Don’t underestimate the power your story has to help other people
I’ve been chatting with a friend over WhatsApp. We are the only autistic people in our friendship group and have started sharing a little bit more our sensory experiences and challenges.
Today we are talking wetsuits!
They shared with me an embarrassing experience they had recently where they put their wetsuit on inside out, needed help getting out of it and then still had to deal with the sensory nightmare that is rubber. On your skin. In every possible crevice. And it’s tight!
It reminded me I’d had a few of my own uncomfortable experiences with wetsuits. Way before I had even heard of autism let alone cultivated a level of self-compassion that would allow me to acknowledge the discomfort that could then lead to adjusting circumstances to make myself more comfortable; I had squeezed myself in, struggled with the tugging up my limbs, and dissociated from the anxiety, frustration and rising panic my body was feeling in response to being ‘trapped’ in this weird contraption.
I shared with my friend that I had had similar experiences. I’d never heard anyone complain about the sensation of putting on a wetsuit really. Not seriously, just a casual joke about them being tight. There’s a chance I suppose that many people don’t go on about it for fear of being…
