Sensory Issues

I'm not sure exactly when I entered the orphanage, but it was close to when I was born. I spent 14 months in the orphanage, and while it seemed like I being well fed, played with, and read to, orphanages aren't ideal places to grow up.

Institutionalized care can cause a host of problems, including "sensory processing" challenges. This means I don't like bright lights. At all. I'm an absolute nightmare in the eye doctor's office! On my computer and phone, I have to turn the brightness down as low as it can go! 

I can't handle loud sounds. I am super sensitive to noise and to different smells. My parents make jokes all the time about how I can hear grass grow and how I have the best sniffer! However, the most bothersome thing is probably clothes and textures. I can't handle certain fabrics, especially "rough" fabrics like wool. I don't like "clingy" fabrics like elastin in yoga pants or "staticy" fabrics you find in synthetics that make my hair stick on end.

It was really difficult for my mom to understand when I was small. She knew I had issues with things: even on the video recordings of my very first hours being with her and my dad in the hotel room in China, she says "the light is bothering [me]" three times and has my dad turn off varying lights in the hotel room. Now, she understands that I'm not just weird. I need to have ultra soft bedsheets, otherwise, I just can't handle it. I get rashes or my skin feels like its crawling with bugs. Seams can really bother me, like on sweaters by the armhole or the underside of my arm, or on stretchy pants, down the side of the pant. I have to place bandaids on my bras and underwear on the seams so that I can wear them. And don't even get me started on tags, especially the sewn-in tags on the backs of shirts.

I know I'm not alone in the adoptee community with these sensory overload issues. My adoptee friends have them too to varying degrees. My parents wish they had known this was a (legitimate) thing back when I was little, so I'm sharing this here.