I only learned the difference between hunger and thirst about 5 years ago, in my 40s. And the only way I know that I’m tired is that I lose my ability to think linearly–which is very confusing, because I don’t think linearly the majority of the time anyway!

I have not had a single one of those “attacks” since this was pointed out to me, which is great, but I have to wonder why it took 20+ years for anyone to figure out I was not just “randomly anxious about nothing” but actually too warm and not drinking enough water!

One time I was in an office that was a little too cold. Except that, for days, I didn’t notice that it was too cold. I only figured it out after it dawned on me that, every time I washed my hands in the nearest bathroom, I tended to leave my hands in the running water longer than I needed to. See, this faucet was broken in a weird way that meant it kept producing warm water, never cold. And the warm water felt so good to my cold hands that I didn’t want to take them out! Then after that, I started feeling (or, more precisely, noticed or recognized my feeling) cold in my office.

My partner often keeps our bedroom warmer than I like. But it often takes me hours to notice that it has gotten too warm for my comfort.

Whenever something IN my body did something to cause pain, my “experience” of this was usually a combination of a vague “bad” feeling that I generally attributed to something else (such as “stress” or “psychological problems”), and finding myself *doing* (or not doing) things that I could not explain or understand.

The worst case of this was when I injured my back in college (by carrying a too-heavy backpack over a period of months). Initially when (what I later realized was) the pain started I thought I was just in a bad mood “for no reason”. Then when I started getting muscle spasms I attributed that to “anxiety” (but also worried that it might be a brain tumor or something really serious). When I could not even sit down at work (I had a part time internship then) I went to the health center, where I proceeded to pace in circles and hyperventilate. The nurse there told me that I was “just stressed” and wrote me a “prescription” to take more breaks. It was not until a few weeks after that that I even connected any of this to anything in my back — basically one day I got off my bike, tried to pick up my backpack, and simply physically could not do it.

That clued me in to the fact that my back felt “weak”, and then it was like HOLY CRAP OW, that is PAIN! And of course it still took me weeks after that to actually go to the doctor, by which time I could barely walk without falling down. Turned out that my back muscles were swollen up and were pressing on nerves in various places, which accounted for the spasms and weakness and pain.

Anyway, all that said the thing that really stands out to me here is that the only way I found out that the pain was happening was through external things. Like I could not experience the pain as pain until I actually saw my body doing things it didn’t normally do (like twitch uncontrollably in places) and NOT doing things (like picking up backpacks) that it could normally do. And it took a whole ton of data-gathering for me to recognize that these things were both connected and significant, and only after I had “conclusive evidence” that something was indeed wrong did the recognition of pain occur. So I guess at least now I know to watch out for that kind of thing, and I wish for the sake of people whose sensory/perceptual system works this way that there was more discussion of this sort of thing. And that there was less of a push to attribute “strange” movements or lack of ability to do things to laziness or “psychological issues” or “attitude problems”.

When I get what the occupational therapist refer to as “deep pressure”, it helps a lot, especially if it’s from someone I trust. But then that tends to lead to more sexual situations, which I don’t mind except that I do tend to have the “usual orifice” problem. I keep trying to find a way to explain to guys what I experience, but it’s not possible when someone doesn’t go through it and they’re not interested in understanding anyway. I’ve been in many situations where I was told “it ok if we just cuddle” but it’s just an excuse to try to get me to have sex with the person…There is just such a *huge* difference between the way I process general pressure and point pressure. I’m a compulsive petter of pets, since they are “safe”.