I Don’t “Get Used to It.” I Go Somewhere Else.

By Ryan Burbank | AWRYTE |

“You’ll get used to it.”

I’ve heard that my whole life. About lights. Noise. Smells. Clothing. Touch. Crowds. Fluorescent classrooms. Humming appliances. Sudden change.

“You’ll get used to it,” they say, like it’s a matter of time or toughness. Like I just need to stop being so dramatic, and eventually, my nervous system will catch up.

But I don’t get used to it. I go away from it.

When something is too much for me—too loud, too bright, too sudden, too unpredictable—I don’t become stronger. I don’t adjust. I dissociate.

It’s not a choice. It’s not a technique. It’s a reflex. My mind checks out because it doesn’t feel safe.

People have this idea that repeated exposure helps. That if you just keep putting someone in the uncomfortable situation, eventually they’ll adapt. But that logic only works if the discomfort is mild, and the person agrees to it, and they have real tools to cope.

That’s not what happens to us.

What happens to us is survival.

What happens to us is freezing while still smiling.

What happens to us is watching the world through a fog because our senses have locked us out.

I don’t remember most of middle school.

That’s not an exaggeration.

I was there.

I did well.

I smiled.

I performed.

But when I try to recall it, it’s blank.

Because I spent so much of it in shutdown.

I’d walk into a cafeteria with metal trays clattering and kids screaming and chairs scraping the floor and the smell of tater tots and body spray and I would go numb. I could still move. I could still talk. But inside, I was gone.

Teachers thought I was focused.

Friends thought I was moody.

I thought I was broken.

But I wasn’t. I was overloaded.

And I’d been told, over and over again, that I had to learn to deal with it.

So I did. Quietly. xInvisibly. At the cost of presence.

That’s the thing no one explains: Autistic people don’t “get used to” sensory pain. We build workarounds. We bury it. We grit through it until our bodies stop alerting us that anything is wrong—and then we crash.

Even now, as an adult, I still catch myself dissociating in loud spaces. I lose time in grocery stores. I forget entire meetings. I leave social events with no memory of how they went, just a dull ache in my brain and a pounding behind my eyes.

People think we’re just sensitive.

But this isn’t about discomfort. It's about survival mode.

There’s a difference between “This is annoying” and “My body thinks I’m in danger.”

When I tell someone that a certain noise hurts, or a smell makes me dizzy, or a light makes me nauseous, I’m not being dramatic. I’m being honest about my limits.

And when they say, “You’ll get used to it,” what I hear is: “Your pain doesn’t matter. Keep performing.”

AWRYTE isn’t a place where I pretend I’m fine. It’s a place where I name what’s real. And what’s real is that I’ve spent most of my life pretending things didn’t hurt so I wouldn’t be seen as difficult.

But the cost was always mine.

Here’s the truth: Exposure only helps when it’s chosen. When it’s gradual. When there’s care and control and trust.

Otherwise, it’s just trauma with a nice label.

I can tolerate some things now that I couldn’t at ten. Not because I’m braver, but because I have options. I have earplugs. I have breaks. I have language. I have boundaries. And I no longer believe that suffering in silence makes me strong.

It just makes me disappear.

If you’re reading this and you’ve ever told someone, “You’ll get used to it,” I want you to consider something else:

Ask if they want to.

Ask if they need help.

Ask if they feel safe.

And if you’re the one who’s been white-knuckling through the world because no one believed your pain—come sit here with me. You’re not weak. You’re not broken. You’re not too much. You’re just trying to stay present in a body that’s been asked to ignore its own signals.

That’s not failure. That’s resilience.

But it doesn’t have to stay that hard.

You don’t have to earn peace. You don’t have to get used to pain. You don’t have to disappear to be accepted.

AWRYTE is where we start telling the truth again.

Not because it’s comfortable. Because it’s ours.