What I Mean When I Say I'm Autistic: Unpuzzling a Life on the Autism Spectrum

by Annie Kotowicz

Sensory sensitivity is challenging when it causes me pain, though. For example, I’m so sensitive to water that raindrops feel like I’m being poked with a pencil. Before I found out that I take in more sensory data than most people, I wasn’t able to explain how water affects me. My inner narrative didn’t include the observation that rain hurts my skin, because every time I flinched at it, people would say, “It won’t hurt you!” For someone with sensory sensitivity, who takes things literally, this is confusing and unhelpful to hear. It’s also inaccurate. What they really meant was that it won’t harm me. But because I took them literally, I never thought to label the feeling as pain. Normally, when something hurts you, it causes you to stop and think about how much danger you’re in. A papercut may hurt a lot, but when you realize it’s just a papercut, you know you’ll be okay. It’s hard to do this without first recognizing the feeling. When I began to accept that water does hurt me, I was able to realize that it won’t harm me, and that the pain I feel is disproportionate to the actual danger. Knowing this, I have a bit more courage to face the rain—but I also feel less silly putting up an umbrella when I need to. I think it’s important to trust the words that people use to describe how they feel, but also to notice what they’re communicating through behavior. If someone had trusted that my reactions to rain were reasonable, I might have trusted myself a lot sooner, too.