I get nauseated and dizzy from the smell of most women’s perfumes and some cleaners. I love most men’s scents.
As for disgusting smells - while I hate most perfumes, I am the only one in my class who is not bothered by the smell of C. diff. When the nurses use mint or coffee grounds to cover the smell, I smell mint and coffee while everyone else smells minty of coffee scented C. diff.
If I had to choose walking past a perfume counter or walking past the room of a C. diff patient, I’d choose the patient every time.
When I was younger, I loved nice smelling soap, lotions, shampoos, etc. The only thing I have been consistently bothered by is light. I am hyper sensitive to light. Always have been. One doctor explained to me that my eyes did not have the same amount of filter as regular eyes, and I just need to where sunglasses more. Good enough for me.
My first problem started with skin allergies. Were there were non before, as I got older, certain things would make my skin a little itchy. Now I am hypersensitive. If I spray perfume on my arm, or use a nice smelling deodorant, my skin will literally swell up into giant hives. Now I just use bland soap, bland shampoos, bland skin lotion. Thankfully, you can find hyper-allergenic stuff with regular stuff now. For the only perfumes I can tolerate smelling, I need to spray just a little on my clothes, never ever on my skin. One time I tried just spraying a little on my neck, and I looked like I had hickys for days. :o
Same with smells, I do not know when it all began. I always get numerous sinus infections, in fact, I am on antibiotics right now for one. The things with smells is that they can trigger a really, excruciating painful migraine. I love the smell of flowers, but some, for reasons I will never know, I just cannot tolerate.
Psychosomatic doesn’t mean doing it for attention. It means that somehow your brain is causing your symptoms. And I do not doubt that some of my insensitivities (rarely to smell) are caused by that. And I do think that you can learn to tolerate a lot of things if you do it slowly enough. And this even works with non-psychosomatic problems–see allergy shots. But life is often too short if the situation is something you don’t encounter a lot.
Plus, I’m sure a lot of people are doing these sorts of things, and would be even worse otherwise.
