Bright Lights!

I’ve talked about sensory problems before, because it’s an extremely important part  of what it means to be autistic. We have to live in a world created by neurotypicals and because we don’t understand it or its rules, if we are to have any hope of functioning in it we have to use up a lot of energy to try and overcome our difficulties. When you throw into the mix the fact that we don’t see lights, hear noises or feel things in the same way most people do, you can begin to understand why meltdowns occur, and why our coping mechanisms can fail.

For the most part I consider myself lucky, compared to a lot of others on the spectrum, because although I do have sensory issues, generally they are nothing like as bad as some people experience. I do not suffer physical pain from sensory overload, as I know some do. However, I recently had an experience that stripped away all of my coping mechanisms, reminded me just how solidly I am on the spectrum and allowed me a better understanding of those who suffer this way on a daily basis. I hope it will let you understand them better too.

My day started normally. I was not overly agitated, it was a usual Monday morning. We had been told that the lights in the office where I work were being changed over the weekend, and although I anticipated that I wouldn’t like it, I hadn’t thought for a moment that it would actually cause me any problems. How wrong I was.

The new lights were bright. No, I mean they were BRIGHT! That’s not just my opinion because I’m hypersensitive, everyone who came into the office was shocked as they walked through the door at how bright they were. The difference between me, and everyone else, is that they proceeded to then get on with their day as normal, while I could not.

I felt as though the light was freezing me, so that I couldn’t move. I did manage to make it to my desk, but moving felt very wrong. I just wanted to stay completely still. I felt so completely frozen by the light, that I couldn’t even think straight, and failed miserably to try and focus on my work. I dreaded my phone ringing, because I knew that if it did I would be no use to my customers at all. I’m usually a complete chatterbox, but that day talking was an effort and I didn’t want to talk at all. Forming complete sentences felt like a struggle. I was focusing all my energy on coping with the light!

What scared me more than anything though was that for an entire working day I completely lost the ability to make eye contact. I don’t like eye contact at the best of times, but I can do it. I regulate it and plan it because it doesn’t come naturally to me, but I do it. Not that day. I was even really trying to make eye contact with people who I consider to be friends, not just colleagues, but I just couldn’t do it. Again, it was as though I was frozen. I was an island, and the only way I could cope was to stay an island, so the thought of looking at someone else and connecting with them absolutely petrified me. I felt more helpless in those moments than I have ever felt in my life.

I have had 34 years to build coping mechanisms, to repress tendencies that aren’t appropriate and to cope with situations or sensations that aren’t comfortable for me. I’ve been doing it for so long, that I’ve stopped noticing how much I am actually regulating my behaviour. The lights in the office completely threw me, because they were so extreme, that they forced me to focus all my energies on dealing with them and all my usual coping mechanisms were abandoned and stripped away. I barely recognised the person that was left. I felt so…..so…..Autistic.

All I really wanted to do (and I very nearly did) was crawl under my desk where it was dark, curl up into a ball, and calm myself. Instead I settled for putting on a pair of very dark men’s sunglasses one of my friends had in his draw. I know I looked ridiculous sat in the office wearing dark sunglasses, because everyone told me so, but it did help and it was the only way I could get any work done.

Thankfully I did get used to the light, and now it’s completely normal to me, but that first day is an experience I will never forget.