Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello, my name is Steven and I am 15 and have asperger syndrome. I am here because I am having sense problems but am not sure what is causing them.
one day about october or november in 2015 I woke up and my left eye felt weird. A few days before I got a sensation that my left ear lost some hearing and sometimes still get that sensation. My peripheral vision felt sensitive and bright lights and vivid colours in my left peripheral vision would be annoying. This would also cause the area around my eye and left cheek to have a painful kind of pins and needles.(the kind of pain autistics get when they are sensitive to light touch). My actual eye doesn't hurt though. This problem has not gone away although now I get periods for a few days where the eye problem almost disappears completely but comes back again. if i hold my eye socket and left cheek this problem lessens a lot. so maybe it is a nerve/muscle issue. Now very rarely this switches to my right eye and my left eye becomes normal. So it affects one eye at a time. Anyway a few months ago I realised I started getting that same pins and needles sensation all over my face, neck and shoulders, but not usually below that. And light touch against my face and neck now leaves a painful tingling that I have to brush away. However the painful tingling around my left eye can not be brushed away. I realise a lot of autistics have problems where light touch leaves a tingling. A couple weeks back, tinnitus started in my left ear(ringing in ear) which I would rate mild but it got close to moderate at one phase. I also sometimes get tingling in my left ear too now. I have no idea if these are caused by autism. But lets go back to october before this started. I was at school playing football and i got kicked in the head. I didn't get knocked out or anything but I got kicked nonetheless.Anyway I went back to the changing rooms and started to get a vertigo/panic attack sensation. Ever since then at school I would get these sensations. They would normally start after stopping suddenly after doing exercise or they would start in class if i thought about them. I could normally control them but have had to go to the medical room a few times. This rarely happens at home though I still sometimes get these sensations. So I am wondering if these are caused by a brain/nerve injury? Anyway the only anxiety I had at school really was worrying about losing football matches. Now that I have left school I feel more anxious and depressed. One day I felt really depressed, and then the problem switched to my right eye soon after so this could be linked to anxiety. I am really worried about this. What if they start affecting more senses or they get severe? The only sense problem that is linked to autism is the tingling. I realise autistics might have light sensitivity but how can that only affect one eye? And why in the peripheral vision? And why does my actual eye not hurt? Or might I have a brain tumour or something affecting me? there are 3 causes i think it might be. 1. a brain tumour 2.anxiety/depression and 3. just side affects of autism. But if it is autism then how come I haven't had these my whole life? I never really even had sensory problems. Is it possible for sensory problems to start later in life? I spoke to an asperger once and he told me he has this eye thing and that it will soon develop in the other eye but maybe he misunderstood me. This post was long but I am really worried. Someone help please. PS I have been to the doctor about the eye problems and the optician and everything came back normal apart from slight short sightedness. Please don't post 'go to the doctor' because I haven't written this long post for someone to give me a generic answer like that. I am not asking you to be a medical expert but am asking for guidance on whether this is caused by autism or what else it could be so I can suggest it to my doctor when I go.
No I do have social problems. But I would say less than most autistics. I understand the social word very well. I know what is weird and what isn't weird mostly. Most autistics don't care if they smell, how they look, what they wear. I take great care in that. Unless I am depressed or I never go out in which case I don't care because no one sees me anyway. In school I know who is weird and who isn't and I tend to stay away from weird people. I just sometimes say things that I look back on later and think 'oh that was weird'. When I was 11 I was extremely weird. So much that I look back at things I said and text messages on my phone from the past and think 'what?' 'how is it possible to be so weird?'. I wasn't picked on or bullied. People still got on with me mostly but I had arguments a lot. Now I can say a lot of the severely weird things I did then I wouldn't dream of doing now. I am still a bit weird when I look back at myself a few days ago or at least to me I am. I am not very good at coming up with something to say. If someone gave me a list of three dialogue boxes to say I could pick the right one to say but I can't really come up with anything on my own. Anyway the weirdness doesn't really affect me because it is dominated by social anxiety now and I now never talk to anyone. Apart from online on the internet. I have internet friends but they are not friends, they are just on the internet. And I have arguments and disagreements with them a lot and friendships typically end in a few weeks to a few months but some of them are caused by xbox disagreements and not social disagreements. And I was bullied/picked on in year 5 when I was 9/10 but that was when I move to a very small school where the students were very close to eachother and didn't take kindly to newcomers. Another kid was also bullied there simply for having a different skin colour. They just picked something about you to bully like they bullied the name 'steven'. When I joined, I became the new bully target and they left the other kid. I guess they just picked on new people who didn't know anyone. But that was primary school and was just kids being kids. In secondary school, i didn't experience being picked on or bullied. But then again i haven't been to school much. Only about a total of 3-4 terms since year 7. I am in year 10 now.