CEA Discussion Group

SENSITIVITY TO SOUND/COLORS/SENSES
Do you experience the physical world differently, through your senses, than people around you? Please tell how you experience sensitivities and whether they are positive experiences or not.

(The following answers are previous responses by individuals identified by gender and age)

F60:I am very sensitive to the sound of people’s voices ALL THE TIME. I can feel a new accent like a rhythm played out physically on the surface of my skin. Sometimes the sound is discordant… sometimes an accent feels like a massage on my skin.
Sounds such as boomboxes, or just too much input from outside noise in the summer can make me very jumpy. I use Bose earphones of very high quality sometimes to create white noise and help drown it out. However even this doesn't always work which is why I need to escape and be on my own at certain times to just discharge all the cacophony of sound for a while. Being in nature, birdsong etc also helps with this.
Certain rhythms of music such as rap drive me crazy too. In addition to the cross over between sound and touch, I also have trouble with bright lights sometimes, especially if I am tired. I cannot watch TV for more than a couple of hours without getting very tired, and I believe it is the intense input of sound and light that does it.
I also feel emotions of others. eg if someone is annoyed at me, even if they don't say anything, I feel their thoughts on my skin as if I were being punched up.
I'm very aware of how each color affects me . eg green is very healing for me, red very energizing, blue very calming. When I get dressed in the morning I tune into my mood and pick my colors to help deal with the mood. eg if I am feeling a bit drab I might wear red to boost my mood. Other days if I am feeling too up and think I might get agitated more easily I might wear a color like brown which is neutral and helps me to stay calm.

F62:Some smells are absolutely nauseating and I can never get used to them.
Smells I hate:Artificial candy smells, some perfumes, some beauty parlor smells
Sounds I hate:I hear high pitched sounds that other people don’t hear and when I was a child high pitched sounds were physically painful. Recently at my public library I noticed that the computer monitor the librarian was using was making a horrible whine. I asked her how she could stand this sound and she and the other people in the line looked at me as if I was hallucinating. I told her that the monitor would soon conk out and a few weeks later I saw that the monitor had been replaced.
Sights I hate:Very bright points of light on a sunny day can instantly give me a migraine and I wear photogray glasses to prevent this.
Touch:I’ve never been particularly enamored of people touching me, but as a child I could tolerate it. I didn’t enjoy it. When I was a child, sunlight was physically painful, the needles pricking me, and I could never convince my mom that sunbathing was horrible.

F35: I think I experience odors more intensely and I am somewhat touch sensitive. I am sometimes over-stimulated by fluorescent lights and crowded areas. It’s a mixed bag. I think it can be positive much of the time. I can use my senses to my advantage in creativity.