‘There’s no functioning power left to do what it’s supposed to be doing’ : Autistic Accounts of Sensory Overload

Autistic people often speak about sensory overload as a highly negative impact on their daily life and wellbeing. Despite this community prominence, relatively little research has explored the concept itself and the research that has been conducted has mostly used clinician reports. This study, co-produced with autistic people, recruited 78 self-identified autistic adults to complete a qualitative survey about their experiences of sensory overload. From the data, two themes about the nature of sensory overload were developed: a functioning perspective and a ‘Fight, Flight, Freeze’ perspective. Three further themes constructed from the data related to the overload of high-level processing, the overload of low-level processing, and the fatigue associated with sensory overload. These findings have implications for our understanding of the experience of sensory overload and how we envision autistic sensory processing more generally.