Disabling Senses: Smell

This is one of the blog posts in which I'm focusing on our senses and how they can be disabling. Each one will focus on one of the five senses (touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing), and this week I'll be talking about smell!

Smell Trauma

Most of my life, I have personally struggled with certain scents and tastes from my childhood and instances of food poisoning. I've always felt like scents bothered me more than most people. Some fratboy could drink themselves sick every weekend on UV Vodka or Hamms beers and go right back to those culprits the next week. I, however, could not. I got sick at Del Taco as a tween and have been unable to stomach the food or even go in the restaurant due to the smell of the place. What makes its customers lick their lips makes me sick.

And Del Taco isn't the only thing. I have overwhelming nauseousness in reactions to the smell of Doritos, Cheetos, ketchup, and bananas as well as artificially flavored banana candy. And it does suck! Most of these smells come from very popular snack foods, especially when I was a high school teacher. I could smell students' food from across the hall, much to my regret. The sense that brings me joy of baking cookies, toasting garlic bread, and essential oils during massages brings me much suffering with often little to no warning.

a popular 2024 meme centers on someone farting on an airplane.

Odor: Neutralized

I currently live with three cats... which also means I live with 3 litter boxes and 3 times the amount of cat piss, poop, and vomit. Whenever someone visits me, I have the urge to deep clean my entire apartment. Floors are mopped, swept, and vacuumed. The bathroom is bleached and scrubbed to perfection. The litter boxes are cleared out and the cats are brushed. The laundry is washed. The windows are open and the candles are lit (of course, they're also kept where the cats can't reach them). All in hopes that my guests don't walk into my house and feel repelled by the smell of old cat lady.

If you didn't know already, humans have something called olfactory adaptation. Olfactory adaptation is our ancient brain keeping us safe and alert to changes in our environment. When we smell something for the first time in a while or something new, it stands out to us more because of its novelty. Meanwhile, smells you smell often, every day like the scent of your own home, fade into the background because we are used to those scents and need to focus on new scents in case one scent alerts of us a threat in our environment. For example, during bad wildfires, I'd see ashes rain from the sky. However, if your eyesight was poor, you could realize wildfire impact based on the strength of the burning wood and smoke. If you start bleeding a lot, you might smell fresh blood. When you hug your grandma that you haven't seen since Christmas, you smell her old school lotion, soap, and shampoo. That's the brain at work!

It's why my apartment does not smell like old cat lady to me, and probably to my cats, too. I smell shampoo and soap in my shower, freshly lit candles, and any food I've made that day. And I wish my guests smelled that, too. There's no way for me to know what they smell, and it drives me crazy. What if nobody visits me because my hospitality is overshadowed by the smell of my family, my beautiful kitties? What if people in public think I smell like cats myself?

There is great irony in how what we do or don't smell might impact our lives and how people perceive us. While I try to always smell good using fresh-smelling hair products and lotions, some people have a sensitivity to strong smells from such and can have negative reactions similar to or worse than mine own from my food poisoning trauma. Just like the existence of supertasters, there are supersmellers, too! Supersmelling can be triggered by certain conditions like pregnancy or migraines. But it is also associated with neurodivergence diagnoses like autism. The smell can be so overwhelming that there is nothing to do but attempt to avoid the triggering smells or carry cloth or tissues around to cover your nose if you encounter a triggering scent. Overall, if can be an overwhelming and negative experience.

Smell

You can also have other condition that affect your sense of smell. Some smells may smell different to you and other people. You may be unable to smell certain scents, like if you couldn't smell a wildfire! These can be dangerous as smells can be some of the first indicators of a dangerous change in environment. Some people lost their sense of smell after catching Covid-19... what would happen if they couldn't smell a gas leak in their home? Some remedies include trying to smell certain senses to stimulate the nose, but they don't always work. Long story short, we need our sense of scent! While it can be a lot, I am thankful for my strong nose and appreciate how well it works when I get to sense the beautiful smells of bonfire, fresh-cut grass, and peppermint oil. Don't underestimate the value of your nose!

#IDMD #IDisappointMyDad #disablingsenses #smell #sensoryoverload #disability