Clothes

Clothes, yes that’s right I am going to do an entire post about clothing. Now you may ask why but I have always had issues with the kind of clothes I wear, I mean the material had to be right, the fit, the size even the colour could cause me to refuse an item of clothing. I am going to talk you through some of this and hopefully you can understand just why us people on the spectrum are so choosy when it comes to clothing.

So first let’s go with colour, just like everyone else us spectrum dwellers has favourite colours, we have colours we don’t like. But it’s so easy for something as simple as the colour of a shirt to get under our skin. Just for a minute think about how often you catch a glimpse of your top in the edge of your vision. It’s like when you have a stain on your top it irritates you because you can stop seeing it. But only its thousands of times worse, it just bothers me and can make me annoyed, aggressive or even sad.

Size and fit, now everyone gets annoyed when their clothes don’t fit them properly, either it be a size too small or fitted to tight across the shoulders.  But when my clothes are too tight I feel restricted, I feel like I’m being crushed, like I can’t move and that in itself is a pretty bad feeling. When this feeling of restriction is mixed with anxiety from groups of people you can soon come to realise that the issue is. In some situations tight fitting clothing is needed, for instance I cycle everywhere and the level of comfort correctly fitting lycra cycle gear brings when doing large distances is unmatched with any other kind of clothing.

The feel of clothes I also important, I mean when many people are alone they chose to wear jogging pants and lose t-shirts. That’s because the material and fit are what’s needed when appearance isn’t too important. I personally have some shirts that I love the way they look, but when I wear them I can’t the way the material feels against my skin. It can be rather bothersome because I really like the way it looks but when I have it on I just can’t wait to get it off. Simply because the material makes me uncomfortable. 

I realise that this post covers some of the same topic that I covered in the post sensory processing but the aim of this post was to explain exactly what it is that bothers me about various clothing items.

Thanks for reading and as usual, remember, a little patience can go a long way,

Spec.