Tactile irritants and clusters (was Unexpected Success in the Media this Week!)

[Guest guest]

Caroline wrote:

>My son, however, also has issues

>related to other sensory sensitivies including tactile sensitivities (e.g.,

>clothes bother him)

That's really interesting: I'm also driven crazy by my clothes. In

particular if they bunch, as when sitting, or if they feel

'asymmetrical'. I couldn't wear jeans for years.

I'm another newbie, having just stumbled across Martha's site

recently. I was really happy to discover I wasn't the only one driven

crazy by noises. My particular problems are mouth sounds, especially

eating (but also 'wet' sounding voices), which my sister and I

acquired at the same time when we were kids. In my case it now also

extends to visual stimuli - even a glimpse out of the corner of my

eye of someone raising something to their mouth is enough to make me

want to throttle them.

I'm really interested in where all this stuff comes from. I've been

wondering for a while now whether it might be related to Tourettes,

as a lot of my own problems seem similar to Tourettes in flavour - I

have obsessive compulsive tendencies and a whole battery of tics - no

verbal ones, but, as is described for Tourettes, they began with tics

of the eyes, and those remain the most persistent, with other tics

becoming less persistent and hard to control the further away they

are from my eyes. Also what I think of as psychological tics, which

feel like a cross between physical tics and OC - for example, in a

moving car I feel the need to move my line of sight along the kerb in

'just the right way'. That 'just right' thing seems to be key to all

my tics and most of my OC tendencies. And of course my clothes

feeling 'not right' fits into that.

Also, though, my problems seems to be to do with a desire not to be

'contaminated' - to remain whole, me, and entirely under my own

control. That's how I've always described the eating sounds thing to

people when I have to - that those noises feel 'invasive' to me, in a

similar way to if someone came up and licked my face (shuddering just

thinking about it). And similarly I like to be clean, not because I'm

afraid of germs (I actually think they're essential to a healthy

immune system) but because I don't want 'not-me' things on me. Or in

me - which I think is the reason I also have problems with food. It's

definitely not a body image thing, as I love my body and have no

desire to lose weight. It's simply that, when I'm stressed or upset

or, inconveniently, hypoglycemic, I sometimes feel a great reluctance

to eat because I don't want to take anything into me, I don't want to

change my state. So then I have to make myself eat.

Anyway, I hope I haven't bored you all to death going on about my

issues; it's just that I'm really fascinated to understand why I'm

like this. I'm naturally self-analytical, and the psychology and

philosophy degree just made it worse. So I'm really pleased to

discover that someone is researching it. I'm also really looking

forward to hearing about everyone else's stories, and curious whether

anyone has any good coping mechanisms that they can recommend -

because of course most people just think I'm 'difficult', and I'd

like to be less so!

Regards,

Kate

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