Sensory
14 terms
Auditory Hypersensitivity
When your brain's sound filtering system doesn't work properly, causing everyday sounds to register as painful, overwhelming, or unbearable. Not about disliking noise—experiencing sound as physical assault that triggers genuine pain responses and fight-or-flight reactions. Like living with all volume knobs stuck on eleven and no way to turn them down.
Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)
Your ears work perfectly, but your brain's sound-to-meaning translator is glitching. You hear everything—too many things, actually—but understanding speech is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle while everyone waits for your answer. Not a hearing problem; a sound-interpretation problem.
Hyposensitivity
Reduced responsiveness to sensory input, requiring more intense or prolonged stimulation to register sensations that others notice easily.
Interoception
Your internal body sense—the ability to feel hunger, thirst, heartbeat, temperature, pain, and other signals from inside your body. Many neurodivergent people experience this "eighth sense" differently, making basic needs harder to recognize.
Misophonia
A neurological condition where specific sounds trigger intense emotional reactions, often including anger, disgust, or panic, along with physical responses.
Sensory Avoidance
Reducing or avoiding certain inputs (noise, light, textures, smells) to prevent overload and stay regulated.
Sensory Diet
A planned set of activities and inputs designed to give the nervous system the right amount of stimulation across the day.
Sensory Gating
The brain’s ability to filter out unimportant sensory information; reduced gating can amplify overload.
Sensory Integration
How the brain combines input from different senses to guide movement, learning, and comfort.
Sensory Overload
When your brain receives more sensory input than it can process—like a computer with too many programs running until it crashes. Lights become painful, sounds pierce your skull, textures feel like sandpaper, and your nervous system screams for escape.
Sensory Processing Disorder
A condition where the nervous system has trouble receiving and responding to sensory information. People may be over-sensitive, under-sensitive, or both to different sensory inputs.
Sensory Seeking
Preferring or seeking extra sensory input (movement, pressure, sound, texture) to feel regulated.
Stimming
Self-stimulatory behaviors—repetitive movements, sounds, or activities that regulate the nervous system. Natural, necessary, and beneficial actions that help process sensory input, manage emotions, and maintain focus.
Synesthesia
A neurological phenomenon where stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway - like hearing colors or seeing sounds.