I am touch sensitive. I enjoy soft, silky, and smooth surfaces. I love the feel of plush, or a good hug from someone I love. I love the feel of bark, and soft grass on my feet. On the other side, the idea of certain textures makes me shudder; wetness, slime, ooze, chitin, spiky, or shag. yuck. Even smooth bumps, like glossy stones pushed together give me the willies. The idea is bad, the sensation of touching them is worse.

There are these smooth bumpy stones you are supposed to walk over to relieve stress or massage your feet. They hurt massively. Like I mean I cannot walk on anything after I use those.

I am also extremely ticklish to the point of pain. I have never been to a masseuse, because the idea of a stranger touching me makes my skin crawl. I have this image of me laying on the table all ready to have my muscles soothed, and then they touch me with their cold hands and I involuntarily twitch off of the table. My best friend in High school used to call me “The Royal Tickle-Me-Elmo.” (If you don’t get the reference, please google it).

There is another side to this, that comes into play. Social. As a teacher in Asia, the children are always trying to hug you, and poke you, and push you. In Korea they have this “game” called a Dong-Shim. The children put their hands together with their pointer fingers pointed up, like a gun, and then try to shove that into the butt of the closest person. It’s horrid. In China, the younger kids often see you as a surrogate parent, and try to hug you. By the end of the day, you just don’t want to touch anyone or anything. You are touched out. I love hugs from my family, and people I trust, but others I have to mentally brace myself for.

When you are young, it doesn’t take very long to be touched out.

This week at church, there was a little boy, about 1 years old. Sweet guy. But he immediately latched onto my daughter. All he was doing was hugging her, and taking her finger to lead her around. He would gently push her to sit, so he could sit with her. But within 20 minutes, My daughter was touched out. She began trying to escape, and ended up having a short breakdown.

I took her outside the room to the water machine. She sat there and tried to just feel the space around her again. She was afraid of going back in with this little guy because he wouldn’t give her space. This is not the first time this has happened with her, so I knew what she needed. She used to have these troubles when playing with certain friends in Preschool. She didn’t want to be rude, either time, which made it worse.

The trouble is just that. When it comes to sensory sensitivities of any type, we don’t want to be rude. We are often afraid of offending, or scaring off potential friends. In the case of the little boy, she didn’t want to make him cry. But then, in order to be polite, or accommodating, we tend to let ourselves get pushed beyond our threshold. where the sensation is no longer an irritation, but becomes a source of panic.

People who don’t understand these sensations often misinterpret them as being rude, or mean. And this is where our fear comes from. “He’s just a baby.” or “They just wanted a hug.” looks innocent enough, but if you are at your threshold, one of 3 things will happen, and none of them are great:

• Try to get away from the source of irritation. This can be trying to leave, but if the source follows you can lead to a panicked push away or a yell to get away. It is often the last choice before one of the other two happens.
• Melt down. Collapse and cry. This often happens without choice, but is terrible because if you are melting down from too much touch, people want to console you by hugging you.
• Shut down. again not a conscious choice. This involves your brain stopping, and you not reacting to the outside world. If continues for a while as you try to get your body to reactivate. Again, people may try to hold you to touch you to get your reaction. Which makes it last longer.

One of the worst things when working in a public space like a school is people don’t realize that crowds make things worse. If you have neurotypical children in a class, and autistic children in the same class, you have to spend a lot of time teaching both how to handle situations.

When an autistic child is having a meltdown or shutdown, it draws the attention of the whole class. Everyone is worried, and so everyone stands around them. Crowding them in, making the panic attack worse. I have to often herd the children away and ask for help from other teachers or admin to help move the children away. I have had days where I had to just lay down next to the child, and breathe slowly, so they can focus on the sound of my breathing.

On the flip side, I have been touched-out early in the day before. It happens from my sound sensitivity too. I’ve collapsed into a crying mess in front of the children. I am not a loud crier usually. I just flop-sit down, usually on the floor, and focus on my breathing as the tears flow. It does not happen often. But I have talked with my students about what they need to do if this happens.

I always pick a couple of students to lead. They make sure everyone is back at their desks giving me space. Then they try to get everyone quieter. I can usually function to a degree after a couple of minutes, but this took a long time to reach. There are still some days it takes me hours to be functional again.

My daughter has not learned these skills yet, and is not even comfortable setting her boundaries yet. I hope that I can help her learn to know when she is getting near her limit. I hope I can give her the confidence to say “No” when she needs space, or to just find a quiet space.

I don’t know how yet to teach her these, and am learning myself. My parents didn’t know how to help me with this, and my school councilors only focused on my speaking, reading and writing. So I am completely self taught.

The world is better equipped to help my daughter than they were to help me. Unfortunately, ignorance still pervades.

Until the world catches up, I will be wrapped up in my blankets. I will be teaching my children that its okay to do the same.