How your senses shape reality

Umpteen doors to reality

This is the opening chapter in a new series exploring the human senses, far beyond the old “five senses” we learned in school. Each of us lives in a sensory universe shaped by our unique blend of hypersensitivities, hyposensitivities, and the ways we seek or avoid stimulation. We’ll dive into each sense in detail, sight, smell, balance, time perception, interoception, and more, to uncover why no two people experience the same moment in quite the same way. Your reality isn’t mine. And that’s exactly why understanding our senses changes everything.

We can always assume we’re all experiencing the same reality. Same room. Same conversation. Same moment. Same feelings. But the truth is, we’re not.

While we might share the same physical space, our brains are each constructing an entirely different world – moment by moment, sense by sense. The way you hear a voice, feel the temperature, notice a smell, or interpret a facial expression may be radically different from the person sitting next to you. And when we forget this, we mislabel behaviour. We call someone “rude,” “dramatic,” or “cold” when really, they’re just navigating a different sensory universe from our own.

More than the big five: The expanded human senses

Forget what you learned in school, humans don’t just have five senses. We have more, depending on how you define them. Here are some of the major players:

• Vision (sight)
• Audition (hearing)
• Olfaction (smell)
• Gustation (taste)
• Tactile perception (touch)
• Thermoception (temperature perception)
• Nociception (pain perception)
• Equilibrioception (balance and spatial orientation)
• Proprioception (body position awareness)
• Kinesthesia (sense of movement)
• Interoception (awareness of internal body states)
• Chronoception (sense of time)
• Pruriception (itch)
• Chemoreception (chemical sensing, e.g., CO₂ levels)
• Magnetoreception (possible human orientation to Earth’s magnetic fields)
• Electroreception (speculative)
• Affective perception (emotional cue detection, e.g. facial expression, tone, body language)
• Agentic perception (the sense that one is the cause of their own actions and their consequences)

Each sense acts like a gate, opening or closing to let information in. But for each person, some gates are wide open, others cracked, and some may be nearly shut. That means no two people are experiencing the same room, relationship or reality in quite the same way.

Sensory profiles: Seekers, avoiders, hypersensitive & hyposensitive

Your nervous system doesn't just receive sensory input – it also filters and prioritises it. That’s why some people crave stimulation, while others avoid it entirely.

Common sensory responses:

• Hypersensitive: Overwhelmed by sound, light, touch, movement or bearing a responsibility for the world's suffering and injustice.
• Hyposensitive: Under-responsive, needing more intense input to register sensation.
• Sensory-seeking: Fidgeting, chewing, pacing, and humming are often misread as disruptive.
• Sensory-avoidant: Avoids crowds, textures, noise, or smells are often misread as picky or antisocial.

These patterns aren’t preferences. They’re adaptations are built by your nervous system to survive and make sense of the world for you.

Real-life examples: Same space, different universe

A child who spins and jumps constantly may be under-sensitive to movement, and seeking vestibular input is not "hyper." A colleague who never eats lunch may have dulled interoception and genuinely not feel hunger. A partner who reacts tearfully to subtle mood shifts may be hypersensitive to affective cues and is sensing tension long before it is verbalised. A friend who hates hugging? Possibly tactile-avoidant, they are not cold or distant. Understanding these sensory differences reframes behaviour as intelligent adaptation, not pathology or personality flaw.

Neurodivergence, trauma and sensory extremes

In neurodivergent people, those with ADHD, autism or trauma backgrounds, sensory extremes are far more common. That is not dysfunction. It is neurological diversity. They may have heightened or dulled interoception (internal body awareness), leading to burnout, missed hunger cues or emotional dysregulation.

Autism often includes intense sensory aversions or fixations, which can be calming or overwhelming. Trauma can create hypervigilance: scanning for threat via tone, touch or light changes, even when “nothing’s wrong.” In therapy, we work with clients to map their sensory reality, and it is not about fixing it; it is about working together to incorporate it into their life, and to understand how it shapes energy, emotion, comfort and connection.

Gender, age and evolving sensory landscapes

Science shows that your sensory profile isn’t static; it shifts across your lifespan and differs across genders. Women tend to score higher in sensitivity to smell, taste, touch, pain and emotion-reading. Men often score lower in proprioception, interoception, and thermal detection. Children are often more sensory seeking; older adults tend to experience decreased sensitivity overall. So not only are you different from everyone else, you're also different from who you used to be. What lit up your senses at 17 may overwhelm or bore you at 47.

What does this mean in daily life?

Once you understand sensory diversity, you begin to see people differently: the teenager who refuses jeans isn’t “being difficult,” they may have tactile sensitivity. The friend who can’t stand the sound of your chewing may have misophonia. The adult who is constantly late may have distorted time perception (chronoception), not poor priorities. The parent who doesn’t eat during stressful periods likely has an interoceptive disconnect. Sensory input is the foundation of behaviour. It informs how we move, connect, regulate, and even trust. So, when someone does not react the way you expect, don’t assume they are overreacting. They may be reacting appropriately to a completely different experience from you.

There is no shared reality, only shared space

We don’t live in the same world. We live in overlapping worlds with different lighting, textures, rhythms and rules. And the more we pretend otherwise, the more misunderstanding, judgement and shame we create, especially for neurodivergent kids and adults, whose sensory realities often clash with mainstream expectations. When you expect everyone to respond like you, you make your experience the “standard” and everyone else “difficult.” But if you can pause and ask: “What might they be sensing that I am not?” then you open the door to empathy. Not the soft kind, but the fierce kind. The kind that rewires relationships.

Coexisting universes: How to practise sensory grace

You can not live in someone else’s nervous system. But you can respect and embrace it. Ask before touching. Dim the lights. Offer headphones or breaks. Let people stim. Let yourself stim. Reframe “overreaction” as a clue, not a character flaw. Sensory difference is not a failure of regulation, it’s an invitation to expand our definitions of what is normal, safe and true. And in a world that often demands sameness, honouring sensory diversity becomes a quiet act of rebellion and connection.

If you are neurodivergent and/or parenting a sensory-divergent child and/or constantly overwhelmed by a world that feels too loud, too bright or too confusing, therapy can help you.