Sensory overload

When one of the judges of the prestigious Tolley’s Awards first contacted me in March to kindly ask if I would like to be his guest to the event I was initially a bit hesitant as I’m autistic and being in a new environment with lots of people can sometimes be challenging.

There are several reasons for this. One of those is not knowing how sensory overload might affect me especially as the awards were being held somewhere I hadn’t been previously.

Sensory overload for those who are not familiar with the term is very common for those of us who are autistic and occurs when the senses are overloaded with too much input.

My personal most common source of sensory overload is light especially if I’m somewhere with no natural light but a lot of artificial light sources. Other common triggers are...