Sunday 12 August 2012

Me and Asperger's - Sensory Overload

A couple of months ago, an illustrator friend of mine, mentioned something about her daughter who also has Autism.  She said that her daughter sometimes has trouble coping with the world and at the end of the day she shuts herself off.  This got me thinking about a few incidences I had a few years ago at work, and made me wonder if I had sensory overload - you can't cope with the world and everything that is happening and what you do.  It made me realise that Asperger's isn't always about difficulty communicating with others, but there are other problems.  Here is what happened to me.

A few years ago (about 5-6) I was at work having my lunch. As usual I was reading after I had eaten my lunch.  I had just started reading when my brain went into a fog and it felt like it couldn't take any more information in.  I felt I couldn't cope with doing anything.  It was a struggle to even walk back to my desk.  I ended up in tears and going home. It took me a couple of hours in bed, resting, to get back my energy.

This wasn't the first time it had happened to me. On other occasions it had happened at the end of the day when I was walking home from the train station.  I had got half way home, when my legs felt heavy and seemed to me that they couldn't cope with it all anymore. I started feeling faint and had to stop at the bus stop to rest before I could manage to carry on walking to get home. When I got home, I had to go to bed and rest for a couple of hours. It has always been after a few hours resting that I am able to get up and live normally again.  It has also happened first thing in the morning or during the day.

I have always thought it was a virus, but now I am not so sure.  Could this be sensory overload?  Could my brain have been telling me that it had had enough and couldn't go on and I needed to rest to carry on again?

I would like someone's opinion about this.  If you read this and think yes, it was sensory overload, let me know.

4 comments:

Heather Kilgour said...

I don't know, but it sounds like it might be. Have you tried asking a Doctor?

Deborah Carr (Debs) said...

I don't know either, but it does sound like it could be sensory overload. Sounds very frightening too.

Julie Day said...

I don't know so much about frightening, more frustrating as I couldn't do anything except rest and sleep.

Louise said...

Hi Julie
My son who us 19 & has Aspergers always goes to bed for a while after he has been out. It's like he needs to escape the world for a bit when he has been with people. He won't talk to me at all when he is like this but will reappear a couple of hours later like all is normal again.