plus there was the Christmas Eve dinner the night before that i was still kinda recovering from i guess. It was the first time in a long time that it’s gotten beyond me just kinda discreetly flipping out for a couple minutes in a corner somewhere, or focusing one something (drawing, tablet game, just fidgeting with something, etc. tonight it was Fallout Shelter) wasn’t able to calm me down, at least in public. I had to escape, i just…. completely melted down in a room upstairs, and was unable to completely recompose myself afterwards. It was embarrassing, and we had to leave early. And now it’s going to take me hours maybe even days to rebalance myself. I am not blaming anyone, it just happened, no one was trying to make things bad for me, i know that. But… it doesn’t make it any more fun.
Parties are a special kind of hell for an autistic person, but we are expected to attend them sometimes, and we try and deal as best we can, but there are limits. But there are some things that others can do to make the experience more bearable for them. So just wanted to get a little PSA out there that if you know someone who is autistic, or otherwise has problems with too much noise and activity around them, try and keep things around them from getting too hectic and loud at things like parties and family gatherings that they are obligated to attend. Just to be kind. It’s not about volume so much, it’s too many different TYPES of sensory input coming in at once, making it very hard to process it. So just eliminating music in the background or something can be a huge help. Saying they should just deal with it will not help, trust me, they would like nothing more than to be able to enjoy a party ‘normally’ and not freak out at extraneous noise. They aren’t being difficult on purpose, their only thought is eliminating the noise that is causing them distress. If they need to go somewhere quiet all alone, it’s not personal, they just need to collect themselves and escape something that’s causing them distress. Make a nice quiet room available to them. If they begin melting down, don’t try and talk them through it, unless they ask. It will just make things worse, talking, no matter how kind and well intentioned, is just more noise at that point. They may have some sort of repetitive motion they do to calm themselves down, they may fidget with something, they may lose themselves in a phone game or something, they may plug their ears. it looks strange, but let them do it without judgement. it helps keep them calm.
Okay. I just wanted to get that out there.
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