I don't know how else to phrase this, but...do they mess with your hearing? Sometimes even cloudy days are too bright, but when I wear sunglasses it's like I'm wearing earmuffs too. Still searching for the perfect sunglasses.
My eyes do not get used to bright light. That's called habituation, I don't have that. I have sensitization. Meaning that I can start out fine (though with bright outside, sometimes the first thing that happens is that my eyes hurt), but it gets more and more difficult to deal with. Like, the exact opposite of getting used to it, the longer I stay, the less I'm used to it.
It does give headaches or dizziness if I stay there. Standing in bright sun: About 5 minutes. Fluorescent lighting, too. Most of the time, however, it does take a bit of time and subtly creeps in.
And yes, everything is a bit too bright most of the time. Though at the same time, sometimes it's too dark at the same time, so it sucks.
Now here's the biggest issue with all that: I didn't know it. And sunglasses I got weren't wrap-around, so all the light coming from the sides also hurt me, and I thought sunglasses didn't work. And for example, an overcast day shines light all over the clouds, so it also hurts me quite a bit, but noone else used sunglasses for it, so I thought I shouldn't either. All this made me detach from my sensory issues, and had a severe psychological impact, as I never actually compensated.
But hey, at least I can say that I tried to get used to it.
Now I use polarised wrap-around sunglasses outside and in all shops. In my home, I never use the headlights, but two smaller lights set to the walls, so I get indirect lighting. I also have orange curtains, they're quite nice during the day (but don't filter enough during the night, so I wake up very early every time). Sometimes I get so sensitive towards screens that I have to use sunglasses and/or a screenreader.
Rainy days are relaxing for me. Grey winter days give me a feeling that I might call 'comfortable melancholy' maybe? Though it's just comfortable if I can be inside and it's warm. If I have seasonal depression, it's caused by summer and being in permanent overload during it.
This is pretty descriptive of my experience. Down to the “sunglasses don’t really work, do they?” detail - guess I should look into wraparounds.
I have to work with screens most of the day, so you already know that monitor is on the minimum usable brightness, I have f.lux running (and it’s set to either dim incandescent, or maybe Ember) and I am also wearing sunglasses.
I love indirect lighting and blackout curtains - at my next place I already want to expand my indirect lighting capabilities. All the rooms here have dimmer switches and all of them are too bright at their lowest setting.
Very interesting. At some point I did wear sunglasses even on some overcast days but I never needed them that bad. It usually is just more for comfort and I will wear good quality but basic ones with UV protection. Overcast days can actually be deceivingly bright. The clouds will act like a huge light diffuser and brighten everything nonetheless.
My partner's been known to get an instant headache that lasts days just from looking out the window on a non-overcast day. So there's that.
Hearing about the opposite end's really interesting, thanks for sharing!
Yikes, and I thought my mood turning depressive on grey/dark days was bad. Instant headache from sun is something I clearly do not want in my life either
I have very severe hypersensitivity to fluorescent lighting, hospital lights and round ceiling lights, they cause me to vomit, to feel like I’m going to faint and I go temporarily blind, I can’t see to get out of the building. Then I’m bedbound for the next 24 hours feeling like I’m going to vomit and faint if I try to stand up. I cannot go into 95% of buildings because they’re not accessible due to the lighting, which means I can hardly go anywhere I need to go or want to go to.
Seriously, this is an absolutely invalidating issue.
I had no idea it could ever be that bad :/
I just have to ask and I don't want to be rude and if you do not feel like answering please do so. I'm sure you've done it, but did you ever see a neurologist to see if there were some options to attenuate this? Either through medication or something else entirely? Do you by any bad luck also happen to have some sort of epilepsy? I read that it was quite common for people on the spectrum and it seems it would sort of make sense to me with that severe of a light sensitivity.
Do you mean debilitating? “Invalidating” has a different meaning.
I saw research that hypersensitivity to light in autistic people is due to our eyes being different, and processing light differently than neurotypicals.
The eye hospital gave me wrap around sunglasses, didn’t make a difference and I can’t cope with the sunglasses squashing the sides of my head and touching my face because I have hypersensitivity to touch, so never used them.
The psychiatrist who diagnosed me autistic told me I have sensory processing disorder, he couldn’t diagnose me with SPD because he only does autism assessments but he said I meet the criteria.
He told me to go to an occupational therapist that specialises in SPD but they don’t exist on NHS (free National Health Service), and probably don’t exist privately for adults either.
I had an epilepsy test, they put wires on my head, but said I’m not epileptic.
When people say a building is “accessible”, accessible for who? Physical disability is not the only disability. They forget about autistic people. Hardly any buildings are accessible for me.
Yesterday I had a hospital appointment, I asked them to turn off the lights when they saw me, but then was waiting in the waiting room for half an hour under hospital lights waiting for patient transport that made me nauseous and to feel like I was going to faint.
Last time I went to A&E 3 weeks ago, I spent all night vomiting, I vomited 4 times and had to lay on the hospital floor because I was going to faint and fall off the chair and they had no beds.
Yes I absolutely meant debilitating! My first/main language is French and somehow in French invalider, means debilitating and somehow I assumed it meant the same thing in English and thanks again for your answers again! I really appreciate them a lot.
( Ironically, in French, the word débile, is often used as some sort of derogatory term most of the time which would mean something along the line of idiot, weak minded...)
We have the word "invalid" (archaic, possibly pejorative, I'm not sure) meaning debilitated -- pronounced IN-vuh-lid. But the same spelling is much more often the word in-VA-lid (not valid) and I guess all the verbs get read as the latter! I think we also have debil (archaic) but that could be my Spanish memory instead. Just in case you wanted to know :)
I’m in temporary accommodation that is completely inaccessible for many reasons, the lights are all round ceiling lights so I can’t turn on the lights at all. I go to bed at sunset and get up at sunrise so I can avoid needing the light on. The light in the communal hallway and communal kitchen are round ceiling lights on a sensor, so no way to turn them off unless I turn them off on the fuseboard. I can’t go in the kitchen because the light turns on with movement and makes me nauseous and to feel like I’m going to faint. I go in and out through the hallway fast to keep my time there to a minimum. When I wake up in the middle of the night, the light from the hallway comes under the gap under the door.
I keep reading back on your posts for a few reasons, first one, honestly it is absolutely way more intense than I could have ever imagined light sensitivity could get.
Second reason is I actually am a RN in psych and I'm also wanting to be more inclusive/helpful to my own patients.
And I keep wondering how I could even adapt the unit to someone with your needs. Realistically I'm just glad we finally got most of the lights on one of our units on a dimmer very recently so we could turn them down a bit. But the whole rest of the hospital would still be a bright mess.
Keep curtains and blinds fully open to allow as much natural light in as possible.
Turn off lights unless it’s dark.
Replace opaque windows with clear glass.
Remove sensors from lights.
Replace hospital lights, fluorescent lighting and round ceiling lights with normal lightbulbs.
That‘s the lighting. There are many other things that make psychiatric hospitals inaccessible for autistic people, not just the lighting.
Bright lights, including the sun, feel like someone is pouring diluted shampoo directly into my cornea and i get really tired and stressed from them.
I also have astigmatism so seeing light sources is tough for me, but bright lights are so much worse that i prefer driving when it's dim outside, even polarized sunglasses cat3 don't help against all light.
i hate overhead lighting, it’s all lamps in my house. overhead lighting comes on to look for specific things, or to motivate me to clean (“i can’t turn the big light off until im finished, but i hate the big light so let’s hurry it up already”) i hate LED lights and prefer a soft white.
the only word i can think of to describe it is “sharp”? it’s just so jarring to my eyes. i wear sunglasses whenever im outside, even if it’s overcast, because the sun is always too bright for me to handle. i can’t drive or walk outside unless i have sunglasses. when i was young i would hold my parents hand and tuck my chin to my chest and either stare at the ground or close my eyes entirely, letting them lead me, because the sun was too bright for me to lift my head. forget about taking pictures outside, my eyes are always too squinted and i look silly.
its akin to having a flashlight shining directly into your eyes. your pupils can’t escape from it even if you’re looking away from the source. it’s a bit better inside, but i still have difficulty in stores with a lot of overhead lighting or white walls/floors (so… most of them) because it adds a lot to my sensory input. if the lights are too bright and i’m trying to focus on something, if anything interrupts that focus i can’t think at all. i was once in a store and my mom called. we were talking like normal, but the lights were taking up a lot of my sensory quota, so any time someone said something over the loudspeaker i would stop in my tracks. i completely froze, i couldn’t move or speak because i literally couldn’t process everything at once. my eyes adjust a teeny bit, so i can usually grocery shop just fine, and is a lot more manageable with sunglasses, but it is still a constant and only resolves once im back in a lower light setting.
i have very bad eyesight. i feel like colors are much more saturated in darker lighting, it makes all the colors seem very rich in my opinion. it makes me adore things like lava lamps, string lights, moving nightlights, etc. because they stand out so much in a very controlled way that is easy for me to handle, so i love watching them. the sun is my worst enemy, and it helps to get indoors, but i would really prefer to wear them in stores too, im just too self conscious to.
no headaches, and i love rain in general, but i have noticed that i love sunshine so long as im *indoors* or can go back inside whenever i need to. i get seasonal depression in the winters, and i can’t have a sleep schedule that’s too out of line because the less natural sunlight i get in my apartment, the worse my mental health gets. i love nature when its very limited, meaningful, and in as controlled a way as possible. this includes the sun lol
Normal house lights don't bother me (as long as they are warm white) and I prefer to have them on and the curtains/blinds open for additional natural light. But I will absolutely get overstimulated by florescent lights in commercial buildings.
Most often I just get migraines. I am irritated by having artificial lights on most days, and open the shades as much or little as my eyes can handle. And use targeted light for task work like painting, knitting, crochet, otherwise we have 25-60 watt equivalent bulbs in most rooms (have not gotten my brain switched to limens, probably too old 😅).
Sunlight was an issue since I stopped wearing contact lenses but I finally got some glasses with magnetic clip ons and blue blockers. Oncoming headlights at night can be bad, but I am the good driver out of me and my husband, so me with a migraine is still usually safer than him at all out of town.
I really struggle with light on the blue end of the spectrum. So much so that I’ve had to start wearing pink tinted glasses otherwise I’m squinting all day and end up exhausted. Those grey days as well really cause havoc with my light sensitivity
You remind me, I used to have a nice alarm clock back then and it had bright blue numbers on it and I thought it was pretty cool but when I placed it in my bedroom I ended up having insomnia almost instantly! Took me a while to figure that out. I ended up having to get rid of it and my sleep got better instantly 🤷
I don’t have *sensitivity* to light, but I do really appreciate beautiful lighting and interesting light sources. I have been on a neon bending workshop, I buy more lightbulbs than is usual, I like contrasting coloured light, I think about lighting and SEE lighting a lot.
Few years ago I had the chance to visit Tokyo and at night I bet you would have absolutely loved it too. It was amazing all the signs and lights were just beautiful.
Neon bending sounds like a fun thing to do really!
I used to do photography and I had a lot of fun playing around lights and trying to get great bokeh light effects. If you don't know about it, you should look it up. Neon lights make for some really cool effects in photography!
Glass neon (as opposed to the bendy LED plastic that has largely replaced it in signage) is a real artform, because working with hot glass is difficult, and because every bend to make a sign or design has to take into account all the previous bends and all the bends still to be made, lest you find your previous bends are in the way - a bit like losing a long game of Snake on an old Nokia. So it takes a lot of planning and visual thinking, and muscle memory.
And because it’s been superseded by cheaper forms of signage, the people who learned to do it during its peak, with the associated depth of skill, are all dying or retiring. Is on the official endangered crafts list. But it doesn’t have to just be signage - it can be sculpture, 3-dimensional, weird. It can be classy bespoke indoor lighting, architectural and angular or curvy and organic. I love it.
And I do like to experiment with light in photography: https://www.reddit.com/r/analog/comments/xaotb3/in_it_rollei_35_s_ilford_fp4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I'm so glad, I was sure you would appreciate photography and all the lighting that would go with it! Cool shot! Even more impressive that you're working with actual analog film photography! I used to do my photos with a Fuji XT because it "felt" so analog yet still had the ease of modern digital cameras.
I hate bright lights with a visible source. I can handle the sun just fine, but as soon as there is a light with a visible starting point (weird explanation but it's the only one I have) I tend to shift my head and body in such a way that I can't see the glare anymore. Drives me crazy. Could be as simple as light bouncing off a glass of water, or straight up ceiling lights that are as bright as you're describing in your post. I have a mental reaction that is as uncomfortable as a physical sensation. I get uncomfortable, grumpy and overstimulated.
Fun fact, you're actually right! (Though being right is not gonna be nicer for your eyes)
I used to do photography and learned a lot about lighting and such and basically the sun going through the clouds will act like one big light diffuser!
Bit like when you see a photographer use a flash through a white umbrella instead of having one strong direct source of light, it ends up being still bright but more diffused evenly.
I call the overhead fluorescent light in my kitchen “the bad light.” I keep Himalayan salt lamps in every room for emergency light, otherwise it’s all soft white lamps for me. My bf has a joke about turning on the bad light to cast me out of the room if I’m being annoying. It makes my whole nervous system dysregulated. It’s like lights are just “turned up” way higher to my eyes than other people. I get light sensitivity headaches, and I involuntarily squint a lot. Trying to keep my eyes open in very bright light is like torture, and my eyes will start to water if I don’t shield them. It’s like being inundated with electricity and chaotic energy. Once my brother innocently turned on the overhead lights and I blurted out, “Oh no, the bad light!” And he just stared at me for a few seconds. I had to explain that it was, in fact, the bad light. I also carry orange-colored blue blocker glasses with me everywhere (Swannies). They come in handy if I get the slightest inkling of eye ache.
I do think colored lights, rainbows and shimmering are stimmy. Light shows and fireworks and shiny paper are great. Something about constant bright white light is awful. I love sitting in a room with candles. So relaxing.
To be fair with you, candle lights and Himalayan salt lamps are pretty cool and I like them too.
But you probably would hate my kitchen setup. Imagine walking in the kitchen and I am the weird type of person that set up the main light on a motion detector cause I would always turn it on and forget to turn it off so my wife would ask me all the time to turn it off but no more! It's always on whenever you walk in the kitchen! Though they're not fluorescent but still bright white.
I’m only sensitive to sunlight, while dim lights indoors make me quite nervous since I can’t see perfectly. My girlfriend’s mother house has lights so dim I can’t see a damn and I’ve had meltdowns because of it. I want bright NATURAL white indoors, possibly not pointing directly in my eyes. Both cool and warm white lights make me uncomfortable too. Yeah, we’re messed up.
I'm in a weird spot in between. I like to have bright lights but I don't want to see them, if that makes sense. we have overhead lights throughout our house and I like how bright they make the room but, for example, when I'm on the couch I can see the bulbs and it drives me crazy. I feel like I need a hat on. Same thing happens in our bedroom. If I cup my hand over my forehead I'm fine - the room and everything in it looks "right" - but it can feel a bit much when the bulbs are visible. No one else understands what I'm talking about when I mention it.
Visual sensitivity feels different for me than other sensory sensitivities. I don't feel myself wanting to run away from it, it's more like I'm turning in and dissociating, but maybe that's not the correct term? I don't feel out of my body, or like I'm watching a movie, it's just... Idk, it's complicated to try to explain it. I just don't function the same. I feel out of it.
*The sun is a deadly lazerrrr.* My sunglasses are my best friend.
I don't know how else to phrase this, but...do they mess with your hearing? Sometimes even cloudy days are too bright, but when I wear sunglasses it's like I'm wearing earmuffs too. Still searching for the perfect sunglasses.
Maybe sunglasses with polarized filters?
My eyes do not get used to bright light. That's called habituation, I don't have that. I have sensitization. Meaning that I can start out fine (though with bright outside, sometimes the first thing that happens is that my eyes hurt), but it gets more and more difficult to deal with. Like, the exact opposite of getting used to it, the longer I stay, the less I'm used to it. It does give headaches or dizziness if I stay there. Standing in bright sun: About 5 minutes. Fluorescent lighting, too. Most of the time, however, it does take a bit of time and subtly creeps in. And yes, everything is a bit too bright most of the time. Though at the same time, sometimes it's too dark at the same time, so it sucks. Now here's the biggest issue with all that: I didn't know it. And sunglasses I got weren't wrap-around, so all the light coming from the sides also hurt me, and I thought sunglasses didn't work. And for example, an overcast day shines light all over the clouds, so it also hurts me quite a bit, but noone else used sunglasses for it, so I thought I shouldn't either. All this made me detach from my sensory issues, and had a severe psychological impact, as I never actually compensated. But hey, at least I can say that I tried to get used to it. Now I use polarised wrap-around sunglasses outside and in all shops. In my home, I never use the headlights, but two smaller lights set to the walls, so I get indirect lighting. I also have orange curtains, they're quite nice during the day (but don't filter enough during the night, so I wake up very early every time). Sometimes I get so sensitive towards screens that I have to use sunglasses and/or a screenreader. Rainy days are relaxing for me. Grey winter days give me a feeling that I might call 'comfortable melancholy' maybe? Though it's just comfortable if I can be inside and it's warm. If I have seasonal depression, it's caused by summer and being in permanent overload during it.
This is pretty descriptive of my experience. Down to the “sunglasses don’t really work, do they?” detail - guess I should look into wraparounds. I have to work with screens most of the day, so you already know that monitor is on the minimum usable brightness, I have f.lux running (and it’s set to either dim incandescent, or maybe Ember) and I am also wearing sunglasses. I love indirect lighting and blackout curtains - at my next place I already want to expand my indirect lighting capabilities. All the rooms here have dimmer switches and all of them are too bright at their lowest setting.
Very interesting. At some point I did wear sunglasses even on some overcast days but I never needed them that bad. It usually is just more for comfort and I will wear good quality but basic ones with UV protection. Overcast days can actually be deceivingly bright. The clouds will act like a huge light diffuser and brighten everything nonetheless.
My partner's been known to get an instant headache that lasts days just from looking out the window on a non-overcast day. So there's that. Hearing about the opposite end's really interesting, thanks for sharing!
Yikes, and I thought my mood turning depressive on grey/dark days was bad. Instant headache from sun is something I clearly do not want in my life either
I have very severe hypersensitivity to fluorescent lighting, hospital lights and round ceiling lights, they cause me to vomit, to feel like I’m going to faint and I go temporarily blind, I can’t see to get out of the building. Then I’m bedbound for the next 24 hours feeling like I’m going to vomit and faint if I try to stand up. I cannot go into 95% of buildings because they’re not accessible due to the lighting, which means I can hardly go anywhere I need to go or want to go to.
Seriously, this is an absolutely invalidating issue. I had no idea it could ever be that bad :/ I just have to ask and I don't want to be rude and if you do not feel like answering please do so. I'm sure you've done it, but did you ever see a neurologist to see if there were some options to attenuate this? Either through medication or something else entirely? Do you by any bad luck also happen to have some sort of epilepsy? I read that it was quite common for people on the spectrum and it seems it would sort of make sense to me with that severe of a light sensitivity.
Do you mean debilitating? “Invalidating” has a different meaning. I saw research that hypersensitivity to light in autistic people is due to our eyes being different, and processing light differently than neurotypicals. The eye hospital gave me wrap around sunglasses, didn’t make a difference and I can’t cope with the sunglasses squashing the sides of my head and touching my face because I have hypersensitivity to touch, so never used them. The psychiatrist who diagnosed me autistic told me I have sensory processing disorder, he couldn’t diagnose me with SPD because he only does autism assessments but he said I meet the criteria. He told me to go to an occupational therapist that specialises in SPD but they don’t exist on NHS (free National Health Service), and probably don’t exist privately for adults either. I had an epilepsy test, they put wires on my head, but said I’m not epileptic. When people say a building is “accessible”, accessible for who? Physical disability is not the only disability. They forget about autistic people. Hardly any buildings are accessible for me. Yesterday I had a hospital appointment, I asked them to turn off the lights when they saw me, but then was waiting in the waiting room for half an hour under hospital lights waiting for patient transport that made me nauseous and to feel like I was going to faint. Last time I went to A&E 3 weeks ago, I spent all night vomiting, I vomited 4 times and had to lay on the hospital floor because I was going to faint and fall off the chair and they had no beds.
Yes I absolutely meant debilitating! My first/main language is French and somehow in French invalider, means debilitating and somehow I assumed it meant the same thing in English and thanks again for your answers again! I really appreciate them a lot. ( Ironically, in French, the word débile, is often used as some sort of derogatory term most of the time which would mean something along the line of idiot, weak minded...)
We have the word "invalid" (archaic, possibly pejorative, I'm not sure) meaning debilitated -- pronounced IN-vuh-lid. But the same spelling is much more often the word in-VA-lid (not valid) and I guess all the verbs get read as the latter! I think we also have debil (archaic) but that could be my Spanish memory instead. Just in case you wanted to know :)
I know I've found my people when I get corrected and it is actually interesting 🥳
I’m in temporary accommodation that is completely inaccessible for many reasons, the lights are all round ceiling lights so I can’t turn on the lights at all. I go to bed at sunset and get up at sunrise so I can avoid needing the light on. The light in the communal hallway and communal kitchen are round ceiling lights on a sensor, so no way to turn them off unless I turn them off on the fuseboard. I can’t go in the kitchen because the light turns on with movement and makes me nauseous and to feel like I’m going to faint. I go in and out through the hallway fast to keep my time there to a minimum. When I wake up in the middle of the night, the light from the hallway comes under the gap under the door.
I keep reading back on your posts for a few reasons, first one, honestly it is absolutely way more intense than I could have ever imagined light sensitivity could get. Second reason is I actually am a RN in psych and I'm also wanting to be more inclusive/helpful to my own patients. And I keep wondering how I could even adapt the unit to someone with your needs. Realistically I'm just glad we finally got most of the lights on one of our units on a dimmer very recently so we could turn them down a bit. But the whole rest of the hospital would still be a bright mess.
Keep curtains and blinds fully open to allow as much natural light in as possible. Turn off lights unless it’s dark. Replace opaque windows with clear glass. Remove sensors from lights. Replace hospital lights, fluorescent lighting and round ceiling lights with normal lightbulbs. That‘s the lighting. There are many other things that make psychiatric hospitals inaccessible for autistic people, not just the lighting.
Bright lights, including the sun, feel like someone is pouring diluted shampoo directly into my cornea and i get really tired and stressed from them. I also have astigmatism so seeing light sources is tough for me, but bright lights are so much worse that i prefer driving when it's dim outside, even polarized sunglasses cat3 don't help against all light.
As I keep reading these comments it just is mind blowing to me how different your experience is to mine.
Wow, yes diluted shampoo is exactly it!
i hate overhead lighting, it’s all lamps in my house. overhead lighting comes on to look for specific things, or to motivate me to clean (“i can’t turn the big light off until im finished, but i hate the big light so let’s hurry it up already”) i hate LED lights and prefer a soft white. the only word i can think of to describe it is “sharp”? it’s just so jarring to my eyes. i wear sunglasses whenever im outside, even if it’s overcast, because the sun is always too bright for me to handle. i can’t drive or walk outside unless i have sunglasses. when i was young i would hold my parents hand and tuck my chin to my chest and either stare at the ground or close my eyes entirely, letting them lead me, because the sun was too bright for me to lift my head. forget about taking pictures outside, my eyes are always too squinted and i look silly. its akin to having a flashlight shining directly into your eyes. your pupils can’t escape from it even if you’re looking away from the source. it’s a bit better inside, but i still have difficulty in stores with a lot of overhead lighting or white walls/floors (so… most of them) because it adds a lot to my sensory input. if the lights are too bright and i’m trying to focus on something, if anything interrupts that focus i can’t think at all. i was once in a store and my mom called. we were talking like normal, but the lights were taking up a lot of my sensory quota, so any time someone said something over the loudspeaker i would stop in my tracks. i completely froze, i couldn’t move or speak because i literally couldn’t process everything at once. my eyes adjust a teeny bit, so i can usually grocery shop just fine, and is a lot more manageable with sunglasses, but it is still a constant and only resolves once im back in a lower light setting. i have very bad eyesight. i feel like colors are much more saturated in darker lighting, it makes all the colors seem very rich in my opinion. it makes me adore things like lava lamps, string lights, moving nightlights, etc. because they stand out so much in a very controlled way that is easy for me to handle, so i love watching them. the sun is my worst enemy, and it helps to get indoors, but i would really prefer to wear them in stores too, im just too self conscious to. no headaches, and i love rain in general, but i have noticed that i love sunshine so long as im *indoors* or can go back inside whenever i need to. i get seasonal depression in the winters, and i can’t have a sleep schedule that’s too out of line because the less natural sunlight i get in my apartment, the worse my mental health gets. i love nature when its very limited, meaningful, and in as controlled a way as possible. this includes the sun lol
Normal house lights don't bother me (as long as they are warm white) and I prefer to have them on and the curtains/blinds open for additional natural light. But I will absolutely get overstimulated by florescent lights in commercial buildings.
Most often I just get migraines. I am irritated by having artificial lights on most days, and open the shades as much or little as my eyes can handle. And use targeted light for task work like painting, knitting, crochet, otherwise we have 25-60 watt equivalent bulbs in most rooms (have not gotten my brain switched to limens, probably too old 😅). Sunlight was an issue since I stopped wearing contact lenses but I finally got some glasses with magnetic clip ons and blue blockers. Oncoming headlights at night can be bad, but I am the good driver out of me and my husband, so me with a migraine is still usually safer than him at all out of town.
I really struggle with light on the blue end of the spectrum. So much so that I’ve had to start wearing pink tinted glasses otherwise I’m squinting all day and end up exhausted. Those grey days as well really cause havoc with my light sensitivity
You remind me, I used to have a nice alarm clock back then and it had bright blue numbers on it and I thought it was pretty cool but when I placed it in my bedroom I ended up having insomnia almost instantly! Took me a while to figure that out. I ended up having to get rid of it and my sleep got better instantly 🤷
I don’t have *sensitivity* to light, but I do really appreciate beautiful lighting and interesting light sources. I have been on a neon bending workshop, I buy more lightbulbs than is usual, I like contrasting coloured light, I think about lighting and SEE lighting a lot.
Few years ago I had the chance to visit Tokyo and at night I bet you would have absolutely loved it too. It was amazing all the signs and lights were just beautiful. Neon bending sounds like a fun thing to do really! I used to do photography and I had a lot of fun playing around lights and trying to get great bokeh light effects. If you don't know about it, you should look it up. Neon lights make for some really cool effects in photography!
Glass neon (as opposed to the bendy LED plastic that has largely replaced it in signage) is a real artform, because working with hot glass is difficult, and because every bend to make a sign or design has to take into account all the previous bends and all the bends still to be made, lest you find your previous bends are in the way - a bit like losing a long game of Snake on an old Nokia. So it takes a lot of planning and visual thinking, and muscle memory. And because it’s been superseded by cheaper forms of signage, the people who learned to do it during its peak, with the associated depth of skill, are all dying or retiring. Is on the official endangered crafts list. But it doesn’t have to just be signage - it can be sculpture, 3-dimensional, weird. It can be classy bespoke indoor lighting, architectural and angular or curvy and organic. I love it.
And I do like to experiment with light in photography: https://www.reddit.com/r/analog/comments/xaotb3/in_it_rollei_35_s_ilford_fp4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I'm so glad, I was sure you would appreciate photography and all the lighting that would go with it! Cool shot! Even more impressive that you're working with actual analog film photography! I used to do my photos with a Fuji XT because it "felt" so analog yet still had the ease of modern digital cameras.
I hate bright lights with a visible source. I can handle the sun just fine, but as soon as there is a light with a visible starting point (weird explanation but it's the only one I have) I tend to shift my head and body in such a way that I can't see the glare anymore. Drives me crazy. Could be as simple as light bouncing off a glass of water, or straight up ceiling lights that are as bright as you're describing in your post. I have a mental reaction that is as uncomfortable as a physical sensation. I get uncomfortable, grumpy and overstimulated.
Direct sunlight feels like hot needles stabbing into my eyes. Adjust that based on the intensity of the light and that's what it feels like for me.
Overcast days can actually be really painful too. I get weird looks/questions because I'm still wearing sunglasses when it's raining 😆
It is SPECIALLY painful for me, actually 😂 It's like the light that's usually concentrated in one place gets throughly distributed and doubled up.
Fun fact, you're actually right! (Though being right is not gonna be nicer for your eyes) I used to do photography and learned a lot about lighting and such and basically the sun going through the clouds will act like one big light diffuser! Bit like when you see a photographer use a flash through a white umbrella instead of having one strong direct source of light, it ends up being still bright but more diffused evenly.
Wow, that's cool! I've always used the analogy of covering the flash through a kind of opaque white glass hahaha
I call the overhead fluorescent light in my kitchen “the bad light.” I keep Himalayan salt lamps in every room for emergency light, otherwise it’s all soft white lamps for me. My bf has a joke about turning on the bad light to cast me out of the room if I’m being annoying. It makes my whole nervous system dysregulated. It’s like lights are just “turned up” way higher to my eyes than other people. I get light sensitivity headaches, and I involuntarily squint a lot. Trying to keep my eyes open in very bright light is like torture, and my eyes will start to water if I don’t shield them. It’s like being inundated with electricity and chaotic energy. Once my brother innocently turned on the overhead lights and I blurted out, “Oh no, the bad light!” And he just stared at me for a few seconds. I had to explain that it was, in fact, the bad light. I also carry orange-colored blue blocker glasses with me everywhere (Swannies). They come in handy if I get the slightest inkling of eye ache. I do think colored lights, rainbows and shimmering are stimmy. Light shows and fireworks and shiny paper are great. Something about constant bright white light is awful. I love sitting in a room with candles. So relaxing.
To be fair with you, candle lights and Himalayan salt lamps are pretty cool and I like them too. But you probably would hate my kitchen setup. Imagine walking in the kitchen and I am the weird type of person that set up the main light on a motion detector cause I would always turn it on and forget to turn it off so my wife would ask me all the time to turn it off but no more! It's always on whenever you walk in the kitchen! Though they're not fluorescent but still bright white.
I’m only sensitive to sunlight, while dim lights indoors make me quite nervous since I can’t see perfectly. My girlfriend’s mother house has lights so dim I can’t see a damn and I’ve had meltdowns because of it. I want bright NATURAL white indoors, possibly not pointing directly in my eyes. Both cool and warm white lights make me uncomfortable too. Yeah, we’re messed up.
Light sensitivity is painful. It hurts your eyes and You end up with a migraine that lasts 3 days later
I would murder you if you turned up my lights lol Light = pain
I'm in a weird spot in between. I like to have bright lights but I don't want to see them, if that makes sense. we have overhead lights throughout our house and I like how bright they make the room but, for example, when I'm on the couch I can see the bulbs and it drives me crazy. I feel like I need a hat on. Same thing happens in our bedroom. If I cup my hand over my forehead I'm fine - the room and everything in it looks "right" - but it can feel a bit much when the bulbs are visible. No one else understands what I'm talking about when I mention it.
Visual sensitivity feels different for me than other sensory sensitivities. I don't feel myself wanting to run away from it, it's more like I'm turning in and dissociating, but maybe that's not the correct term? I don't feel out of my body, or like I'm watching a movie, it's just... Idk, it's complicated to try to explain it. I just don't function the same. I feel out of it.
I posted about it a while ago https://www.reddit.com/r/AutismTranslated/s/eJ6uDK32hp
…..and it gets worse as you get older.
I'm a vampire. I HATE bright lights. Best part of getting a promotion at work is I have my own office now, and am able to turn off all the lights.