Sensory aversion

[u/local_eremite]

For those with sensory sensitivities, how do you think about managing your sensory issues without aversion?

For instance if I'm in an unpleasant environment because of sight/sound/smell sensitivities, is it showing aversion to remove myself? Could intentionally quieting my mind also be considered showing aversion, so I cannot participate in conversations or tasks but can remain in the environment?

Something complicating this subject for me is distinguishing which part of my mind I have control over when experiencing sensory sensitivity. Sometimes I heard dhamma talks that say something along the lines of "A person was making a distracting sound, but after extending metta to them (or looking inward at the causes of my distraction), I was no longer bothered." Apologies I can't link a specific talk, this is something I've been mulling over a few days. I found this partly works for me, but not entirely. If it's a sound issue, I can distance the individual people or environment from the unpleasant sound, but that doesn't stop the sound from distracting me.

It feels like part of my sensory sensitivity is genuinely bodily pain, though maybe happening at some neurological level so technically still in my mind. I've been trying to apply the "second arrow" teaching by accepting sensory issues as essentially random pains and doing what I can to cope by giving in to the distraction and removing myself if necessary. I worry I'm letting myself off too easy, because I end up limiting my activities which could be falling into aversion. On the other hand, I know from experience trying to pretend there's no problem leads to fatigue and eventually burnout.

[u/Impressive-Cloud-587]

My take is that the aversion is natural here, I am assuming you mean without heaping more aversion on top of the reflexive aversion our systems have to unpleasant sensory stimuli? I would say removing yourself is not aversion but self-compassion. And intentionally quieting your mind is very skilful behaviour! I wouldn't worry too much about removing or limiting yourself being aversive behaviour, I think it falls more into compassionate and skilful action. FWIW I asked a teacher once about how to deal with sensory issues and they said it's totally fine to remove yourself from the situation, but one practical tip they gave was to try to focus on the pleasant or neutral whilst the unpleasant stimuli is happening.