Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi everyone,
my mother has always been a lover of animals, and we have always had some sort of pet within our home, especially dogs. I am now an adult but I still live at home and support my family financially. I have a particular sensitivity when it comes to my senses of sound and touch, finding loud noises or persistent unwanted noise to irritate me greatly and cause an intense anger response. I've never really acted upon these feelings, instead I have become quite proficient in bottling them up and appearing relatively normal on the surface, however the sensation is so strong that it tends to cause me to shutdown after too long.
we used to have 3 dogs; 2 smaller dogs that were more of my mum's dogs, and 1 big border collie, Ozzie, who was practically my best friend. He made me see the best in dogs, and was one of the only sources in my life who made me feel unconditionally loved. however, he had to get put down earlier this year and i was devastated. following this, i've started to dislike our small dogs more and more, without Ozzie being there to remind me of the good. Shortly after he was put down, my mum bought herself a third small dog without first asking me whether or not I was ready and willing to attach to a new dog, and now I've been expected to train and dog-sit them even though I wasn't given the opportunity to accept these responsibilities. She had never trained the previous two and is making very little effort to train the third, so I am now having to try tolerate 3 uncontrolled, whining, screeching, barking, and biting dogs without my head exploding.
A result of this frustrating situation is that my willingness to tolerate my sensory issues with the dogs has decreased. I've made my mum aware of how uncomfortable and upset I get when the dogs, especially now that I've received my diagnosis, but instead of finding ways to train her dogs to behave properly and respond to commands to get them to calm down, I am expected to just simply tolerate it and try to out-reason my disability and sensory issues, with her responses being like: "but you need to understand they're just dogs", "you need to understand they're just anxious", "you need to understand they're just playing", or "you need to just learn to tune them out".
What about my anxiety?
What about my feelings?
what about my enjoyment?
What about my diagnosed disability, which explains that I can't tune these noises out?
it upsets me to see the dog's feelings being more valued than mine, surely the more easily controlled variable is the dogs temper, rather than my autism? suppressing my responses in these situations is profoundly uncomfortable and will surely wreak havoc on my mental health, even more than it already has.
Has anyone else here been in a similar situation? do you guys think that I'm in the right? have you any advice on how to approach this situation and improve my quality of life, even though I've already told my mum about this multiple times? How do I learn to process these feelings in a more healthy manner, in order to avoid potentially hours of rage and discomfort?
This has ended up being a very lengthy post, so I appreciate anyone who took the time to read it and respond. Thanks
Your mum seems to have a lack of empathy towards you and your situation. She needs to understand that due to your autism you can't 'just learn to tune them out'.
I sympathise greatly and have similar issues with the high pitched yapping of a neighbours dog. They had dogs before, which didn't bother me much, but there is something about the pitch and tone of the yapping of this latest one that really gets to me. It invokes and instant and intense anger / anxiety response in me and has resulted in some huge meltdowns recently.
I end up confined to the house, as if it is in their garden I cannot use mine without setting it off.
There are things which might help, such as ear plugs, ear defenders and noise cancelling headphones. However in my experience they only dampen the noise and my reaction is still that intense anger response. There was another discussion on here recently which includes some suggestions https://community.autism.org.uk/f/adults-on-the-autistic-spectrum/27526/sensory-issues
Dogs need to be trained while they are still young enough to learn. My neighbours don't seem to be training theirs either and that only adds to my anger and frustration. I bought one of those sonic noise barking deterrents, that are supposed to help train the dog not to bark. Unfortunately when it barks I get myself in such a state that I don't think straight and only think afterwards that I should have used it.
Thanks for the reply, sorry to hear about your own situation. There are also plenty of other dogs in my neighbourhood which each take turns barking all day, which makes me furious enough to contemplate confronting the neighbours about it. If only I wasn't so socially anxious.
I have tried some noise reducing ear buds before such as Loop and Flare Audio, but unfortunately I'm also especially sensitive physically around my ears as well audibly, so I really don't enjoy using them. Unfortunately I just have to choose which sensory experience causes the least discomfort, I can't just actually be comfortable in my own home. It doesn't feel fair. I've ordered some over-ear defenders so hopefully I have more success with those.