My disrupted sensory world: caught between too much and not enough

One of my oldest memories is watching tiny floating dust particles in the light of my bedroom window. That sight fascinated me. And yet, for most of my life, my sensory sensitivities have been my greatest struggle. They were the main trigger for my autistic meltdowns. When I experienced my first autistic burnout, my sensory hypersensitivities intensified to the point where I described them as “broken.” Things that used to bother me mildly — or things I had adapted to — suddenly became unbearable. Since sensory sensitivities are a core part of the diagnostic criteria and a major aspect of autistic life, it feels important to explain them and share my experience.

Sensory sensitivities with an atypical origin

Sensory hypersensitivity is something many readers will already be familiar with. Its prevalence in the general population is estimated between 10% and 35%. According to one study, more than 90% of autistic people experience sensory differences. However, it’s important to distinguish these experiences. The causes and consequences of hypersensitivity are not the same in neurotypical people as they are in autistic people. For neurotypicals, it usually affects only one or two sensory modalities, whereas for autistic people it often involves several — sometimes all of them.

A different brain structure

The key difference is that hypersensitivity (and hyposensitivity) in autism is linked to a specific neurological structure and organization. Sensory differences are the result of the brain processing sensory information in an atypical way. Normally, the brain filters out irrelevant information: it allows through what it considers important (like someone speaking to you) and reduces the rest (background noise). In autism, this filtering works differently. The brain may let through too many sensory signals — this is hypersensitivity — or dampen them too much — this is hyposensitivity.

What is common in autistic people, and far less so in neurotypicals, is the combination of hypersensitivity and hyposensitivity, sometimes within the same sensory modality. This atypical sensory filtering has been widely studied and explained in specialized publications (such as The Transmitter).

Fascination and sensory overload

This often surprises people around me, yet it’s simply a different neurological functioning. Studies suggest hyperconnectivity in certain sensory processing areas and hypoconnectivity between more distant brain regions (Connectopathy in Autism Spectrum Disorders, Frontiers in Neuroscience). Sensory input may also trigger an atypical neural response. This neurological difference is what leads to sensory fascination commonly observed in autistic children and adults — but also to sensory overload. And when that overload exceeds the autistic person’s tolerance threshold, it results in either a shutdown (autistic withdrawal) or a meltdown (emotional overwhelm) — the two main crisis responses many autistic people experience. I go through them regularly.

My experience with sensory differences

All my life, I lived with these sensory sensitivities without ever questioning whether they were atypical. I could tell others didn’t react as strongly as I did, but I naively assumed everyone experienced the world the same way. This is common among autistic people: sensing the difference (to the point of feeling alien) while still believing others perceive the world similarly. It wasn’t until my autistic burnout that I realized this wasn’t “normal.”

👇🏻 Touch — my worst enemy

As a child, I would have refused to take off my socks to walk on a beach. Touch has always been complicated for me, and it created difficulties in my relationships with others. I still remember having a meltdown in the car because my sister’s knee was touching mine. The slightest brush felt like aggression.

We had to cut the tags off every piece of clothing so I could get through a school day. An ill-fitting pair of underwear was so unbearable that I constantly had to readjust it. This even led to public humiliation in fourth grade when a teacher scolded me loudly in front of the class, telling me to “stop scratching my butt.” What began as discomfort turned into being forbidden to exist as I was.

My mother swears she hugged me when I was very small, but that stopped quickly. I found the idea overwhelming, intrusive, and uncomfortable.

Today, only a few close friends (who I sometimes jokingly call my annual oxytocin suppliers) are allowed to hug me without triggering a sharp recoil. I even seek out hugs from two of them — I feel safe with them, and one hugs me with strong pressure, which calms me immensely. Research suggests oxytocin is released atypically in autistic people. Oxytocin is known as the bonding and social contact hormone. In autistic individuals, it may be released intensely, delayed, or not at all. Even the functioning of oxytocin receptors varies.

Some studies have found lower oxytocin levels in autistic people (see PubMed — oxytocin levels in autism), and others have examined its effects in autistic children (see NIH). In my case, I believe oxytocin release is strongly tied to trust and safety. Physical contact with most people likely releases nothing — and is therefore unpleasant or even repulsive.

Just like deep-pressure hugs, I used to enjoy wearing tight pants as a teenager, before switching to looser clothing as an adult. Because yes — sensory sensitivities change over time, often more noticeably than in allistic people. I’ll come back to this later in the article.

👂🏻👁️ Hearing and vision — the traits that turn me into an X-Man

A friend once jokingly called me an X-Man after hearing me talk about my sensory sensitivities (probably thinking of Cyclops and his visor). This was during my burnout, and I was nearly at the point of wearing sunglasses indoors with the shutters closed. What might seem like a superpower from an allistic perspective is, in reality, my biggest disability.

This “superpower” doesn’t appear from nowhere. I’ve mentioned before that my hearing is so sharp I can hear my soda fizzing two rooms away. Sometimes I can even hear electricity buzzing through the walls (I’m not an electrician, so I don’t know what device causes it). If I had to choose one thing that defines my autistic experience the most, it would be this. I smile while writing these words — yet living with auditory hypersensitivity is far from easy. I navigate a world every day that wasn’t built for autistic people, and it is overwhelmingly loud. Especially in the Paris region, where construction noise is constant and public transport would be unbearable without my active noise-cancelling headphones.

Socializing is where it becomes particularly challenging. Because I don’t want to appear strange, I refuse to wear my noise-cancelling headphones in social gatherings. A conversation with three people? Manageable. More than three? It gets difficult. Four or more — and I’m headed straight toward shutdown. The easiest way to picture it is to imagine each person as a dot with lines connecting them every time they speak over one another. The more lines, the more noise. Place that scene inside a bar in the evening, and a shutdown is guaranteed — either in the moment or as soon as I get home. Sound, as I often describe it, feels no different from a knife stabbing into my ears.

To protect myself, I use my headphones, and paradoxically, I almost always turn the volume all the way up. It’s where auditory hyposensitivity overlaps with hypersensitivity. In a nightclub, if you spot someone headbanging next to the bass speakers, that might be me. Ignoring a constant background sound in my apartment — unless I’m in overload — is normal for me.

As for the X-Men comparison, I’ve always been hypersensitive to sunlight, to the point where I’ve worn sunglasses for as long as I can remember. I went to school in Guadalupe, so sunny days were the norm, but I couldn’t wear sunglasses in class. It was difficult, so I walked around staring at the ground and only felt relief once inside the classrooms. When I moved to Paris, I started wearing sunglasses outside all the time.

This may surprise many — though probably not autistic people — but I’m even more overwhelmed when the sky is white. It can trigger intense headaches, which is a sign I’m going into overload. And often, by the time it happens, it’s already too late to prevent a crisis. So I live with my blinds half-closed.

Conversely, once night falls, it’s my hyposensitivities that take over. Lacking sensory stimulation, I shift into sensory-seeking mode. Lights that others find harsh become a source of fascination for me. When I’m waiting for a train, I usually stare at a streetlamp. When I’m in a car, I watch traffic lights and the glow of the city. I see a kind of beauty in it that others often overlook. Sleeping in complete darkness? Difficult. I keep my blinds open — sometimes even with a dim light on. Beyond hyposensitivity, it’s also the total absence of visual reference points that unsettles me.

👅 Taste

Taste is the sense that best illustrates how sensitivities change over time. Everyone has likely experienced this: hating a food as a child and later cooking it regularly, or going from disliking coffee to not being able to live without it. For me, and often in autism, this evolution has also happened across my senses.

Taste is the sense that causes me the least difficulty. I’ve generally always been open to most foods as long as they weren’t bitter, at least until I adapted. That’s how I deliberately trained myself to enjoy coffee, tea, and beer. Not to fit in, but out of curiosity — to understand what others found in them. If so many people consumed them, surely there had to be something enjoyable for a refined palate. Now, not only am I used to them, but I enjoy them without any additives (sugar, milk, etc.).

In the end, I’m mostly hyposensitive to taste. I add pepper and spices to almost every meal and often don’t even notice whether my pasta needs salt — or whether there’s too much of it.

👃🏻 Smell

Smell is the sense where the change has been the most dramatic. I was so hyposensitive to smells until age 28 that I could barely detect anything. When I caught COVID, I didn’t notice any difference. I needed a strong amount of perfume to smell anything; cigarette smell in an apartment wouldn’t have bothered me. Sweat odors didn’t affect me. I probably wouldn’t have noticed a gas leak — and would have blown up with the building.

Then at 28, I went through my second autistic burnout. Since then, my sense of smell has gradually come back. Except I would probably have preferred it stayed the way it was. I’ve become so sensitive that I often smell things everywhere, sometimes scents with no clear origin, like perfume lingering from someone who walked past before me.

Navigating the metro now forces me to breathe through my mouth. Once, I noticed a pleasant smell and realized it was a friend’s natural body scent. I instinctively moved closer just to smell it again — almost like a natural perfume. The same way I take deep breaths at a gas station, attracted by the smell of fuel.

My first burnout made my perception so extreme that I lived with the blinds shut, wore sunglasses indoors, and avoided any situation where I might come into contact with others (especially rush hour in public transport). When it slowly faded, my sensory sensitivities never fully returned to what used to be my baseline.

Beyond the five commonly known senses, others also play a crucial role: proprioception (awareness of body position), the vestibular system (balance and movement), nociception (pain perception), and thermoception (temperature perception). In autistic people, these systems can also be altered — something I discuss further in The Invisible Senses. These additional senses are increasingly recognized in scientific literature and public science communication.

Not only do additional senses exist, but in my case, my bipolar episodes affect them as well — something I will also explore in dedicated articles (impact of hypomania, mania, and depression).

TL;DR : My sensitivities issues

I’ll return in a future article to these burnouts and to how sensory overload can lead to an autistic crisis when it isn’t contained.

Despite the difficulties they cause me, my sensory sensitivities are part of who I am, and I truly believe they allow me to experience the world in a way that is very different from neurotypical perception. Sometimes, I wish others could see the world the way I do.

Right now, as I’m writing, I’m completely shut off from the noises around me. My server no longer sounds like a fire alarm, the lighting is dim, and I have only one thing in mind: write, write, and write again.

Originally published in French on: 3 Sep 2025 — translated to English on: 18 Nov 2025.