Note to Alicorn: have you ever succeeded in getting rid of a textural or other sensory aversion through gradual exposure?
My sensory issues do morph over time, but largely outside my control. The closest thing I can think of is that when I was little, I couldn’t stand denim, but then I had a pair of very soft stonewashed jeans that I did like, and thereafter I was able to touch all varieties of denim comfortably. Trying to figure out how to not be bothered by such a thing on purpose would be a little like trying to rewire myself to not mind pain: surely a worthy ultimate goal, but not currently within reach for any practical purpose. It’s too base-level.
That’s what I thought. It’s not a simple matter of habituation, although the fact that your liking the one pair of jeans generalized to all denim suggests it might have to do with what category your mind places different textures into, rather than just how they feel.
Has this ever happened in reverse: there was a texture/other stimulus that didn’t bother you until you encountered a particularly nasty instance of it, and it generalized to all instances?
The reverse hasn’t happened quite that way, no. In general I become more, not less, tolerant over time; sometimes I have temporary episodes where something that’s normally neutral is suddenly abhorrent for no obvious reason, but that passes.
My sensory issues do morph over time, but largely outside my control. The closest thing I can think of is that when I was little, I couldn’t stand denim, but then I had a pair of very soft stonewashed jeans that I did like, and thereafter I was able to touch all varieties of denim comfortably. Trying to figure out how to not be bothered by such a thing on purpose would be a little like trying to rewire myself to not mind pain: surely a worthy ultimate goal, but not currently within reach for any practical purpose. It’s too base-level.
That’s what I thought. It’s not a simple matter of habituation, although the fact that your liking the one pair of jeans generalized to all denim suggests it might have to do with what category your mind places different textures into, rather than just how they feel.
Has this ever happened in reverse: there was a texture/other stimulus that didn’t bother you until you encountered a particularly nasty instance of it, and it generalized to all instances?
The reverse hasn’t happened quite that way, no. In general I become more, not less, tolerant over time; sometimes I have temporary episodes where something that’s normally neutral is suddenly abhorrent for no obvious reason, but that passes.