OMG....I don't even know where to start... I'm 44 and my life is a living hell. I never knew it til yesterday, but SPD has ruined my life. I always knew I had extreme sensory issues, but I always attributed my severe anxiety to the abuse I suffered as a child. As an adult I suspected autism but it never really seemed to exactly describe my issues. I stumbled across SPD yesterday and everything just fell into place!!! I've been crying off an on ever since, partly out of joy that maybe I can finally FIX me!, but mostly out of grief that so much of my life has been lost to this disorder!

I was recently homeless and now I'm literally living in a shed on my mother's property, have never been able to hold a steady job, zero friends for the last 8 years, my family thinks I'm a horrible bitch because I'm so GD irritable all the time, and I'm just about to the point of suicide because I can't take it anymore! And how am I supposed to call a suicide hotline when I can't even bring myself to use the phone!!!!!???!!

But I understand now that I have SO MANY sensory triggers (my god, just THINKING about sand on my skin makes my skin crawl and I want to scream!), and I have spent my whole life blowing up at people (because these triggers just enrage me), and I thought I must be a horrible person! I have just been running, running, running, trying to escape and avoid everything, to the point of walling myself off from the world, so much so that I thought I was agoraphobic!!

I found a 10-point scale somewhere that rated people's reactions to stimulus (this site? Don't remember), and no joke, I'm an 11.

WHY IS THIS DISORDER NOT BETTER RESEARCHED AND KNOWN?!?

I have so much more to say but I'm so damn freaked out right now and still trying to process everything (ha!)!!

((hugs)) if you want them.

Having a name for this helps. Knowing whether this has always been part of you, or if it is only something that happened to you can help. For me some of one, some of the other; it went from sensory differences to overwhelming sensory pain over the past few years. Now if it's something that's happened to you, maybe you can list specific changes, and go to doctors, to test for Lyme disease, lupus, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, Meniere's syndrome, fructose malabsorption, salicylate intolerance [which seems to cause my condition and mimic fibro], etc. Some of these are treatable, others aren't. I hope this helps.