 What's up guys? Welcome back to Asperger's Growth and today we're talking about sensory overloads. I'm going to be talking to you about what a sensory overload is and how it links in with autism. I'm also going to show you why sensory overloads can be a large part in how a young autistic person may behave and even someone with Asperger's who is an adult may behave as well. Then I'm going to give you my personal experiences with sensory overloads and autism and lastly talk about ways that we as a society and maybe you as a friend can help someone who has Asperger's and maybe suffering from a lot of sensory overload in their daily life. Before the video I would just want to ask you guys to remember to click the like button if you like the video and make sure to subscribe and click the little notification bell in the corner and that will basically let you know when my videos come out and kind of give you a notification of when you can watch them because they don't come out often so you want to be able to get into that juicy content. So without further ado, let's go to the video. So according to Wikipedia Sensory overload occurs when one or more of the body sensors experiences over stimulation from the environment. There are many environmental elements that can impact an individual. Examples of these elements may be urbanization, crowding, noise, mass media or technology. So sensory overload isn't something that is completely intertwined with a autism diagnosis and some people may get sensory overloads without having an autistic diagnosis. However, it's very common that someone on the autistic spectrum may be experiencing sensory overload in some way or another. One of the qualities that distinguishes a autistic disorder is not being able to tune out background noise. So if you imagine sitting across from your friends, they're chatting about something boring and you're finding it really hard to concentrate on them. You may find yourself listening to some of the background noise. You might be able to hear people chatting in the background. You might be able to hear the kind of wearing sounds of machinery that's going on that maybe you may not have been attuned to if you weren't getting so bored about the conversation. Well people with autism, I find it very hard to focus on a specific amount of stimuli. This can mean that the stimuli that they're trying to concentrate on, which may be someone talking to them, may not be as distinguished from the amount of background noise. Obviously not being able to tune out the environment is very distracting and it can lead to a lot of lack of social ability when you're talking to someone with autism, especially when they're in a public place. The background noise can be very distracting for someone with autism. Especially during social conversations where their skills might not be up to scratch, it may make it even harder for them to communicate properly. Sensory overload and anxiety come hand-in-hand. And the thing is is that we're not able to tune out the environmental noises around us. So even if we we don't want to, we're still getting bombarded with different sensations, different sounds, different noises, different sights, everything like that can impact. And it also very much heavily depends on the person. So for example, some people may have difficulty with a lot of bright lights, a lot of different colorful lights. They also may have difficulty with small little background noises, or maybe it just might be a sharp noise that's very irritating. All of these things can really ramp up the anxiety that a person experiences and they can usually lead to what is called a meltdown. Now having a sensory overload isn't directly correlated with someone having a meltdown. Sensory overload can have a large impact on social skills, executive functioning and, very importantly, anxiety. Now it is true that people with autism or aspergers do have a higher tendency to have a higher level of anxiety than the general population. Now whether this is genetic because of the ways that our brain is wired, or whether the environment just tends to be a lot more stressful for us, it is something that is to be considered. Now sensory overload isn't something that you can learn to get over, or it doesn't go away as you get older. However, people with autism will tend to develop more healthy and better ways of coping with the sensory overload. Being bombarded with a lot of sensory information that may lead to sensory overload can either lead to one of four things. One, the person removing themselves from the situation. So if they're in a busy place, they may want to go somewhere more quiet, or they may want to put on some noise-canceling headphones to reduce the background noise. Two, they'll have a meltdown or a panic attack, which is where the body shuts down and the sensory information is too much for them and they may start hyperventilating and having a very traumatic experience. I personally have a lot of experiences with having panic attacks, and as well as the exhausting physical effects of it, it's also very bad socially because you can lose a lot of motivation having one of these in public or in front of someone that you care about or a friend of. Number three, anger outbursts. Now this is more common with kids. You may see a lot of correlation between physical and verbal abuse in people with aspergis or autism, but this usually comes about from an overload of some kind and their mind thinking that having those anger outbursts being a way of coping with the anxiety and the stress that they're under. So you can see that there isn't understanding behind the reason that autistic kids tend to have these outbursts, especially in school. But to people who aren't properly educated into autism and the reasons why they're doing these kind of things, it can be very confusing for them and it can also impact badly on the child who has autism. Number four, shutdowns. Now shutdown might sound a bit over dramatic. It can vary from person to person, but it generally occurs when there's too much sensory stimulation. So the person decides to go into their own little bubble, into their own little world and do something that they enjoy and relaxes them. During these times of shutdown, they may be very unaware of different environmental things that are happening or not about them, but they're trying their best to take their mind away from any kind of outward stimulation that is causing their anxiety. I have a lot of experiences with this. I have an iPad with me a lot of the time and I've got some music with me. So when I feel stressed and when I get these social overloads or sensory overloads, I tend to go into my own little bubble and start playing games just to kind of relieve the tension and get myself back to working order again. Now the problem with this is that there are a lot of bad social connotations with playing games in public when you're in a place that you're supposed to be socializing. So with that thing in mind, with the lack of social skills that we innately have, it can make it very difficult for us to be in social situations, especially when there's a big group of people. So if you know someone with aspergous autism and they seem to zone out a lot of the time or seem to be on their iPad a lot of the time, they may be just trying to escape some of the other alternatives that their brain goes to when they're in them states of panic. They don't want to have anger outbursts and hurt anybody and they don't want to have panic attacks because it's very traumatic and also gives people a bad view of them. So for those of you who are still watching, I'm going to share with you some ways or methods that you can help people around you in your society or community, as well as maybe someone that you're more intimate with or friends with, because I really think they would appreciate your input on the situation and definitely take into account someone else's perception of things and trying to make sure that they're okay in situations. It's something that people with autism, especially with friends around age, were not very common for us. So if we have someone who takes into account these things and makes us feel better, you're much more likely to have a better friendship or relationship with them. A lot of the ways of alleviating sensory overload for people with autism is to lower their general anxiety and in social situations, it's usually social anxiety that drives or power anxiety and kind of interplays with the sensory overload. So you can help alleviate the social demand on them by being a lot more easy to read and trying to speak directly and logical rather than using any kind of body language or facial expressions or behind words kind of meaning something else. I can't even speak out. So basically not using these or being very overly expressive with the body language and the facial expressions that you use, it will take a lot of the doubt that the person with autism are having their minds. Well, as being easy to read, you can also do some things in terms of planning in order to make sure that the person is comfortable during group meetings or even individual meetings. And this can be things like letting them sit in the corner in a restaurant. If you've got a busy corner, if you've got a busy corner, if you've got a busy restaurant and there's a lot of people a lot of different noises, a lot of people talking, a lot of noises of chefs doing the cooking, a lot of lights and different aromas and stuff. It can be very overloading for someone with autism. So maybe going to the quiet place in the restaurant or somewhere where they can sit in the corner, it makes it a lot safer and it can alleviate some of the anxiety that you have. Or you can either take it one step further and make sure that the places that you go to meet with them are quiet and there's not as much background noise going on. Remember, it's okay to ask someone with autism or aspergis if the environment is okay for them and if they are okay and they're not feeling anxious. Simply because it makes it a lot nicer for us because we don't get that kind of treatment a lot of the time because not a lot of people understand aspergis or autism. You may not ask them if they're okay from fears of being patronising or undermining their ability to cope. But in reality a lot of us would be very grateful for that kind of friendship. One other thing that you can do if you're a parent or you have friends with aspergis or autism is to let them take breaks from being sociable, let them play a few games on their iPad. And if you have any questions about what I've been talking about today or just anything in general about autism aspergis on mental health make sure to leave a comment down below and I'll try and get back to you as soon as I can. As someone with aspergis I have had a lot of experiences with sensory overload. I get it throughout my daily life as I said before in the public and stuff like that but I've also had it to some kind of weird degrees. One thing that is well known for people with autism is that some of our senses towards certain things are either stronger or weaker compared to the normal person. So this can mean things like the feeling of sand can either feel very very pleasant for us or could make us want to scratch our eyeballs out or something because of how bad the sensory information was. And it can range from anywhere between those and it can range from anything from visual stuff, auditory stuff, touch, you know like physical contact. I love people with autism or aspergis don't like physical contact but we don't really know why it's just something that's given really. And one of my things during high school was that I really didn't like the feel of the sun on my skin. As a result of that I didn't go out in the sun. I used to wear coats all the time because I really hated the feel of the sun on my skin. And as you can probably guess I got bullied for it a lot. You know like vampire boy stuff like that. And it is very horrible for me and the thing is that I couldn't really explain it to other people without really sitting down and talking to them and the fact that they were you know like 14, 13, 15 at the time. And obviously were very compliant when I was trying to explain it to them. Another little quirky thing that I used to do was as a child I used to spin around on the spot on one leg when I got anxious or when I was in social situations. Anything that made me feel a bit anxious where there's too much sensory input, anything like that. And the sensation of spinning was something that I really liked and it was really pleasant for me. It may be quite weird. I know some people like spinny rollercoasters stuff like that. But I used it as a way of coping with my anxiety and that is in some ways a good thing about the differences in sensory stuff that people of autism have because we're able to cope with things in maybe ways that other people may not be able to. So thank you very much for watching and if you like the video make sure to like it. Please, you're a help a lot. And if you want to see more content from me make sure to subscribe, hit the notification bell in the corner so you can get notifications when new videos come out. It doesn't mean that I'll be spamming you of emails. It just means that when you open the YouTube app will be a little red number and my notification will be under that. And it'll just make it easier for you to stay on top of the information that I'm pointing out. So I hope you guys are having a good day or a good evening or a good morning and I'll see you in the next video. Goodbye.