I have a few sensory issues. I'm very aware of the ones that are especially problematic for me as a performing musician and and have ways of dealing with them.
My hearing is very, very sensitive, and this causes the following problems when performing:
- Big, loud impact sounds, particularly snare drums, cause dizziness and nausea, and the more i'm exposed to it the worse it gets. I love it when a drummer uses electric drums - that seems to eliminate the snare drum problem at least.
- Very high frequencies are horrible. Things like the high frequency 'beams' from a guitar amp (the very harsh sounds that you only hear when your ear is in the direct 'firing line' of the speaker's sound projection), they not only feel like something is scratching my inner ear with an emery board, i kind of 'hear' the scratch as a sound that isn't really there, like a kind of distortion in my hearing perception.
I can mostly eliminate these problems by wearing earplugs, but even then, i still have problems if the overall volume on stage is too loud. The positive side of this is, if i have it my own way, lots of people always seem to comment that the overall sound is very nice and clear.
I'm also very sensitive to light - i have problems with stage lighting, especially if the lights are pointed directly at my eyes. It's like looking into the sun, for me. Even worse is when they are constantly changing colour or there's a strobe effect - a strobe effect and rapid colour changing does a similar thing as a snare drum - it makes me feel like the ground is moving beneath my feet. It also interferes with my hearing. I noticed recently at a show where the lights were pointed directly at me, and were doing rapid colour changing strobe effects (so all 3 problems), Not only did it feel like the stage was going up and down and tilting from side to side, each time it changed colour my perception of what i was hearing would start to get distorted, because i was just completely overloaded. Luckily it was only a short set. During a break between a song where i had to pick up my acoustic guitar and do an acoustic number, people noticed how much i was shaking, and how nervous i had looked the whole time, and that my eyes were closed through most of the performance, and pointed it out to me afterwards - i wasn't nervous, i was trying desperately hard not to freak out because of the damn lights.
I usually ask for the lights to not be pointed directly into my eyes and for the strobe/colour changing effects to be kept at a minimum. If my needs are not met, i wear sunglasses
Other issues include oversensitivity to certain types of smells and tastes, problems with food with certain textures (especially bits of gristle in meat), i can't stand touching greasy or slimey/sticky surfaces, and i hate being touched on the knees, feet and the side of my lower abdomen for some reason... but also i'm under-sensitive to certain types of pain (like getting punched - i feel the pain but it doesn't actually affect me in any way), coldness (similar kind of thing to pain. excessive heat REALLY bothers me though). There might even be a few other things that i nobody has pointed out to me as being 'abnormal', as well.