This Is Why I Didn’t Answer the Door
As an autistic person, I’ve got my share of sensory sensitivities. But the one that is most debilitating and least within my control is noise.
Every day I use huge dollops of conscious and unconscious effort to minimise my exposure to it. It’s as though a muscle memory guides me along the path of least resistance whenever I go out somewhere.
Unsurprisingly, I spend a lot of time at home. My tiny apartment is a cocoon, a cosy sanctuary from everything outside of it. It’s not that I need complete quiet, but that I need to control the type and intensity of sound that surrounds me.
I cherish and closely guard the one place where I feel safe. So when outside noise rudely intrudes upon it, it’s all the more unsettling. As far as my nervous system is concerned, noise equals threat and jolts me into survival mode. And because I’m on edge waiting for it to happen again, I stay in it.
What’s more, the effect is cumulative. As the day goes on, the auditory assaults pile on each other to the point where the tiniest noise can tip the whole lot over. Internally, the discomfort is intolerable. An external observer would see an irrational person going off their brain at the crinkle of a plastic bag.
