Help with identifying my brother's problem

[Compudude1]

Greetings,

I need some help trying to figure out what is wrong with my brother if anything. He has had the following symptoms for a while but they are getting worse. If I can find out if he has a condition I might be able to convince him to go seek help or treatment. Here are the symptoms that he complains about or are the most noticeable.

Basically to describe my brother would be to say he is overly sensitive.

The first problem he has is that he always talks about his personal space. If people get too close to him he starts to freak out and get all anxious and looses his concentration. He is also like this sometimes when people touch him, whether it is someone brushing up against him or a pat on the back.

The second and probably the most disruptive is that he is overly sensive to sounds. Specifically he can not take it when people eat around him and there is no background noise to block it out. He has a hard time having dinners with the family and going to go see movies with everyone eating popcorn. He says it is the crunching and chewing that he hears and it is loud to him. He can not focus and actually starts to get angry.
This also seems to happen with almost any crunching like or high pitch noises. He often complains about work and hearing everyone typing on the keyboards. Of all the symptoms he has this is the one that is getting worse.

He is also sometimes sensitive to smells. He can smell things that are very slight and it will give him the same problems that sounds do.

He also has problems sleeping. At least once a week he can not fall asleep because he says his mind is restless. He could be physically exhausted but if his mind is racing he cannot fall asleep at all.

He does have some positive behaviors that may or may not be related.

He is very good at pattern recognition. He can easily see shapes and designs in things like clouds, carpet, tiles almost anything. When he was young he was very good with legos and all those building toys. He can walk into a hardware store and come up with new and radical ways of putting things together. I do not know if this is a problem but it does seem out of the ordinary.

Does he have a condition or problem? If so are there any cures or treatments he can undergo. He has already lost his job for 8 years because of these behaviors and I am afraid it is getting worse. Thanks.




Concerned older brother..

 

[Suzette]

Hi CompuDude,

I don't know what the name if of your brother's behavior. But... something else: is he not bothered by it...? He should be, because this sounds exhausting being this sensitive. Hasn't he gotten any sessions with a therapist yet?

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Have you seen this thread?

http://www.psychlinks.ca/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=654

 

[zero seven]

Compudude1, your brother sounds a lot like myself. Medically I don't have much experience, but from my personal experience I can offer some advice.

If he doesn't like physical contact, don't touch him. With me, when I let on that I really don't like people touching me, they'll sometimes do it to joke around anyway. I can take a little, but too much and I have to be alone to breakdown.

As for his hearing, I'm a lot like that with another sense I have. If I don't have some 'white noise' going on around me to focus on, it gets pretty disruptive and I have a hard time sleeping, working, anything really.

If he's grown up this way, there's a good chance he's adapted ways to handle it already. Just allow him to do those things, like a good amount of time alone, or not touching him, and he will likely be ok. Don't push him though. If he is like me, you can do things that will really bother him and he will never show it until he's alone, but it will eat away at him.

So it comes down to, try to be extra considerate of his needs.

 

[zero seven]

Compudude1, your brother sounds a lot like myself. Medically I don't have much experience, but from my personal experience I can offer some advice.

If he doesn't like physical contact, don't touch him. With me, when I let on that I really don't like people touching me, they'll sometimes do it to joke around anyway. I can take a little, but too much and I have to be alone to breakdown.

As for his hearing, I'm a lot like that with another sense I have. If I don't have some 'white noise' going on around me to focus on, it gets pretty disruptive and I have a hard time sleeping, working, anything really.

If he's grown up this way, there's a good chance he's adapted ways to handle it already. Just allow him to do those things, like a good amount of time alone, or not touching him, and he will likely be ok. Don't push him though. If he is like me, you can do things that will really bother him and he will never show it until he's alone, but it will eat away at him.

So it comes down to, try to be extra considerate of his needs.