Odd they never want to make the “real” world better for people.
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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I think they just never consider it to be an option. People tend to underestimate how much impact they can have.
My mom's favorite phrase was "life's not fair." A lot of people think the best you can do is keep your head down and endure.
Let's prepare vulnerable people to the abuse they are going to receive by abusing them ourselves. Yay! /s
Many offices have terrible acoustics anyway so even non-autistic people wear noise canceling headphones at the office all day.
I first read that as "non-acoustic people"
As an electric person I love headphones.
But then you're not constantly engaging with the others in your bullpen!
I work in municipal government, and 5 of us used to share a tiny open space and I was in online meetings all day. It was bad enough I'd sometimes take my laptop into the courtroom/council chambers so I could spend some time talking without everyone else having to hear me.
We got a new City Hall building a few months back, and I have my own super-nice office with walls and everything on a different floor than the people I used to share space with. It's glorious.
"We shouldn't let children use wheelchairs because we need to prepare them for the real world."
Nah they mean the real world where they think they will rule everyone and force people into labor camps and refuse to provide any preventative health protections.
This reminds me of my middle+high school math teachers telling us we're not going to have calculators available...
Yeah but they need to be able to actually thrive in school in order to be prepared for the real world.... Education and all that
I don't have autism, but I'm genuinely curious. Do you take them out when you want to listen to live music?
What situations do you wear the noise cancelling headphones and in what situations do you take them out?
I have heard that for non-autistic people anyway, tuning out noise is a skill that your brain has to learn, and that's why the health organizations recommend it limiting your time on noise cancelling headphones.
Is it different for people with autism?
So, I'm in my 40s, and have never really used noise cancellation. My brain has had all of the time in the world to learn how to do this. Instead, it chooses to amplify and focus on background noise.
Having a conversation in a noisy public space is literally just me doing my best to guess what you are saying at any given time. All I hear is a loud hiss of crowd noise.
tuning out noise is a skill that your brain has to learn, and that’s why the health organizations recommend it limiting your time on noise cancelling headphones.
Is it different for people with autism?
The other commenter already responded to this point, but I wanted to stress the difficulty we have with this. I'd argue that differences in filtering out stimuli is a key component of autism - not just for sounds, but for all variety of inputs. Lights, tactile sensations, tastes and smells, they can seem "dialed up to 11" (or turned down to 1) for a lot of us. No two autistic people are the same, however, and my sensory experiences can be drastically different from another's. It's all about how the stimuli is handled in the brain.
Typically, human brains filter out a lot of information. Take the example of "can you feel the chair you're sitting in?" Now that you're thinking about it, you probably can. But before it was mentioned, were you aware? Did you feel the way the wood, plastic, or cushion pushed against your body? For an autistic individual, they may be acutely aware of those sensations before having them pointed out. How about your clothes? Are you wearing long sleeves, feeling the fabric against your arms? Some of us feel it constantly, to the point that some of us avoid long sleeves because of it. Or socks? I think I feel my feet sandwiched into socks moreso than most people do. Fuzzy socks aren't fun for me - they're distracting.
The experience can change based on other factors. Most days I can tolerate sunlight, though I prefer to wear my sunglasses. Rarely, there are days where light gives me such bad headaches that I need to wear sunglasses inside and/or turn lights off. Stress, general health, energy levels, and more can impact such experiences.
As to recommendations for one's health, you might consider us the canaries in the coal mine. If we find an environment too overwhelming, it might be taxing your brain too - you just don't feel it as immediately as we might.
Thank you for writing this all down. I think I can understand it a lot better now. <3
I have heard that for non-autistic people anyway, tuning out noise is a skill that your brain has to learn, and that's why the health organizations recommend it limiting your time on noise cancelling headphones.
Is it different for people with autism?
Yes. The inability to filter out noise is a common experience with autism. This is one of the reasons people might wear noise cancelling headphones.
In a noisy environment, many autistic people say it is difficult to hear what’s being said. Background noises can create overwhelming listening difficulties. Conversations can become a jumble of words (as shown in the image below, created by the authors).
I personally use ear plugs or head phones that are not powered on to filter out noises so I can focus on conversation.
Thank you for the explanation.
I often find it difficult to tune out background noise, especially to hear what someone is telling me, but it sounds different from being unable to.
Maybe there is a term for "people relating to the Autistic experience, but getting it wrong because they never lived it."
If I had active noise cancelling headphones in as a kid, I wonder if I would be even worse at tuning out noises? That is why the research is interesting to me.
If I am on a road trip for a long time, sometimes I put in my acoustic earplugs and turn the car stereo up very loud to try and drown out the road noise, maybe that is relatable too? Idk.
I often find it difficult to tune out background noise, especially to hear what someone is telling me, but it sounds different from being unable to.
Maybe a more accurate way of describing the difficulty some autistic people experience with filtering out noise is to say it takes more effort for them than for people who do not experience issues with filtering noises. For some people that amount of effort makes it impossible, and for others they may be able to do it sometimes but not all the time, and others still may be able to do it most or all of the time, but it is exhausting and impacts their ability to do other things that day.
This is why it can be damaging to tell people to just push through it. It doesn't help that another common autistic experience is not being able to understand you are redlining. This could be because of issues with introspection, not feeling or understanding body cues, and/or not understanding social cues + taking things literally.
I personally sit on the "it's exhausting but if I'm well rested I can do it" part of the spectrum, and have the added compounding bonus of having challenged processing auditory information even if filtering isn't an issue 🫠
Maybe there is a term for "people relating to the Autistic experience, but getting it wrong because they never lived it."
Sounds like empathy, comrade. Also autism is a massive spectrum. There is no universal autistic experience (except being hot and devastatingly funny) so it's not possible to 'get it right'.
Personal and not widely held opinion alert: If we put aside the literal diagnostic criteria for a moment, I think the difference between someone who prefers not to eat mushrooms and my austic ass dry heaving if I feel them against my teeth is the severity of the impact. It's not a disability unless it's disabling, ya dig?
If I had active noise cancelling headphones in as a kid, I wonder if I would be even worse at tuning out noises? That is why the research is interesting to me.
It is interesting! I think one of the challenges is that some of these things are so hard to quantify, and some children are punished for displaying autistic traits so they learn to compensate/mask etc, to their detriment. Possibly by families who are perpetuating the cycle of forcing conformity to societal norms. There are so many things where I was like, "Wait, you mean most people don't have trouble with [thing]?" Or I explained away issues to myself like, "oh my hearing is bad becuase I listen to loud music too much" but my hearing isn't actually bad at all...
If I am on a road trip for a long time, sometimes I put in my acoustic earplugs and turn the car stereo up very loud to try and drown out the road noise, maybe that is relatable too? Idk.
I don't personally wear earplugs when driving but I can very much relate to the difficulty in tolerating droning background noise for long periods! When I was new to driving (at 30 lmao) I would blast music and sing along "to help with my nervousness" but actually my nervousness was largely sensory overwhelm and controlling my environment helped a lot lol.
tuning out noise
There's already good explanations given, but I'll add it's not only about that. A lot of autistic people also experience sounds to be louder in general, which means the headphones etc. can help with it too