I only work two days a week, but I find work exhausts me. I come home feeling pretty awful, burnt out and like someone has squished my brain. On Monday, listened to some music while doing some boring data entry and it seemed to help alleviate some of the burnt out “brain being squished” feeling. I usually only listen to music at work for very mindless tasks, not data entry, as I worry about being distracted, but the task I was doing is, to some extent, self-correcting, and often makes me feel a little ill staring at the computer screen (although a lot of my job involves that). The music seemed to help and I wondered if, rather than being over-stimulated at work, I’m actually being under-stimulated.
My understanding is that autistics have sensitive senses that can be easily over-stimulated, but can also go crazy if under-stimulated. (This may be why we stim.) The office I work in is gloomy and badly lit and, now the building works outside have finished, fairly quiet. Autistics often complain about bright light, but I think I am, or have become, hypo-sensitive to light i.e. I struggle with dim lights in ways that I haven’t yet been able to put into words. Gloomy lighting makes me feel vaguely sad, a bit tired and perhaps something else that I’m not sure of yet. There’s a level of “peopling” in the job with my boss, J, in the room all the time, but he’s very quiet and we barely talk except about work things. Occasionally other people from the building come in to talk to J, but never for long. I do have to use the phone sometimes, but not often. So I wonder if I get under-stimulated and whether listening to music more might help? Or getting a brighter light over my desk (although I'm not sure how I would explain this to J).
What do you think? Have you got any experience of under-stimulation?
