E9 – Hypersensitivity

Julie Legg and Jel Legg discuss the link between ADHD and hypersensitivity – not necessarily a trait, but a common attribute for people with ADHD.

They chat about each of their senses, the weird and wonderful extremes they experience. From datum lines to aesthetics, bass drums and distant conversations, scratchy clothing labels to repetitive touch, Christmas shopping to confrontation. They ponder criticism, expected outcomes, adverse reactions to not feeling in control of self, empathy, negative people and energy levels – to name a few.

 

Topics discussed in this episode:

  • HSP, a highly sensitive person.
  • Line of focus, peripheral vision, and datum lines.
  • Acutely sensitive to a range of noise frequencies and pitches, and unexpected loud noises.
  • Taste, smell and memory links.
  • Sensory overload to texture – difficulty swallowing medication, clothing labels, certain fabrics … or being repetitively touched by another person.
  • Being highly sensitive to criticism or confrontation (actual or perceived), body language, and others’ energy.

Key takeaways:

  • While we all have a given set of ears, eyes and nervous system that reacts the same, it is how ADHD brains process those sensory signals that makes us more hypersensitive in many instances.
  • Hypersensitivity is not a clinical ADHD trait in accordance with the DSM, however it is a common attribute that is experienced by many people with ADHD.
  • Some ADHD brain reactions to ‘seemingly normal’ everyday sights, sounds, tastes, textures and smells may appear very irrational to neurotypicals: “Oh they get so upset over the littlest of things.”
  • Every individual is different, as with every ADHD brain in so far as some may, or may not, experience these hypersensitive occurrences.

Links:

Julie is the author of THE MISSING PIECE: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD (Harper Collins, 2024).

Transcript:

JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of ‘The Missing Piece’ and diagnosed with ADHD at 52.

JEL: And I’m Jel Legg, diagnosed at 55.

JULIE: Welcome back to ADHDifference. In this episode we’ll be talking about hypersensitivity. Now HSP, a highly sensitive person, is not a disorder in itself but it is a common attribute for people with ADHD. So, we’re talking about sensory overload with sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. So that’s what we’ll be chatting about today.

JEL: Awesome. So, let’s start with sight, shall we? [Let’s.] You go first.

JULIE: Well, I tend to be acutely aware of the weird and wonderful so I’m more inclined in my … I’m look, I’m shortsighted yeah so I wear glasses for driving or watching television but without my glasses on, which is most of the day, I will actually see the oddities in my sight of vision. Is that … my view. So, I’ll be seeing the weird and wonderful bits. My eyes are going to be drawn to a little ladybird on a twig as opposed to the beautiful scenery around me. Look that’s not sensory overload that was just a little interesting from my point of view. You probably have more of an overload when it comes to sight.

JEL: Okay, so with each of these … okay with each of these five senses, my understanding, and I’m sure someone out there will correct me if I’m wrong, is that for a given set of ears, eyes and nervous system that reacts the same it is how we process those sensory signals in our mind that makes us perhaps different to neurotypical people. And so, in our case, we’re always concerned with how our brains are wired and how they react and/or process information, react well react and so forth, but process information. So for … given two people that have the same set of eyes for instance, and now Julie you’re talking about being shortsighted. Okay but you see that raises an interesting sort of memory for me, when I was studying a bit of psychology a long time ago and how our eyes work and how we can only ever truly focus on about 1 or 2% of our vision in one space at any time. And it’s constantly moving around because the light hits the wee little receptacles … receptacles, what are they called? The little … [Retina?] Retina, is that the thing at the back? Those little cells that respond to that light and then transfer that information to be processed in the brain. Now there are heaps of them and if you just keep looking in one place, they get tired and so they’re designed to keep moving around. You’re not really aware that you’re moving around but something like 98-99% of our vision is peripheral vision. Even though you think it isn’t just the stuff at the side it’s actually what’s in front of you. You’re look … your brain is looking for a trigger, something that’s changed. Now I would suggest to you … and I’m not a scientist or a doctor, that if you’re not in a distance able to focus on something, you’ve probably … your brain’s learned to perhaps be more sensitive to the peripheral stuff going on. And you do tend to notice things changing – a bird that flutters in the bush more.

JULIE: Yes, that’s probably more my inability to focus or hold attention on something else. So I’m not getting a sensory overload with that but it … that’s just my little thing about sight, but you have quite a strong overwhelm when it comes to …

JEL: Yeah, one or two things. I think my number one is what I believe is called, they’re called datum lines. It’s an engineering term for how things inter … lines and vertical, horizontal, or three dimensions, how they intersect, and how they need to be straight or at certain angles. So if I’m looking at a fence that I put up a couple of years ago that it sort of, kind of twisted itself slightly, it’s not perfectly vertical … which happens to be slightly behind the edge of our old house, which was moved some 20 years ago, it’s a 100 year old house, and it’s got a part that’s not vertical. Now you know, every house should be vertical. You don’t have wonky houses. You shouldn’t do unless perhaps you have a Tudor house, 1600s. And every day I have to look at this, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and it just drives me nuts. I can see if a picture’s not straight. I can see if it’s slightly twisted and as I walk around, I’ll move it. [And we’re talking a millimeter.] Just a small amount. [It’s so tiny]. Yeah and I’m not so sure that I didn’t improve it because I’ll move it and I’ll walk back past again and go “Oh it’s twisted the other way now,” and it drives me nuts. It really does. My brain has got this need for everything to be square and line up and be …

JULIE: And maybe orderly? [Orderly, yes.] Maybe because your brain isn’t always orderly, at least you want something in your life to look straight and linear.

JEL: Yeah I don’t … I can’t explain why it’s like it. Maybe it comes from this engineering mind I’ve had. After a lifetime of doing engineering, in one form or another, when things should be straight and square, or the angle prescribed and they need to be correct. And if they’re imbalanced or not right … and that can extend to the aesthetics in things. If I see a car that just seems disproportionate, the proportions are wrong, it just doesn’t seem like a design that feels very human, then I get a real high … my brain has a real reaction to that. It’s an ugly car and I see a car, another car, that’s beautifully proportioned, and tend to be older ones, and then I get a lovely sense of “Oh that’s really nice.” And so my … it’s an environmental thing. It’s for me, with sight, it’s there all the time and everywhere.

JULIE: I want to move on to sound actually because I think that’s fun. Now, two sets of ears, we both have ADHD. Now my hearing is really attuned to high pitched sounds and I’ll … it’ll be as clear as day to me. It’ll be this high pitch, shrieking, whining and I’ll be getting up from the breakfast table saying “Oh what is that noise!” and Jel will say “No, I can’t hear a thing.” Or I can hear someone calling out a pet’s name in the distance and I can really tune in and make out every word, and we’re talking this is 100 meters away. But I just, yeah, I have this ability particularly with higher levels but you can’t hear them but you really attuned to … [The low ones.] Extra low levels, yeah.

JEL: I used to hear the high ones a long time ago, and as a music producer you’d think “Well, can’t be much of a producer if he can’t hear the high frequencies.” Well, we’re talking the stuff up around 17 khz-18 khz or we’re talking about very small levels of sound in which I don’t have the sensitivity for high up. That’s very common in music producers and so that it doesn’t preclude us from still being able to produce music but what … now I love listening to music of course and my two favourite forms of music is pretty full-on English punk music and I love classical music. So they appear to be complete opposites but they’re … no, they’re not. They’re both very emotional and they stir all sorts of endorphins in me. I was for a long time, about 20 years ago, I did a lot of dance production, music, trance in particular, I produced a lot of that and loved doing it. I found that very stirring and emotional but now if I hear a bass drum, just that repetitive boom boom boom boom boom, whether it’s from a car or a distant neighbour, and it can be quite a distant neighbour sometimes, it drives me to distraction. It’s that constant pattern of that simple beat absolutely drives me mad. I think the problem is because I can’t hear the rest of the music, it’s only one component of it, and that really drives me mad. I just … so there’s a hyper sensitivity to something I shouldn’t be sensitive to because I’m a musician.

JULIE: And again, it’s something [excuse me] not within your control. You will to the point say “I just can’t.  I can’t do anything because of that bass drum.” And we live in the country and our neighboUrs are far far away but on a still, on a still evening, you know we can hear noises from a … [9 -10 kms]. Yeah, like the train for example, that’s nowhere near us and we can hear that rumbling through.

JEL: I don’t mind the train. [No neither do I]. No because it’s not a repetitive sound. The train is along drawn-out sound as it takes a while to go past [yes] but it’s not that repetitive sound. And it’s the hypersensitivity. Okay so I think I touched on earlier, let’s get this clear that it’s our ears and our eyes can have different degrees of sensitivity. But ultimately, we’re talking ADHD and we’re talking about how our ADHD brains process information. We’re wired differently. So, what may not bother someone else may very much bother us, or you, and we’re not all the same, and so we all have different triggers and they will amplify how much they bother us I think because of ADHD brains and with the way we’re wired I really genuinely feel that.

JULIE: Yes, and this is, it’s just a really interesting subject matter you know. It’s not one of the criteria in the DSM being hypersensitivity yeah, hypersensitive that’s not on the list, but it is again a common attribute. For me again, living in the country, I will hear a rooster in the distance and it doesn’t bother me at all, at all. [Actually I like the sound of roosters, that’s cool.] However I’ll hear a truck rumble past and hearing it go, you know, accelerating or engine breaking, or rumble through and I’ll get quite irrationally upset that this truck is disturbing my peace and quiet, and it’s hardly peace and quiet in the country is it? I mean you’ve got … you’ve got birds squabbling and you’ve got the occasional dairy cow mooing, and there’s always … there’s always something going on.

JEL: That’s a good point. If you have ADHD and you think, “Right, I’ve got to get out of the city because the noise is just driving me to distraction, there’s too much over sensory overload,” just be wary if you move to the countryside it’s actually very similar. There is a lot of sensory overload and then in some ways if you … we’ve both lived in cities and towns and you know, you hear the traffic constantly. The trucks can be quite regular and they don’t bother you quite so much in that … us in that situation as here where they’re far more sporadic.

JULIE: So really, it’s those, the sounds of nature, kind of we expect them to be there so therefore that doesn’t bother us. But it’s the intrusiveness perhaps of that truck rumbling by when we’re not used to that sound being in our space. That’s a bit over the top.

JEL: Hypersensitivity is also, I think, very much linked to experiences, your life story. So something may have happened in your life, or be a process of a time in your life, when sounds and various things we talk about with different senses, trigger those memories from that time and you’re trying to get away from them.

JULIE: Yeah, it could be a siren for example might be triggering, yeah. Yes, very interesting. Now, thunderstorms. I love thunderstorms. I love heavy rain and I love the claps of thunder and lightning, and love it, love it.

JEL: I think the more violent the storm the better.

JULIE: Yeah, I find it so exciting. That does not personally overwhelm us at all, no. No.

JEL: As we go through this the other thing, I should think say before I forget is, as ADHDers perhaps talking to you as ADHDers, some you will agree with, some of you won’t. It doesn’t … it’s not really important what we agree that is awful or not, that’s not the point. I think what I would like to sort of mention a couple of times through this is that if you’re listening to this and you’re trying to understand someone with ADHD, and they seem to have an irrational reaction to any of these senses, these stimuli coming through the senses, it may be down to how their brain processes that information. So it may be, it’s not guaranteed to be, but a little understanding can actually go a long way to making a better relationship with someone and ADHD. [Yes.] I need peace and quiet when I want it and I want to a lot of noise when I want to make a lot of noise, and I make a lot of noise whether it’s music or power tools. So, when someone else’s noise is intruding on my space it drives me … it triggers such a fight or flight thing. I want to go and, you know, just be really angry with them or move house. “Sell the house now. I can’t live next door to this anymore.” And it’s not every noise you think. I don’t mind tractors, I know, but I don’t. I mean I just … I don’t mind a tractor driving past when it’s, you know, putting lime on the field. I don’t mind cows mooing and bulls in the middle of the night crying out because that’s part of living in the country.

JULIE: But you don’t like dogs barking.

JEL: No, I don’t because I’m … sorry guys, I don’t really like dogs a great deal so I don’t like dogs barking. I haven’t got a thing for tractors but I don’t mind tractors because we live in the country. It’s an industrial estate really isn’t it. Okay so … taste, no that’s more you I think on that front.

JULIE: It is, it is. I’m … yeah, we’re pretty good with taste we’ve got a really …. a wide range … [Eclectic I think is the word you’re looking for] … Yeah, I was going to say eclectic. Yeah, a wide range of foods, yeah, we’ll eat anything. So, in a way sometimes we might need to skip past the taste bit but then go on to texture and I will ….

JEL: Hang on, tablets. [I know, I know] … Are you going to join that with texture? Fair enough.

JULIE: I’m shocking at taking medication and one of the reasons why we saw a psychologist rather than a psychiatrist for our diagnosis because I really struggle taking medication. Yes, I might forget to take them, actually I do often but actually it’s the taste and the texture of the meds. It’s … I was shocking as a child and I still continue to do … to do bad.

JEL: Literally be sick if you don’t … if you sense that tablet at all … and then you only have to take it again then don’t you, because you don’t know if you’ve taken it.

JULIE: It’s terrible. So there’s a really bad one which is an antihistamine for hay fever. Now that dissolves on your tongue instantly. So it normally takes me a little while to swallow medication because I’m a problem child but once it starts dissolving it attaches to my taste buds and I know I’ll have that horrible taste of antihistamine there for ages. And then the texture as it dissolves starts getting a bit grainy and if I can’t swallow it quickly, I will gag and I will throw up, which is stupid. I’m 50 … I’m 54, for goodness’ sake.

JEL: It is irrational but I respect it and yeah, I don’t always respond as kindly as I should because [no you don’t] it’s a teeny little thing. Not even the size of an M&M or Smarty.

JULIE: I remember, as a kid, Dad had identified … my father identified that I had this problem and so he’d crush tablets up and put them in a teaspoon of honey and to this day I don’t particularly like honey either. It’s a taste thing. [I’m sure we to crush tablets up for cats …] Yeah yeah yeah, I know. It probably didn’t work for them either.

JEL: I’m going to skip that taste thing because I honestly can’t think of anything really.

JULIE: No, so on to touch or texture. So I’ll have the talking stick just for a minute. So we talk about the texture of meds that I can’t cope with. The texture of clothing is a big thing for me too. Anything that’s scratchy or any clothing tags still attached that are quite harsh and rub on the back of my neck? Chop them off straight away because they’re just going to be annoying. And so that’ll dictate what clothing I buy really. Anything too woolly I know will have a scratchy element so they’re off the list. But for me the major one was when I got a tattoo several years ago. Now I know tattoos hurt. That’s the whole point at the end of the day, you’re being poked and prodded thousands of times with a needle putting foreign substances into your skin. Yes, of course that hurts, I know. But it was … I had a coloured, quite a colourful tattoo, lots of colours, lots of shading, very clever guy who did that however it was the wiping away of the liquids, which is blood pretty much and excess ink, repetitively over the same space was excruciating. And, you know, the tattooist had a wry smile on his face going “What? Wiping this away is more painful than actually the tattooing itself?” and I said yes. So we had to actually stop every couple of hours and I just needed to go outside and take some fresh air and convince myself that I’ve started it, I’ve got to finish it now and to go back in. But it was excruciating and I have a really high pain threshold. Goodness me. [Had three children.] Yeah, and two without drugs. Anyway, so I can handle those things but this no, just it took me over the edge big time. And the other texture that I don’t … or the feeling I don’t like, is wet swimming togs. Now dry swimming togs, that’s fine if you’re at the beach, for example. But as soon as you’re actually in the water, and you … or in a spa pool, and you remove yourself from the environment, they’re clammy. They stick to you and they’re wet, and they’re cold, and they’re horrible. So, we ditched our swimming togs, didn’t we. [For the spa, yeah.] For the spa. It’s just like no need, no need for that carry on.

JEL: No, horrible and I share that. I share that entirely. So really, yeah, it’s quite a high sort of triggery thing on the skin sensitivity, isn’t it? Go on.

JULIE: I was going to say we, look we’re really tactile people. We hold hands all the time, even in bed which is cute or crazy, I don’t know what it is. And holding hands is really nice, it’s really nice, but we need to hold hands a certain way otherwise I’ll rearrange the hand movements to make sure that I’m most comfortable. But rubbing … rubbing my shoulder, after about four strokes I’ll be shaking, shaking the hand off. I was just thinking that then. Yeah, and isn’t that weird. Yeah. The darling person that I love yet, just that repetitive touch

JEL: … but like you said, we’re very sensory. We love to hug people hello, hug them goodbye. We’re very tactile. Yes. We’re not all standoff-ish with hugging and so forth, yeah.

JULIE: Until we’re not. Until I guess that again, this is sensory overload, and it can have a short wick really.

JEL: I think now, sort of re-thinking about it, getting my head into the space of these sensory overloads, I would reasonably say … I think it would be reasonable for someone who wasn’t perhaps ADHD, “So we just you know, you need to chill a bit. Be more accommodating. Just, you know, it’s none of these things are life-threatening. They’re not particularly that big a deal.” Well, they are a big deal for us. They’re a huge deal. It’s a fight or flight reaction a lot of the time. This … you could argue, is that almost like childish, I don’t know. But no, I think our brains just … they take this sensory information and they churn it around, and around, and around, and they amplify it, and they make it this total focus.  And it’s like, “Do something about it now.” Yeah?

JULIE: Yes … no no no no with that, food. It’s not necessarily the taste but it’s the texture and you don’t like oysters. [Oh no no no no.] And we don’t need to describe how it is for you because a lot of people don’t like oysters for the same reason. I don’t like surprises. I don’t like, for example, if I’m eating … if I’m in a foreign country and I’m eating some food that I think is nice and I bite into it and it explodes, if you know what I mean.  And, I will say ‘baby octopus’ which I don’t like … well I don’t eat that again but I did once, and that was enough, but that kind of exploded and that’s it. No, too much. Too much for me. [Oh yeah, tequila, the worm.] Yeah yeah, and that’s the reason … yeah the worm, oh my gosh. I chewed the worm. You should never chew worms. But funnily enough too, we’re also hypersensitive to situations like … we don’t like surprises either. Now this, we’re not talking about senses here but the thing is that we want to know what’s happening. We don’t like ‘surprise’ that’s out of our control as well. Or, being tickled or … you know what I mean it’s just …

JEL: Yeah, oh there’s another one. People who say “Oh, are you there? I’ll call you in 10 minutes. I’ve got something important to tell you.” Well couldn’t you just tell me if it’s important? Now I’ve got to wait 10 minutes for it. Is that impatience? Maybe that’s the impatience.

JULIE: And like many of the traits of ADHD, and again this isn’t a trait, this is just an attribute that’s common for ADHDers, is but there’s lots of crossover. And we know we’re hypersensitive for example to criticism. And again, that is another trait but you were talking about negative people too and that’s sometimes that can be a bit …

JEL: Okay, hold that thought. On the criticism one, now that doesn’t for us, and we can’t we definitely can’t speak for everyone else, but for us that doesn’t make us the kind of people we need to wrap up in cotton wool when it comes to criticism. It’s just how, for me, it’s how I process that. So if I know I’m not very good at something and I want to get better at it, and work out what I’ve done wrong, I go find an expert and I say to them “I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing here. I’m a bit rubbish at this. I’m obviously making a complete hash of it. Can you help me out with some tips?” The best thing … people love, if they’re good at something, they love to tell you they’re good at it. They just … I learned this years ago. It was a good tip I learned when I was a young man you know, and so they’ll come back and they’ll share hopefully what they know and you take it on board. “Oh you’ve done that wrong. No, you shouldn’t start like that, start here.”  I’m fine with that criticism because I know I’m a bit rubbish at it. That’s fine, yeah no problem. But if I think I’m quite good at something, and it’s generally going to be art isn’t it or music or something, and then I don’t care what someone else thinks. If they say “Oh I think you could have done this and this. Oh that’s not that good,” it doesn’t matter. It’s not your song. It’s my song. I did it my way, for me and you either like it or you don’t. So on the artistic side I think we can be quite sensitive and I don’t seek criticism of my music because it’s only someone’s opinion. But on something practical that has a right and wrong way of doing it, maybe a wee building project or something like that, then I’m quite happy to be criticized if I’ve done it wrong because I know what’s right and what’s wrong in something that’s not perhaps so artistic.

JULIE:  Okay so talking about being hypersensitive, so when are you hyper sensitive to criticism?

JEL: When it’s unjust, and when it’s irrelevant, and I’m when I don’t learn anything from it. If I learn something from it and if I go “Oh, blimey, you’ve got a point there,” or it might be some coding I’ve done wrong. It’s like “Oh, fair go.” I’ll take that one on the chin and move forward but if it’s just someone’s opinion I’m that’s I’m hypersensitive to that. It’s like no no no no no no, and another no. Not required, you know? I guess too if someone’s hyper critical of your opinion on something, that’s not necessary. I’m not ever hyper critical on someone else’s opinion. I’d rather say, “We’ve got different opinions.” Yeah. On some subject matter, it could be politics or doesn’t matter what it is, or any subject, and say “Okay but let’s talk about it. Let’s nut it out and see if we can each learn something.”  And with someone I’m engaging with who’s like that we generally find some common ground at the end and it’s all just fine and if we’re still …  we’re not poles apart.

JULIE: Yeah, and some subject matters you are very well read on, and you have a lot of … you spent years and years and years studying it, and so to be criticized for a …

JEL: An opinion based on a lot of understanding, from someone I believe hasn’t got that understanding, that can actually stay with me forever that one.

JULIE: But we … again we’re talking about more irrational responses to something like that. More drastic I guess. I want to talk about negativity and negative people. Yeah. And we are both really hypersensitive to that and whether it’s the … well it’s a combination of all sorts, it’s the energy that they’re emitting. It’s the tone of their voice when they’re really negative and they’re really grumpy and nothing … you know, it’s just “Where’s the joy? Come on, find some joy there!” It can really drag, well I suppose it’s the energy isn’t it, it can really drag us down big time. And we tend to match energy levels of other people and so if they’re quiet we’ll probably be quiet to match them. But it doesn’t do us any good because that’s not our natural state necessarily.

JEL: Now tell me, oh wise ADHD author, is empathy a strong aspect of ADHD? [Yes.] There you go. Yes. I’ve always felt and said to people, of myself, that I’m very empathetic. So, if you start telling me about that time you broke your leg, and describing in detail what happened, and the pain, and all the stuff, I will say “Just stop right there,” because I can feel that pain. I’m empathetic to that situation you’re in. And yes, I can be empathetic to people going through a difficult patch with something when they previously generally upbeat and got a good grip of life, when something goes wrong then yes, we’re fantastic listeners and got lots of love to give. But put us … because that empathy and how as you just said, we observe, absorb, or react, or feel the energy around people and in a room, yeah if someone walks into our space who’s very negative and just is moaning and complaining it can drain us in 5 minutes flat.

JULIE: Yes, and again sensory overload. To that, we’re likely to just put up a wall going “No, no. I can’t let you into my space because I know this is going to just go downhill really quickly.

JEL: Now I do call that sensory overload … I call that ‘negative sensory overload’. And it’s okay I understand, most people say well … sensory overload is say someone comes into our space, and we’ve met plenty of people who are so full of energy. It’s amazing. They’ll light the room up and we just buzz and spark. We can take 2 or 3 hours of that and then we’re completely worn out and we have to withdraw, but we give them a hug and thank them for their energy. It’s fantastic but I do believe the opposite can have the same effect. Yes. And generally, the negative one, is quicker. Oh yeah, I guess too … It’s overloading our negative sensories. Our reactives are shutting down. It’s overloading our masking and all that stuff.

JULIE: Yes. Now I said at times we’ll be irrational and actually put up a wall quite quickly with negative people. But then, because we’re walking contradictions, will also could/want to try and uplift them and so we’ll be extra positive to try and counterbalance their extra negativeness. And we can burn ourselves up really quickly because our battery … They’re draining our battery very very quickly and they can leave after an hour feeling so much better for themselves. “Thank you. You’ve really helped me out and I’m feeling really positive now. Thank you, thank you.” They can walk away happy and it’s and … we’ve left, we’re left on empty really and so we just need time out to recharge ourselves.

JEL: How many times we say, “That person’s just spent the last two hours talking at us.” Yeah yeah. To us, not with us. Did they ask a single question? Did they learn … what did they learn about us? Nothing.

JULIE: I know, I know and we’re hyper sensitive about that too because we … it happens all the time.

JEL: That’s true. As you can see we’re quite open about chatting. We’re an open book our world, but yeah we’re very sensitive. That’s hypersensitivity, yes.

JULIE: Yes, not just energy, but I think … would this fall under sight? So we feel the energy but also we can see body language. And what disturbs me, is if words are coming out of someone’s mouth but their body language doesn’t match it. Yes. I get quite confused and I need to try and work out what the heck’s going on. So yeah, so their body language – arms crossed, no smile, but they’re saying some quite positive words. I treat that with much suspicion.

JEL: I just thought of another one I’m very hypersensitive to, is people who just talk loudly, far too loudly. It just … it comes across as this … that there’s no dynamic to it.

JULIE: Or a monotone voice and everything like that. Oh monotone and loud together, no that’s the worst worst.

JEL: You know, someone talking at you even for five minutes is like listening to a song that has no dynamics. It’s like just start, stop. Yeah, and this hypersensitivity, sometimes it can take a very long time. It doesn’t just happen in that split second. It can build up over weeks then months and sometimes years, and then one day you suddenly crack and go “I can’t take a single minute of this anymore.” And then that’s when we appear to be irrational because it’s built up and up. We mask. We mask. We put up with it and then bam, it’s gone. That’s it. No more.

JULIE: Again, throw confrontation into the mix … so what you’re talking about is over time when things may annoy us about a certain person or a situation, and we don’t address it because we’re masking and we’re trying not to have that confrontation, because we know the odds are we’re going to fight or flight. Fighting we might say something that we regret. Flighting we don’t actually get to say what we want to say and we can feel unheard. And so over time, it’s that putting issues under the rug and then one day you trip up over this huge mound.

JEL: Well that hypersensitivity goes nuclear. [Yeah it does eh, it does eh?] Yeah it does. I’m not proud of it but it’s just …

JULIE: So, I guess being diagnosed with ADHD, what is quite nice is that we can look at these situations and go “Oh that makes sense.” Again it’s not a trait according to the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, being a highly sensitive person isn’t a disorder, but again it’s an attribute that’s common with people with ADHD. So to look back at those instances and go “Ahh, I’m not alone in that,” is quite nice.

JEL: Yeah and as I said toward the beginning of this, I think perhaps with this episode more than any so far, this one might be quite hopefully useful for someone living with someone with ADHD, or parenting someone with ADHD.

JULIE: Yeah, things like, yes … if you were to observe them, and the radio is too loud, and it’s literally “Ahhhhhhhh turn it off!” or Charlie’s playing his music too loud in the bedroom, it can be quite irrational but it’s enough really to trigger.

JEL: I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh but I can think what happens when if you drop a glass on … we got a … in the kitchen on the floor, it’s a tile floor so anything drops mashes, and my instant reaction is “No no no!” It’s like that’s irrational and stupid. Why? Well because A, it’s a big horrible noise that’s just happened. B, now I’ve got to help clear it up but number one reason? Everything has to stand still because there’s now shards of glass everywhere and if you stand in that glass we then, or me, then we have to go to hospital.

JULIE: And D, it was probably me that dropped it in the first instance. I drop  everything.

JEL: It’s not about the glass. You know, there’s nothing of any value and, if it was it wouldn’t matter. It’s about getting a piece of glass in our foot. That’s … we’re now frozen in time and we can’t … who can move? Who can get to the broom? So ah, let me … what is the hypersensitivity there? It isn’t the noise initially. It is the instant recognition that we have a wee emergency to deal with. It’s the hypersensitivity to the change in the plan of what was happening. We were just about to have breakfast and I had a few things organized today. In that split second has my world now changed? Has my world … I mean that for the next 6 hours we’ve got to sit in A&E getting a piece of glass out. And it’s happened. You know, remember the time you dropped the secateurs on your toe? It was ridiculous because … So there’s hypersensitivity to losing control and having the day turned upside down. There’s … that’s a hypersensitivity to … I wouldn’t even say it’s always necessarily having routine taken away. It’s just I had plans for that day and so it’s a big cognitive ADHD brain imagining the whole world coming to an end, yeah?

JULIE: I … as you know I’ve written a book. I spoke to lots of women also diagnosed as adults to help share their story to provide balance, and when it comes to hypersensitivity it was quite interesting. Some liked large crowds. For example, if they went to a concert … we’ve got loud music, you’ve got lots and lots of people …  if they were anonymous in that crowd they found it as pleasurable as being by themselves, and in a really positive way. They could go there and really enjoy … really enjoy it, so crowds didn’t overwhelm them. Yet if they were in a concert in their local town where they weren’t anonymous, because everyone knew them, they’d really dislike that and they’d be overwhelmed by familiar faces, by you know potentially of being spoken to when they just wanted to enjoy the music. Yeah, it’s quite interesting, ‘walking contradiction’. We can be everything, can’t we?

JEL: There’s almost, yeah I mean I’m wondering there, it’s a bit philosophical, but a hypersensitivity to expected outcomes. So, for instance we used to go camping a lot. We had a regular campsite, we had lots of friends there and if we turned up on nice summer’s days to spend a night or two there, and there was no one else, it was really quiet, that was … the expected outcome is there’d be lots of our friends there. We could say hello to them and have a really good time. [Friends?] Ah okay, I see what you did there. Acquaintances. Well yeah [close acquaintances] they were acquaintances or actually really a lot of the time there were strangers. It was just lots of new faces to say hello to, and that made the reason we chose to go from our little isolated rural space into a campsite where there might be say 100 people, is there was a chance to engage, you know, with energy for 24 hours and then come home and back into our space. Conversely, going into a shopping space where I need to buy something and there’s no car parks, and there’s thousands of people, now I can’t do that. I hate that but if I go there, and I find it’s empty, then the same task is fine. It’s great, quite enjoyable. So I think it’s all to do with expected outcomes, hypersensitive to what you may or may not think’s going to happen.

JULIE: Yeah but if I … we don’t, we don’t do Christmas presents anymore, but if I said Christmas Eve shopping. [Oh no!] No. We know it’s going to be chaos and it is, so we just don’t do it anymore. [No.] But that’s our expected outcome is the same. It doesn’t make it any worse. You’ve got people with bags, and people screaming, and car parks, and noises, and loud speakers, and all sorts of things. It’s not a good mix, is it?

JEL: No. Look, it all comes down to how our brains process the stimuli and that’s what we’ve … hypersensitivity. We’re just a constant, well everyone, every living creature has a constant stream of stimuli and 98% of what comes into us is designed to keep us alive. What’s that sound? What’s that sound? Do I need to move? Do I need to run? Is that a lion? You know, I have to go faster to catch dinner. It’s like, we are literally … everything we do is about surviving. And then there’s this small stream of important information and then this big computer in between our ears then processes it all and that’s where ADHD has an interesting space with hypersensitivity, I think. It’s how we process that stimuli in our environment and, you know, if neurodiversity isn’t about environment and reaction to it, and living in it, and stimuli … if that lot isn’t neurodiversity and a relationship between neurotypical and neurodiversity, then I almost don’t know what is. So, it is a funny one that it’s not yet part of the DSM, as you say, but it actually I think, can be quite a big thing for a lot of people with ADHD and it can really put them out of sorts with people: their work colleagues, their family and people around them.

JULIE: Yeah and it’s like, “Oh they get so upset over the littlest things,” hmmmm, HSP highly sensitive person.

JEL: Yeah particularly in a work environment when “Everyone else is fine, so what’s your problem?” That’s why I need to work in this office on my own “Well you can’t, you know. Look at the where you are on the pecking order. You don’t get an office.” But I need to work in the office where I don’t have all the stimuli. I’m sensitive to the noise. “What makes you different?”

JULIE: Noise cancelling headphones. Yes. Thank you for listening and that was us, on hypersensitivity.

Scroll to top