OMG....I don't even know where to start... I'm 44 and my life is a living hell. I never knew it til yesterday, but SPD has ruined my life. I always knew I had extreme sensory issues, but I always attributed my severe anxiety to the abuse I suffered as a child. As an adult I suspected autism but it never really seemed to exactly describe my issues. I stumbled across SPD yesterday and everything just fell into place!!! I've been crying off an on ever since, partly out of joy that maybe I can finally FIX me!, but mostly out of grief that so much of my life has been lost to this disorder!

I was recently homeless and now I'm literally living in a shed on my mother's property, have never been able to hold a steady job, zero friends for the last 8 years, my family thinks I'm a horrible bitch because I'm so GD irritable all the time, and I'm just about to the point of suicide because I can't take it anymore! And how am I supposed to call a suicide hotline when I can't even bring myself to use the phone!!!!!???!!

But I understand now that I have SO MANY sensory triggers (my god, just THINKING about sand on my skin makes my skin crawl and I want to scream!), and I have spent my whole life blowing up at people (because these triggers just enrage me), and I thought I must be a horrible person! I have just been running, running, running, trying to escape and avoid everything, to the point of walling myself off from the world, so much so that I thought I was agoraphobic!!

I found a 10-point scale somewhere that rated people's reactions to stimulus (this site? Don't remember), and no joke, I'm an 11.

WHY IS THIS DISORDER NOT BETTER RESEARCHED AND KNOWN?!?

I have so much more to say but I'm so damn freaked out right now and still trying to process everything (ha!)!!