As an autist, I have
sensory issues, much like most people on the spectrum. There have
been a few efforts by fellow self-advocates on the spectrum to
attempt to recreate the experience of overstimulation, but I find it
may give neurotypicals the wrong idea of what the autistic experience
actually is. It captures the essence of the experience, to be true,
but it forgets nuances that may be critical to understanding what is
going on.
Contrary to popular
belief, most of the senses are not in themselves magnified at all
levels; while sounds, smells, sights, etc. may be more apparent to us
than to a neurotypical, this does not mean that everything is simply
magnified. In other words, it is not exactly the hallucinatory
experience many of the videos show.
However, the reason
certain stimuli cause issues and the reason we can sometimes perceive
more than normies can is because of perception thresholds being
lowered. That is to say, it can take less intensity to percieve
something for us than for a neurotypical. Conversely, some stimuli
can take a higher threshold, and are less apparent, but generally a
lack of perception does not cause a sensory issue.
It is this lowered
threshold that also lowers the upper limit of pain for some stimuli;
we may see the sun as bright, or hear the crowds just as loud as a
neurotypical, but since it takes less for us to hear it, it also
takes less for us to be caused pain by it. So sounds are not
amplified at an upper limit, but we can tolerate less of it before it
starts causing us pain. To summarize, it's not that we hear it
louder, smell it more potently, or see it more brightly at the upper
limits, but the upper limit for us to tolerate before it causes pain
or frustration in general can be lower than normies.
