A Society Not Made For Me

As an Autistic person, modern society was not created with me, or people like me in mind. Therefore, it takes a lot of extra mental and physical work for me to live and just exist in this modern world, much more than the ordinary person. Since hitting autistic burnout, I have spent more time alone than I used to before, because the world quickly becomes too much for me to handle and I need a controlled environment and lots of rest in order for my brain to recover from everything that I deal with on a daily basis.

Going out in public is constant sensory overload. Loud noises, bright lights, crowds of people, etc. Just going into the grocery store, where I have to make lots of decisions, there is bright overhead lights, lots of people talking and moving around, the scanner beeper at the register that can be heard anywhere in the store, etc. Sometimes there is the unruly kid who is screaming and won't be quiet the whole time that I am in there and since it isn't my kid, I can't do anything about it besides put in earplugs, which only lowers the volume, not silence it completely. There is also the occasional car alarm going off outside or the low battery chirp somewhere inside the store that will drive me to extra overload if I have to deal with it for very long. Sometimes they rearrange the store layout, which means it takes extra mental effort for me to find what I am looking for and possibly backtracking several times to find something that I already walked past because it was in a different than normal place.

Any place with noise and people is hard for me to handle, including restaurants and church fellowships. Noises that are loud and uncontrollable, but I am expected to be able to socially interact with certain people while there, so my accommodations are limited because controlling the noise around me and being able to socially interact are often contradictory. I do best with one-on-one interactions in quiet places, but finding those situations is extremely hard.

I often get bombarded by noise, even in my safe places, like my house or my car, by noises from the outside. Thunder is acceptable for me because it is controlled by God and that is just another manifestation of His power. There are lots of other noises though that are man-made and completely unnecessary in my opinion. Loud vehicles with a muffler that doesn't muffle the sound at all. Showing off your car by being loud is actually hurtful to people like me. Also, blasting your music in your car so loud that not only can I hear the beat, but I can feel it a quarter to a half of a mile away. All of this noise bombardment keeps me from being able to think straight because of the noise bombarding my brain, not just my ears. Fireworks are also hard to deal with, but those are just at certain times of the year, and I accept those as legitimate celebrations that I have to endure. Being in a state where it is legal for everyone to own and use fireworks means that I hear them for hours on end during the week or two around both July 4th and New Years Eve. Twice a year is hard, but manageable and I have to give myself extra recovery time during those weeks. Sirens are also a bombardment on my senses, but they have a legitimate purpose for emergencies. I just have to recover after having to deal with them, even if there are there just for a few seconds.

When it comes to lights, flashing lights are hard to handle, especially after dark, but sometimes during the daylight as well. Whether it is on a police car, ambulance, firetruck, DOT vehicle, trash truck, tow truck, school bus, car turn signal, etc. Some make it hard to see anything else, especially after dark, but others, in the daytime, make my brain make internal noises in sync with the flashing/blinking, like the blinker sound in your car. Multiple flashing lights that aren't in sync with each other can start chaos in my brain. This is common with trash trucks and multiple cars at a stop light. This may be hard for most people to understand, but believe me, it happens all the time and I can't make it stop, no matter how hard I try. I hate having my blinkers on any longer than absolutely necessary because of the noise that takes over in my brain.

Heat is another point of sensory overload. I have found that it is common for autistics to have problems with regulating our body temperature, therefore it is easy to overheat and that has often led to sickness for me because my body needs lots of help to cool down. My house is kept at a temperature year-round that most people wouldn't be able to handle and the temperature has only gotten lower since hitting autistic burnout. Summers in SC are really hot, but at least AC is common and in every major building here, unlike in the northern states where most houses don't have any AC. Winters here are mild and not nearly long enough. When I was without power for the week after Hurricane Helene hit, I was miserable all week and in constant sensory overload because of the heat. I barely survived the week and didn't eat much of anything all week because my body couldn't handle food and the heat at the same time. Thankfully I had a neighbor with 3 teenage boys who I was able to give all of my fridge and freezer food to so that they could eat it up before it went bad. I had a few mental breakdowns from the sensory overload that week and was very relieved when the power was restored and I could cool off completely again.

All of these things and more that I have to deal with in modern life and society make my life extra hard and so I have to severely limit what I can do and participate in. I never know what will happen when I leave my controlled environment of my house or even sometimes within my house, so I have to schedule out my time when I feel capable of doing things and when I know I can't do certain things. Even bad dreams can unexpectantly deplete my mental energy and give me mental overload. I have to make a lot of accommodations for myself because I can't currently depend on anyone else to support or make accommodations for me all the time. If I had the right support, I would be able to do more interactions with society and socializing, but I currently don't have that kind of outside support.

I have spent some time in recent years around some elderly people, and I have seen a lot of similarities in what I deal with and what they deal with, but also a lot of big differences as well. For example, we both can easily get overwhelmed by too much happening at once and get brain fog when trying to make even simple food choice decisions. But they are more likely to be losing their hearing and eyesight, whereas I can hear very well, and get overwhelmed by "normal" noise being too loud and my brain can't filter out unnecessary information and just concentrate on the important things happening at that moment. Their internal temperature regulation issues are more likely to make them get cold quickly instead of how I get too hot quickly. These are just a few examples that come to mind.

Please be extra considerate if I, and others like me, can't do as much as people expect us to do. Our brains have to work extra hard just to survive in this modern society and all that it expects of us. Also, if you can provide the type of support that we need, we would greatly appreciate knowing that help is available to us. I know that support for me will be a lot for someone who isn't ready and willing to help, so I don't ask a specific person unless I know that they are willing and able to help.