The eight senses (not five)
You probably learned “five senses” at school. There are really eight:
- Sight — light and colour
- Sound — auditory input
- Smell
- Taste
- Touch — pressure, temperature, pain, texture
- Proprioception — where your body is in space
- Vestibular — balance and movement (inner ear)
- Interoception — signals from inside your body (hunger, thirst, needing the toilet, heartbeat, emotions)
The last three are usually invisible to people who don't have trouble with them — which is why they're often overlooked in conversations about sensory differences. They matter a lot.
Over-responsive vs. under-responsive
Each sense can be either “too loud” (hyper-responsive) or “too quiet” (hypo-responsive), and a single person can be both in different channels. You can be over-responsive to sound and under-responsive to pain, at the same time.
Over-responsive: certain sounds hurt. Fluorescent lights feel aggressive. Clothing tags are unbearable. Perfume gives you a headache. A light touch on the shoulder can feel like a shove.
Under-responsive: you don't notice you're cold. You don't realise you're hungry until you're hangry. You crave deep pressure (weighted blankets, tight hugs) or loud music or strong flavours — because that's the level of input you need to feel properly regulated.
How it actually feels
- Walking into a supermarket and feeling like someone turned the world up to 11.
- Not realising you've been uncomfortable for two hours until you leave the room.
- Finding out at 30 that “clothes should be comfortable” was always the rule — you just assumed you were the defective one.
- Being told you're “too picky” about food, fabric, or noise when you're actually just honest about the pain.
- Needing to rock, fidget, pace, chew, or press on things to think clearly.
- Meltdowns or shutdowns when input has been too high for too long — not a tantrum, a nervous system overflow.
What actually helps
- Noise-cancelling headphones or earplugs. Loop, Flare, cheap foam — doesn't matter, just have some.
- Sunglasses indoors if you need them. No one is judging you.
- Soft, tagless, predictable clothing. It's okay to wear the same thing every day.
- Weighted blankets. Deep pressure is genuinely calming for many nervous systems.
- Stim toys and fidgets. Regulation, not distraction.
- Interoception cues. Alarms that remind you to drink water, eat, stretch. Outsourcing the signals your body isn't sending clearly.
- Leaving early. Knowing your exit in advance takes the load off.
- Our Sensory Check-in tool — four sliders, one suggestion.
Sensory sensitivity isn't being dramatic. It's having a working smoke detector.