My autistic child used to be terrified of the lawn mower, even if he was inside. We couldn’t use the mixer, the vacuum, or even the shower without him freaking out.
He went from terror to thinking these things were cool: if I cut the grass, he comes out to play nearby with his toy mower; he loves to vacuum. And—glory of glories—the shower is boring.
So I think for him at least, it’s a progression from WAY TOO MUCH to fascinating and fun to bo-ring.
This leads me to wonder: if it’s possible for a stimulus to be overwhelming but not too overwhelming, if exposure therapy might help rather than just making him freak. It’s worth a try.
Oops, just thought of this: he loves slurpy noises near his ears. Shouldn’t that be way too stimulating? It would be for me or anyone else I know! Seems autism is both about avoiding/muting stimuli and seeking them out.
if it’s possible for a stimulus to be overwhelming but not too overwhelming, if exposure therapy might help rather than just making him freak. It’s worth a try.
I was chatting about exposure therapy in this other comment. I wonder if we should say that everyday life can sometimes provide “unintentional exposure therapy”, in which case it sounds like “exposure therapy” (in that broader sense) has already been working out for y’all, which would be really neat and interesting.
Reminder that I’m extremely not an expert and don’t trust me on anything. :-)
he loves slurpy noises near his ears. Shouldn’t that be way too stimulating?
Hmm, it might be an example of how that picture I drew—where valence is an inverted-U function of arousal—is a lousy model. Highly-stimulating things aren’t always aversive. Like, the best and worst moments of my life were both highly-stimulating. Maybe it’s like, highly-stimulating things can be very bad or very good, and not so much in between? And whether it’s good or bad depends on other things going on in your brain—for example, how safe you feel. If you feel simultaneously safe and uncomfortable/scared/threatened, the two things mix together like baking soda and vinegar, and the result is…laughter! Or at least, that’s what I’ve been figuring. To be clear, everything I’m saying here is purely coming from introspection / folk psychology, I don’t have any more insight than you or anyone else.
We definitely often have both sensory-seeking and sensory-avoiding needs. I am not as sensitive to some elements of the world now as I used to be as a child, but unsure how much of that is because I was a child and now am not, compared to ‘getting used to’ things (or some partial loss of the actual sense rendering it moot).
Reasons it would not be worth a try are that sensory-avoided experiences are, as mentioned elsewhere, extremely painful. Literally painful, as I was surprised I had to clarify at one point—apparently people without sensory aversions can find sensory experiences metaphorically? painful without them quite registering on the same scale as getting stabbed? But I would definitely say that while I have very much not enjoyed bad ongoing physical pain, bad ongoing sensory-avoid is for my normal experiences of both a great deal worse. A migraine makes me miserable; having to endure a sufficiently unpleasant sound on an ongoing basis without recourse could have me attacking walls / trying to hit my head on things if I didn’t know better / other means to try to override and distract with other sensory input.
My autistic child used to be terrified of the lawn mower, even if he was inside. We couldn’t use the mixer, the vacuum, or even the shower without him freaking out.
He went from terror to thinking these things were cool: if I cut the grass, he comes out to play nearby with his toy mower; he loves to vacuum. And—glory of glories—the shower is boring.
So I think for him at least, it’s a progression from WAY TOO MUCH to fascinating and fun to bo-ring.
This leads me to wonder: if it’s possible for a stimulus to be overwhelming but not too overwhelming, if exposure therapy might help rather than just making him freak. It’s worth a try.
Oops, just thought of this: he loves slurpy noises near his ears. Shouldn’t that be way too stimulating? It would be for me or anyone else I know! Seems autism is both about avoiding/muting stimuli and seeking them out.
I was chatting about exposure therapy in this other comment. I wonder if we should say that everyday life can sometimes provide “unintentional exposure therapy”, in which case it sounds like “exposure therapy” (in that broader sense) has already been working out for y’all, which would be really neat and interesting.
Reminder that I’m extremely not an expert and don’t trust me on anything. :-)
Hmm, it might be an example of how that picture I drew—where valence is an inverted-U function of arousal—is a lousy model. Highly-stimulating things aren’t always aversive. Like, the best and worst moments of my life were both highly-stimulating. Maybe it’s like, highly-stimulating things can be very bad or very good, and not so much in between? And whether it’s good or bad depends on other things going on in your brain—for example, how safe you feel. If you feel simultaneously safe and uncomfortable/scared/threatened, the two things mix together like baking soda and vinegar, and the result is…laughter! Or at least, that’s what I’ve been figuring. To be clear, everything I’m saying here is purely coming from introspection / folk psychology, I don’t have any more insight than you or anyone else.
We definitely often have both sensory-seeking and sensory-avoiding needs. I am not as sensitive to some elements of the world now as I used to be as a child, but unsure how much of that is because I was a child and now am not, compared to ‘getting used to’ things (or some partial loss of the actual sense rendering it moot).
Reasons it would not be worth a try are that sensory-avoided experiences are, as mentioned elsewhere, extremely painful. Literally painful, as I was surprised I had to clarify at one point—apparently people without sensory aversions can find sensory experiences metaphorically? painful without them quite registering on the same scale as getting stabbed? But I would definitely say that while I have very much not enjoyed bad ongoing physical pain, bad ongoing sensory-avoid is for my normal experiences of both a great deal worse. A migraine makes me miserable; having to endure a sufficiently unpleasant sound on an ongoing basis without recourse could have me attacking walls / trying to hit my head on things if I didn’t know better / other means to try to override and distract with other sensory input.