So, my girlfriend started doing research on Adult ADD, which I have. I take a bunch of medicine for it and all, but I also tend to freak out very easily about non-important stuff which doesn’t seem to be related to the condition.
Some of it is psychological, I’m sure. That’s why I have a competent therapist, and spend time each week on the couch. But there’s other things that seem to just be how I’m hard-wired.
Being awakened from sleep is particularly interesting. I completely lose it and start yelling at the person before I go conscious. I believe it’s an actual physical attack. Back in college somebody woke me up, and I sprung into a fighting stance ready to pounce before I came to.
I also have an insanely delicate nose. If there’s even a slightly unpleasant smell that’s noticeable to me, I lock onto it and it bugs me to no end. I visited Jessica and the moment I walked into her apartment a pungent fruit-like (but not in a good way) odor hit me like a haymaker. I waited a good hour before saying anything. Her place is immaculately clean. I walked around like a bloodhound trying to find the source of the smell. She couldn’t smell it at all.
She poked around online and found this condition that seems fits me perfectly. It’s called Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). It basically means that I’m wired up to be hypervigilant toward sensory stimuli. Some of this is good – I can experience things with more physical intensity than others. Like a shower feels like absolute pleasure in the morning. I never want to leave.
SPD talks about being freaked out by textures like cotton. I mean, that can’t be a coincidence. Also how certain sonic frequencies are uncomfortable. There are songs that literally make me nauseous. And not just Phil Collins solo stuff.
Here were the clinchers that I knew it was me – SPD people who respond to light fingertip stroking across the body as if it were the greatest thing on earth. If making love is a ten on the pleasure scale, fingernails lightly touching my skin is a high nine. No exaggeration. It’s pure ecstasy to me and I writhe around like a nut.
Also, there is a tendency for people with SPD to use baths as soothing mechanisms to calm down and achieve intense pleasure at the same time. I love baths like nobody else you know.
I know what you’re thinking. “I love baths and light tickles too!” No you goddamn well don’t. You like that stuff. I LIVE for this stuff.
In short, I’m a total spaz. Break a glass, and the noise it makes will send me nearly running away at full sprint. Give me a neck massage, and I’ll be willing to propose. Play me any of the Mozart violin concertos, and I’ll go off into a fantasy music hallucination and not come out until the final note. And throw a cotton ball or piece of corduroy my way, and I’ll curl up into the fetal position and shake.
What’s the solution? I’m hoping it’s 90 milligrams of Valium every three hours. Sadly, that’s never the recommended treatment.
I guess I just have to learn how to be normal. Good luck to me.
Jessica_thereader says:
Please note: My condo does not smell like rotten fruit.
D.J. Paris says:
@Jessica_thereader This is true – I didn’t mean it was garbage-like. It was just a super pungent fruit smell that sort of bugged me. But most intense smells do. Your place is clean and tidy!
Jessica_thereader says:
@delfinparis We will have to agree to disagree here. There is no fruit smell in my house – intense, pungent, or otherwise. “Pungent” has a super negative connotation, so repeating it is not making it any less biting.
Maybe you should change the Renuzit air-freshener that you wear on a string around your neck from fruity flowers to clean linens or warm vanilla. 🙂
Miranda from Biting Life says:
My boyfriend does the thing where he freaks out when he wakes up. He screams for what seems like MINUTES and will get completely sitting/standing up in like one second flat. It really freaks me out sometimes! I’ve never heard of that happening to anyone else before. He doesn’t have any of the other symptoms, though, so I doubt it’s whatever you have. Still, it’s interesting.
D.J. Paris says:
He sounds like a total weirdo. My advice – dump him. FAST.
Plgrace says:
Thanks for writing about this – my son has autism and a number of sensory issues he is unable to articulate verbally. He shares some of your sensitivities as well as your love for baths – he would live in the tub if I let him. He’s still a little guy so his sensory seeking is still cute, but when he gets older…well, it will be interesting to one day have to say “well, officer, I was not in fact trying to devour my son’s eyeball. He likes to have me press my mouth around his orbital ridge (true story.)”
Athena says:
Huh… kind of weird I’ve never come across this one before. Usually if something is also its own condition, the books on autism will list it as such.
SPD is basically inherently built into autism.
Krystin says:
Too funny… I just found out our family has a strain of SPD (doctors here have decided it’s hereditary I guess). To top it off, my sweetie and I both tickle-scratch our arms in our sleep. 🙂 I’m going to look into the bath thing… I’m glad my hatred of that horrid sound the outlets make can be attributed to something other than craziness 🙂
Just for giggles – Knismesis is the technical tickle-scratch term 🙂