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About Sensory Processing

Sensory Processing, or Integration Disorder, is basically when your brain can’t organise and process outside stimulus such as noise, textures, smells etc. like it is ‘expected’ to using a neurotypical model. Sensory processing can affect people in many different ways and is very unique to the individual. You can be under-reactive (hyposensitive or seeking) or over-reactive (hypersensitive or avoidant) in different areas of sensory processing. Here are the areas commonly referred to:

For example, somebody might have auditory hypersensitivity, and not like loud noises, but have tactile hyposensitivity and constantly be touching and hugging other people. This can cause a lot of confusion for others as you can have a child who wears ear defenders and hates being touched by others and so is labelled shy or nervous, but constantly makes loud noises and climbs on furniture which completely conflicts with this label. Sensory processing issues are also not consistent or rigid. The level of sensitivity can vary daily, hourly, by environment or in the company of different people. Also, there can be a tipping point where someone is managing with little sensory overloads but eventually explodes and resets. Many refer to this as the bucket analogy whereby every little sensory input is like a drop of water in a bucket and eventually the bucket is full. Once the bucket is emptied (by a ‘meltdown’), then the process starts again. However, some days or environments, instead of a drip, each input is a cup of water, or even a bucket load and tolerance is incredibly low. Tolerance levels can be affected by all manner of things, such as tiredness, illness, diet etc. Just like how when you have the flu, you might have less patience for other people because you’re not feeling 100%, it’s just the same for mental illnesses and cognitive issues too. If your physical health or emotional wellbeing is somehow compromised by something, then it is going to affect your ability to cope with things that you normally might not have much of an issue with. Like most things, nobody really knows what exactly causes sensory processing issues but there are links to genetic makeup, neurotransmitters in the brain, and also environmental factors such as brain injury and experiencing trauma such as abuse. Sensory processing issues tend to be co-morbid with other disorders, which basically means that people rarely have a diagnosis of sensory processing disorder and no other condition. In fact, sensory processing disorder is still a very much debated diagnosis and is often included as a sub-category of other diagnoses such as autistic spectrum disorder or ADHD, as opposed to being a diagnosis in it’s own right.  So what happens when someone’s bucket is full? Well, basically they go into fight or flight mode, which is an innate survival technique we all have. The term is pretty self-explanatory in that your brain tells your body you’re in danger and floods it with adrenaline telling you to either bulk up and fight your way out, or run for the hills. What does this look like? Well, in young children a ‘meltdown’ usually occurs. They might completely shut down and disconnect, staring blankly and not responding, flop to the floor, or they may run away and hide. Alternatively, they might start screaming, crying or shouting, lashing out aggressively, and trash the place.  Do kids grow out of it? No, they don’t, it is a lifelong condition, however, it can be managed by working on coping strategies, self-regulation, and what is known as a ‘sensory diet’. A sensory diet is usually devised by an Occupational Therapist (OT) and may look something like this:

Some people may have set routines they follow to try and prevent sensory overload such as avoiding certain stimulus by wearing headphones in crowds, only travelling at off-peak times, or having sensory breaks during the day to stimulate them so they reduce the chances of becoming overloaded. By the time adulthood is reached, a lot of people with SPD have developed coping strategies and can self-manage, but this is obviously dependent on the severity of their sensory issues, the strategies themselves, and whether there are co-morbid conditions.  This morning, I had a sensory overload myself. My children tend to be sensory seekers (they all have varying degrees of SPD) and I had one sat next to me trying to have a conversation with me about the TV show we were watching (and that I was trying to pay attention to), one shouting at the other (not out of anger, just talking at a very loud volume), and the other playing with toys in a loud manner. On top of this, one of them had turned the ceiling light on, there were toys all over the floor in my peripheral vision, and I had 101 things racing round my head that I need to get done today. I only recognise these individual triggers now, at the time I felt inexplicably (to me in that moment) angry and anxious. My jaw was subconsciously clenched, I was curling my toes, and pulling at my hair. I wanted to shout very angry and loud swear words, and I’ll be honest, I had a real urge to smash my head against a wall to make it stop. However, I am fortunate that my capacity, insight, and self-regulation meant that I recognised what was going on, and instead of behaving in that manner (which would cause distress to my children as well as physical and psychological harm to myself), I put on a TV show the children would enjoy, and took myself upstairs to my bed where I hid under the covers and breathed deeply for a few minutes before sitting down to write this. I now feel as though my bucket has been drained slowly and carefully and now as one of my children approaches me to complain that they have ‘nothing to do’ despite being surrounded by siblings, toys, crafts, books, magazines, and a television, instead of screaming at them or literally pulling my hair out, I am able to suggest things they could do in a calm manner and not lose my temper. So if your child has sensory processing issues and you are wondering if you are ever going to be able to take them to the cinema, or a bonfire display, or to the supermarket without them hiding under something, or rocking back and forth with their hands over their ears, or screaming at the top of the lungs or punching you in the legs, then fret not, there is hope. If you are struggling with your own, or someone else’s sensory issues then please seek a referral to an occupational therapist and do some googling or go to the library and find out more about what’s going on in that brain and strategies that can help. It’s not easy, and it’s not consistent, but there will always be progress. Good luck!

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Musings on Loneliness

There’s that saying about being in a room full of people but still feeling alone. That’s because basically, loneliness has nothing to do with the absence of people but more the absence of a connection.

Put simply, loneliness is disconnection. For some, loneliness is sitting next to someone and having a hundred things you want to talk about but not feeling comfortable enough or able to say them to that person. It can be getting good news and not being able to think of anyone you want to share it with, or not being able to share it with the person or people you want to because they’re not available or you’ve fallen out or lost touch with them. 

I find one of the loneliest things is solo parenting. I spend all day (and evening) with 3 children. We talk, we play, we do everything together, they’re basically an extension of me. I can’t even pee in peace. But most evenings I feel completely alone and crushed when I sit down. There’s nobody to reflect on the day with, or run a parenting idea by, or slag the kids off to, or celebrate something they’ve achieved, or even laugh at something ridiculous that happened. There’s nobody to laugh at a TV show with or ask for dinner inspiration. I spend all day waiting for my ‘5 minutes peace’ and when I get it, I find I really don’t want it. The children are a welcome distraction. Yes, it’s exhausting and frustrating a lot of the time, but naturally prioritising others over yourself, and having to have eyes in the back of your head really keeps your mind off all the nasty little thoughts swimming round your head. When I was married, my husband worked away a lot. In the beginning I used to write him epic emails detailing the entire day, sort of like a journal entry I knew would be read by someone. It kind of helped. Occasionally he’d ring. A few years in and we barely had any contact when he was away so my dad used to ring me every evening, or every other evening, just so I could rant about the kids and the loneliness and the bills or tell him about something funny that happened at work, or just be angry or upset. When my husband left me, my dad used to ring me every single night because he knew how lonely I was, struggling through uni and work and daily life, as well as parenting 3 very high needs children and trying to deal with the legal and financial fallouts from a divorce. When the children were at their dad’s I would stay at friends’ houses, go for nights out and stay out anywhere I could. The empty house was soul destroying. Since then I’ve had various people stay over on occasion and also live with us. Now, I live alone with the kids again and as usual I am finding the transition hard. Some people enjoy their own company, their peace and quiet, their freedom. Some days I do too. But most evenings I find myself occupying myself on the internet, finding people to talk to or rubbish to read. Reaching out for company but nothing fills the void. I end up watching TV until 3am and getting very little sleep. I have no prompting or motivation to go up to bed so I lose track of the time, or simply just don’t care. The same goes for eating. If I have nobody to eat with I don’t really think to make anything. And when I do, I’m so anxious I feel physically sick after a couple of mouthfuls if I even manage that.

Loneliness is a terrible thing. Not being alone or on your own, that can be a wonderful thing. But feeling alone, completely alone and isolated in the world, trust me, if you have never experienced it, I can assure you it is one of the most life-changing feelings in the world. Your whole personality shifts, your thought process, your beliefs, your approach to life. Feeling lonely too often for too long will change you as a person in more ways than you can imagine.

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Grown 💛

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Musings on Love

I was catching up on the BBC show ‘Ambulance’ this evening and a paramedic was talking about her upcoming wedding after having attended a call from an elderly couple. She said something which really struck a chord with me. I don’t know her name to credit her but she observed that when she responds to calls from the elderly, they generally have their husbands and wives by their sides but young people don’t. Then she said: 

“It’s too easy to throw things away. The older generation stuck together through thick and thin”.

I think she has a very good point. These days so many people flit between relationships or bail as soon as it gets hard. Instead of finding solutions and really working together on a relationship, we too often stay silent and end up resenting each other and eventually driving the other person away, or turning to someone else for comfort. The phrase “there’s plenty more fish in the sea” does us no favours in that respect. We treat people and relationships as though they are disposable, and then wonder why we are alone. Whilst the introduction of divorce was a positive change to society and allowed people the freedom to change their minds about their choice of life partner, it also, in my opinion, has undermined the importance of marriage as people know there is a get out clause. In the UK, fewer people are getting married, with people often opting to cohabit. However, those who do get married have a 42% chance of getting divorced. Whilst I do think the concept of marriage is rather archaic and it’s frustrating that so many aspects of life are made easier by having that piece of paper (e.g. tax, getting a mortgage, guardianship of children), I do find it sort of depressing that people aren’t willing to commit to the permanence, security, and commitment that marriage is meant to provide. Obviously being married doesn’t guarantee relationship success (as demonstrated by the 42% divorcing), and those that do stay married are obviously not all going to be happy, and I’m sure cohabiting couples are just as content and secure as the happy married couples. However, there is something reassuring about two people being willing to stand in front of all of their friends and family and openly profess their love and dedication to each other, with the genuine intention of never giving up on that person and sticking by them no matter what life throws at them. I came across the following quote/meme online a week or two ago and it really does encapsulate my opinion on what loving someone in terms of choosing a partner etc is:

Love isn’t just butterflies in your stomach, and sharing the same interests, and being physically attracted to someone. Yes, love is generally a subconscious reaction and feeling, an inexplicable connection, however, in order to make a relationship work, you have to make choices. You have to choose to forgive. You have to choose to compromise. You have to choose to listen and to trust and to consider somebody else’s needs and wants as well as your own. You have to make sacrifices and you have to share your time and your money and your soul. You have to accept another person’s flaws and listen to their deepest darkest secrets and fears and help them follow their dreams and aspirations. You have to drag them through the darkness and let them do the same for you. 

But it has to be a two way thing. It has to be equal and it has to be fair. One person can’t take on everything while the other does nothing. Yes there will be imbalances and there will be good times and bad times where one of you is holding the other’s head above water, and nearly drowning yourself in the process, but the important thing is that when the tables are turned, they do the same for you. There will be times when you’re both so down or busy that you’re kind of treading water alongside each other holding hands as opposed to one of you dragging the other out of the water and saving them. Just the mere presence of that special someone drowning next to you is enough to give you the strength and determination to keep your head above the water. There will be times when you accidentally push the other under the water, but then you pull them straight out as soon as you realise what you’ve done and apologise and they forgive you because they know it was not intentional but ask that you please be more careful in the future.

Some relationships aren’t like that. In some relationships one person may lose their butterflies for a while, but they know that they want nobody else by their side and so they keep making their choices to stay with their partner until the butterflies come back. Sometimes they don’t come back but it doesn’t matter because even without the butterflies, you want to be with that person no matter what. Sometimes the butterflies are make and break and no matter how much you like and respect the other person, you just can’t live a life without butterflies. Sometimes there are the butterflies but there are too many compromises to be made and it’s not worth sacrificing so much of both of yourselves simply because of butterflies. And sometimes, one person might have the butterflies, and they might make all the right choices and do everything they can to make the relationship work, whilst the other person rips the wings off the butterflies one by one. They push that person into the water on purpose and they hold them under for a bit before dragging them out, just to do it again. And the victim is coughing and spluttering and scared and upset, and then they get pulled out of the water and resuscitated and they can breathe again and they are so grateful to be alive and to be on dry land that they thank their ‘partner’ for rescuing them, and their brain and their heart makes them focus on that, and not the fact that the person who saved them was the reason they needed rescuing in the first place. And eventually, all the butterflies are dead. And the person’s lungs are filled with water. And then there’s a new choice: let yourself die, slowly and painfully, or shout for help, accept a life ring, and swim like hell away from that person.

So yes, there is a place for divorce, and there are countless cases where a second chance was more than enough. I am not saying that you should tolerate anything that you are not comfortable with or does not make you happy. My point is merely that if you do genuinely love somebody, and they feel the same way, you have to accept that it isn’t a fairytale. It isn’t all smiles and roses and midnight walks on the beach and happy family dinners and never arguing. Love is paying bills, missing each other because you have to go to work, or you’ve just had a baby and get no couple time for a while. Love is standing by someone through their bad days, weeks, months, or even years and helping them through it, and them being there for you too. Love is crying into someone’s chest or lap at 3am when you can’t sleep and the world feels like it’s caving in. Love is having a blazing row and then forgiving each other and working through the issue when you’ve calmed down. Love is accepting somebody as a whole, every tiny little bit of them, no matter how ugly other people might see them. 

But you must also remember to love yourself, and recognise when the love you think you have for someone else is killing you, and know when to walk away in order to protect yourself. Love needs to be a two way thing and someone who dismantles you piece by piece or leaves you to drown does not love you, no matter how much you think you love them or want them to love you back.