Published on 12, July, 2020
Anybody else find that their sensory sensitivity means they struggle to sleep well? I seem to wake up to the slightest sounds. I suppose it classes me as a "light sleeper", but I'm unsure if it's separate to my general sensitivity to sound generally.
I've struggled with it all my life. I remember being 10 years old and trying to find things I could stick in my ears, like nicking my mum's cotton wool, because I can't sleep if there is a sound. I use black out blinds as well. These days I use silicone ear plugs to sleep.
Sometimes I even get bothered by sounds inside my head, like my pulse or strange sensations that I am somehow picking up transmissions from a very distant, crackly radio station.
All that plus rabid thought loops running in my mind.
Yes the thoughts, the obsessive thoughts! Once I get past them it's then the external noises. Waking up every half hour or hour it seems after a few hours of deeper sleep. Bags under the eyes since I can remember. It's only now after accepting I'm likely to be aspergers that it is beginning to make sense.
Reflecting on past and current events and behaviours in a new light is both revelatory and troublesome, but sometimes positively affirming.