#sensory processing

The most common way I see people talk about sensory processing disorders is that the person is always consciously aware of all the noises and sensations around them. And it CAN be like that, but I've found the way it happens most often for me is that I straight up do not realise that something in my environment is bothering me.

Like, earlier I was at the laundrette, doing some washing, and I started feeling very agitated with no idea why. Then after a while, I realised that there was an alarm going off outside. The door was open, and someone's mobility scooter across the street was beeping. Not super quietly either! Once I realised the noise was happening, it was an extremely obvious and very irritating noise.

And you might be wondering; what's the difference between that and a neurotypical person ignoring the noise? The difference is in the processing space being used up. A neurotypical brain can hear a background noise, determine that it is non-salient, and just straight up stop listening to it. Whereas my brain is still listening to the noise, is still using brain power to observe and analyse the sound, it's just not letting my conscious mind be aware of it.

It's kind of like, imagine you were walking down the street, and you felt AWFUL. You're tired, you're breathing way harder than usual, your arms are KILLING you, you're sweaty and achy and you have no idea why. Then you look down, and suddenly realise that you are carrying a very big and heavy box. And even though you weren't aware of the box, you were still having to do a tremendous amount of work to carry it, and that was making you exhausted.

Now a neurotypical person, they can just identify the box as unimportant and put it down. They're not doing the work of carrying the box anymore. But I can't identify whether the box is important, so I have to keep carrying. But instead my brain just kind of. Makes me forget that it's there. I'm still doing all the labour but I don't know where the effort is coming from.

I'm honestly not entirely sure why that happens. I ~suspect~ that it is at least partly yet another casualty of autistic masking, but it's also might just be my brain trying to spare me from having to think about it. Which is a massive pain because if I was made aware of it I could have put my ear plugs in sooner and not have gotten so wound up.