Strange Sensations

Strange Sensations

     Recently, I was talking to a friend and we got on the subject of mental disorders. Mental disorders are often laughed at by people who don’t have them, or are called non-existent. They are highly misunderstood, and the only way to truly know what it is like to have a mental disorder is to actually have one. Even then, these disorders can vary from person to person, with different physiological reactions to different psychological stimuli. Explaining why or how you feel, as a person with a disorder, can be frustratingly difficult. Sometimes it seems that the world doesn’t have a specific word for certain feelings, so people with disorders have to make due with various combined words that still don’t describe the problem accurately.

     This is what happened to me when I was talking to my friend. You see, I suffer from quite a few psychological disorders. Bipolar, OCD, anxiety, and perhaps the least known of all, sensory processing disorder (and now, possibly, misophonia). I have it all, and trying to explain how I feel and why I feel a certain way can be so difficult that it becomes virtually impossible. When I told my friend about my disorders, the main one they wanted to know about was sensory processing disorder. Not many people have heard about it, and even in the psychoanalytical world, it’s not a well-known disorder. My friend asked me what it was and how it affects me, and I didn’t have a very good answer. So, this is my answer.

     Sensory processing disorder affects the senses. It affects how the brain processes these senses. Somehow, in my mind, the wiring is off, and the signals of certain senses are sent to the wrong places in my brain, or the signals are misinterpreted. This makes certain senses unpleasant, to say the least. For me, touch and sound are my downfalls, though the disorder does have the capacity to affect all of the five general senses. Now, all of that is easy enough to explain. It’s all on a website, actually, and it is very easy information to Google. However, explaining how SPD affects me is where it gets difficult.

     When I was a kid and lacked a proper vocabulary, I told my mom that my clothes hurt. Now that I have a better vocabulary, I can tell you that they don’t hurt, per say, but they certainly don’t feel good. Have you ever had someone grab your arm, or squeeze your shoulder? Not to the point of bruising, of course, but you felt that pressure on your skin, tightening over a particular area? If you have, think about that sensation. Hold it in your mind, or even squeeze your arm right now to remember what it feels like. Now, have you ever lost the blood flow to a body part and it went numb? Do you remember how it feels when the sensation comes back to your limb? Different people call it different things. Pins and needles, static, crawling ants, et cetera, can be used to describe that feeling. Now, combine the feeling of constriction with the feeling of pins and needles. Try to imagine it.

     That’s what I usually feel when clothes touch my skin. A bra is suddenly a boa constrictor that’s charged with low voltage electricity, and it constantly zaps me. I can feel it for a few minutes even after I take the offending clothing item off. The only way this feeling can really be stopped, for me, is to have either all loose clothes or all tight clothes. If all of my clothes are loose, they won’t touch my skin as much, and they won’t feel nearly as constricting (think of this one as claustrophobia of the skin, really). If all of my clothes are tight, there is an even pressure on my body, so no one thing stands out as too tight. For this reason, I can wear a corset. It’s even pressure over my body.

     An odd thing happens, however, when I feel the need to be hugged or to hold someone's hand. My disorder is over-ridden almost completely. The tingling becomes tolerable instead of borderline painful. One part of my brain that says the touch is a necessity drowns out the part of my brain that says that the touch is bad. Something similar happens when someone else is in need of a hug from me. However, when someone needs a hug from me, I usually suck it up and hug them, and simply deal with my body screaming at me to back away from them. In those moments, the person in front of me who is in need of comfort comes above my own physical discomfort, so I am able to deal with the discomfort a bit more effectively. Don't ask me why, or how, it happens, but it does.

     Now that I’ve explained, and hopefully you’ve understood, the touch aspect of my SPD, I’ll move on to the hearing aspect. I was very recently told by my therapist that this particular part of my SPD may be misophonia, which is the hatred of sound. I’ll explain that a bit more in a minute. Anyway, certain sounds can take on a physical nature for me. The sound of a cough can ring in my ears like it is trying to burrow through my eardrum. It stays there, digging with dull claws at the thin membrane inside of my ear canal. The sound of someone chewing, or moving their tongue around too much, or swallowing too loudly, or swishing saliva around in their mouth, or someone smacking their lips, or even fixing their dentures drives me in to an uncontrollable rage. I have to fill my ears with loud music until the offending sound stops, or I have to hum to myself. I have to replace the digging, dull-clawed rat in my ear with some louder, more ear piercing noise.

     And here’s where misophonia comes in. The hatred of sound. Misophonia is when certain sounds illicit illogical, uncontrollable rage in the person who has the disorder. A seemingly innocent tapping of a pen on a desk can make someone have to leave a room because it angers them so much. Personally, I think my sensory processing disorder, when it comes to hearing, is so severe that it has morphed in to a separate diagnosable condition.

     And I know that my SPD is severe enough to give me panic attacks. Just yesterday, on September 2^nd, I had one such panic attack. My clothes felt too tight, and I started crying uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop it. My body thought I was in danger because of my discomfort, and because I couldn’t fight my own body or brain in to stopping the sensation, and I couldn’t flee from myself, I started crying. I was lucky enough that this particular episode didn’t end up with me hyperventilating.

     Another super fun part (woah, look at that sarcasm) of SPD is the depression and social anxiety that can come with it. First, we’ll look at the depression. It’s understandable that one might become depressed with this sort of disorder. Your own body is doing uncomfortable, even agonizing things when it is given normal stimuli. And this is on a daily basis. This kind of stuff gets really old really quick, and it kind of makes those nudist colonies seem worth it when you have the symptoms that I do. A padded room with no auditory input where nudity is allowed would be wonderful, too, actually. Party at my cell! Just kidding. Your chewing would make me want to scream.

     And there’s the social anxiety part of it all. Being around people can really suck when they’re chewing or smacking their lips. Having a job where you work in retail is particularly sucky, and not for the obvious reasons. I work in a college bookstore during rush, which is when people sign up for their classes and get their books, and what not. This past semester, I was helping a customer, and he coughed. He only coughed once, and it wasn’t even one of the phlegm-y coughs that I loathe, but I was instantly agitated. My shoulders went up, and I had to actively focus on what I was doing while focusing on keeping myself calm and trying to get my shoulders to ease up. I got my body and mind under control, and then he coughed again. My shoulders went up further, my jaw clenched, and I was thankful that I had my back to the customer. I proceeded to help him as quickly as I could so I could rid myself of his coughing. You can see how that can become a problem around a large group of people. I usually keep to myself because I am an introvert and people drain me, but there’s the added component of keeping myself mentally and physically well that I also take in to account.

     Even in my own house, I stay in my room because the sounds that my family makes with their mouths makes me uncontrollably angry, and I hate snapping at them or even asking them to not perform those innocent tasks that they themselves cannot control. I hate it when my dad touches my shoulder, because it seems like that is one of the worst places to touch me. The tingling is the worst there, the pressure so great that I actually want to move down and away to avoid it.

     What you might be asking yourself, if you actually read this far is, “Why did I read that whiny shit?” and “Why did they even write that whiny shit?” I can’t really answer the first one for you. I’m not a mind reader, but I’m guessing you were bored. However, I can answer the second one. Like I said before, I wanted to be able to explain how I feel, not only to my friend, but to everyone who might come across me or people like me. I want to spread understanding of how folks with sensory processing disorder work. Also, I wanted other people who have this disorder, or any other psychological disorder, to realize that they aren’t alone in their struggles. We are Legion, and we are many. Which is multiple personality disorder, if you really think about it, but I digress. There are a lot of folks out there who have bipolar or OCD, or multiple personality disorder, or sensory processing disorder. We are not alone, and a lot of us want to be understood. So, now you, the reader, might just understand. I certainly hope so.