Life....
Hey Everybody,
I sure hope that life has been treating you well these past few months. I know that it has been a little bit since I last wrote. So, since I last wrote things have come to light for me. I thought that I had finally understood my life and thought that things were calming down, I was so wrong! As you all know I worked at a Special Ed preschool, while working there a condition called Sensory Processing Disorder was brought to my attention, because one of the students seemed to be struggling and it wasn't anything like Autism, but seemed to have similar quirks. Through this amazing student, I learned something about myself that I never knew. I have a Sensory Processing Disorder.
All of my life I haven't been able to identify or connect with numerous people in my life, family, friends and strangers. Lately I have been going back to into my memory bank and realized that little trivial things that never bothered my siblings, where HUGE problems for me and usually ended with me having a meltdown. I am so thankful and extremely grateful to my mom and dad for allowing me to be me as I have grown. When I told my mom about this little student in my class having a Sensory Processing Disorder (aka SPD), she started to do some research on what this disorder is, and found that I most likely have this condition. We then found out that I sure do have this condition. What is SPD? you might ask. It is where my brain is wired different in the way it processes information from my senses. I found this article online (the link is at the bottom of this blog, I recommend you read it if you want to understand me a bit better) in the article she uses the analogy of a sound technician at a soundboard. Except this sound technician is horrible at his/her job. Someone who has SPD the toggles on most, some or all of our senses are pushed way up or way down. Someone who doesn't have SPD their toggles are more evenly spaced making life a bit easier to handle. For me it kind of depends on the day as to which toggles of mine are pushed way up and which ones are pushed down. Sometimes smells are way overwhelming and I want to run from the smell, other times the smells don't bother me as much and I can actually enjoy it. It also depends on the smell as to whether or not I can handle it. For example I can not stand the smell of fish, raw meats, rotten food or sweaty smelly old socks and shoes. Those are the worst offenders for me. I can not bring myself to eat any type of seafood, because of the smell and texture, we will get into the texture part of things next. Just know that if it smells, I won't go near it no matter how good it may taste, because I can taste the smell. There was one time that I cut my left hand open, preparing dinner years ago (yes, it required stitches). It happened pretty fast, but I remember smelling my blood right off and it made me super nauseous. Yes, I am aware that I didn't have any food in my system at that point, but I am sure glad I didn't because I would have thrown up pretty bad if I did have food in my system. My mom looked really perplexed when I mentioned that I could smell my blood and that it was making me nauseous. That has happened more than once, where I can smell something that no one else can seem to smell. Okay, textures or my sense of touch. I am really picky with the type of clothing I wear, it can't be really tight fitting clothes because I feel like I can not move, like someone has me tied up. This causes my fighter reaction, instead of my flight reaction. I remember being super picky about what clothes and shoes I would wear. My poor mom had more fights with me then not over this. For quite sometime I refused to wear jeans, it had to be stretchy pants, and I didn't like to wear dresses too often either. I still don't enjoy wearing dresses, but when I am in the mood I dress up and have fun. But I will be wearing leggings underneath my dresses, mostly for warmth but it comforts me as long as the leggings aren't too tight and I can move freely. I don't mind if my undershirts are tight but it can't be tight around my arms or too tight around my stomach because then I feel like I am wearing a corset that has been done up too tight and I can't seem to breathe. And I cannot wear any type of lace, it feels like someone is rubbing sandpaper over my skin, to the point of my skin becoming raw, and that person won't stop. My mom has also struggled to keep my shoes on my feet as I was growing up, when the time came she asked if I would consider flip-flops, and I flat out refused because I don't like things in between my toes. Well, after trying a pair on and seeing how easy it is to remove flip-flops, I LOVE flip-flops. As I was growing up we went camping quite a bit, and I really enjoyed it, because it was calmer then the city and I could find numerous textures to feel and if it was mobile I could pick it up and examine it more. It seemed like I was one of the very few girls that would play with worms and insects, growing up. I loved the way the worm would feel in my hands and the way other bugs would tickle my hands as they crawled. But I didn't like to get dirty, my dad once told me that I had to be the cleanest kid because I hated to get dirty. I still hate getting dirty, with the exception of my feet, the bottom of my feet can get extremely dirty and I don't mind because I know where my legs end (more on that later). It seems that my sense of touch goes up, and at times is almost nonexistent, because it has to be extreme heat/cold or pain. When it seems my sense of touch is nonexistent, I am touching just about anything around me just so that I can calm myself down. I was that kid that didn't like to be too far away from the wall at school and church, now I know why. So, anytime I see a kid touching the walls or things around them I smile and think as long as they don't get hurt, let them. Textures also factor into my picky eating, if it's rubbery in texture or soggy or mushy or even slimy, don't ask me to eat it because I won't it will trigger my hypersensitive gag reflexes and that is never a good thing. I even bit a dental assistant once because she stuck her gloved fingers in my mouth and I HATE the feeling of rubber or latex, especially when wet because it feels like slime to me, something I cannot stand. I don't like the feel of rubber or latex even dry because it feels like someone giving me an Indian burn and not stopping. My sense of vision is quite high, 95% of the time I see everything at once however, there are times where I don't notice things that are, literally, right in front of me. There was one time when I was tiny, my mom and I were shopping and I noticed this little Mickey Mouse on the face of an alarm clock. I excitedly told my mom "There's Mickey!" I totally lost my mom at this point, I just kept pointing and repeating that I saw Mickey. So, my patient and loving mom took me over to where I was pointing and figured out what I was so excited about. She is still surprised to this day that I could clearly see Mickey Mouse from several feet away from where we were actually standing, but it now makes sense to the both of us. I love bright colors on occasion, but I do enjoy darker colors a bit more. When it comes to florescent lighting or any bright, bright lighting I find myself squinting to see it better and I do develop headaches when I am on a computer or watching TV for too long. While I sit at church I find myself getting headaches from the bright lights and there's nothing I can do to get rid of the headache until I get home and sleep it off. A lot of my headaches are like that, no cure just sleep. I can't even sleep with any kind of light on at night, when I get a new alarm clock (yes I am old fashioned, but I don't want to throw my phone across the room if I used it as an alarm) the lighting on it can keep me up at night. This is funny because I am terrified of the dark. My sense of taste isn't too bad, I can handle that sense more often then not. We will say that my sense of taste is pretty balanced most of the time. And as for my sense of hearing it is a lot like my vision, it's pretty high. I value my sense of hearing, so much so that if I were to lose my hearing I would struggle even more in life then I do right now. I love to hear everything around me, but sometimes it can be too much. I love to listen to most music, but hard rock or anything that loud, overwhelms me, much like my vision I can develop massive headaches because my mind is trying to listen to every word and sound within the song. Even growing up I jumped at the sound of fireworks. Every time my family and I watched a fireworks show, I HAD to be held to remain calm or I would have run off and as far from the big boom sound as I could. Even now I struggle with the loud sound that fireworks make, it feels like a cannon going off within my head and no exits for the cannonballs to get out.
There are three more senses that we aren't really aware of, these are the names and functions:
Proprioceptive System (muscle/joint movement, where body is in space)
Vestibular System (balance)
Interoceptive System (state of internal organs)
My proprioceptive system is quite low. I am constantly bumping into things, even when I think I am clear of any and all obstacles, I have always gotten unexplained bruises growing up and even now. I find that when I sleep I am on my stomach and my feet are hanging over the edge of my bed so that I know where my feet actually are. That is another reason I love going barefoot, when I have shoes on I notice that I drag my feet on occasion because I don't know quite where my feet are, or what they are doing. This maybe another reason that I don't know my own strength. I have been told that I am pretty strong and that I have fingers of steel. My vestibular system isn't too low, but on occasion it can be really bad. My interoceptive system has heightened as of late. When I was younger I wasn't really aware of my internal organs, but now I am, because of health problems.
So, all in all, my soundboard reads like this my toggles for vision, hearing, smell and interoceptive are usually quite high. Try imagining these senses are people/children and they are all wanting your attention for something. You're being pulled in several different directions, but all you want to do is give your attention to one of them and get through the problem, then move on to the other and when all is done sleep. Well, I am not that lucky but I can manage this life with some tricks to get through the stressful times. I once worked in a craft store and there is a section for fabric, well some of the amazing people I worked with thought that I could work the cut counter (where you take the fabric you want and get it measured for what you need.) but I knew that I couldn't work the cut counter and others seemed to know it too. Thankfully I was at the registers or stocking. I say this because my sense of sight, touch, and sound would have been so overloaded I wouldn't have been able to perform my job properly, but at the time I came up with every excuse I could to avoid being put at the cut counter. SPD can be a stand alone diagnosis, it can be confused with something else like Autism or SPD can be accompanied by things like anxiety and depression. I was originally diagnosed with generalized anxiety and depression, but I have always felt like there was more to it then just that original diagnosis. I wanted to know what exactly was causing me to feel tired all of the time, irritable and have severe mood swings on occasion, with is diagnosis everything makes sense. My weird quirks and differences with others and why I can become so exhausted for what seems like no reason in particular and rather fast. When I was a kid I didn't fight my mom too often when it came to nap time, and when school came there wasn't time for a nap, but when I hit the eighth grade naps came back into my life. I went from one teacher in elementary school (and being home taught), to four teachers in my sixth grade of school, five teachers in my seventh grade of school, to six or seven teachers in my eighth grade of school. My middle school wasn't a large school, but once I hit my eighth grade of school, it was two schools combined into one. More students then what I was used to, more movement, colors, smells and sounds, total overload of my senses. When I was in my classes if I became super bored and under-stimulated my brain was like a TV remote and the channel changing button was stuck and the TV was flipping channels so rapidly that I couldn't keep up. I would doodle on anything that belonged to me, write down song lyrics that were in my head at that time, touch the cold metal desk legs and the smooth top of my desk and found every dent/mark made by other students, I would and still sit on the edge of my set when I am nervous or needing to concentrate. Otherwise I am kicking my feet or shifting/fidgeting every minute and I start talking with my hands a lot, because my mind doesn't want to slow down.
All in all, I am who I am and I am doing what I can to make this life as easy as I can for myself and those who are in my life and want to be apart of it.
Until next time, thanks for reading!!
Warrior Daughter
PS Here is the link I mentioned earlier, it might help you a bit more in understanding what a Sensory Processing Disorder is and how it affects me.
https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/the-neurotypicals-guide-to-adults-with-sensory-processing-disorder/
I sure hope that life has been treating you well these past few months. I know that it has been a little bit since I last wrote. So, since I last wrote things have come to light for me. I thought that I had finally understood my life and thought that things were calming down, I was so wrong! As you all know I worked at a Special Ed preschool, while working there a condition called Sensory Processing Disorder was brought to my attention, because one of the students seemed to be struggling and it wasn't anything like Autism, but seemed to have similar quirks. Through this amazing student, I learned something about myself that I never knew. I have a Sensory Processing Disorder.
All of my life I haven't been able to identify or connect with numerous people in my life, family, friends and strangers. Lately I have been going back to into my memory bank and realized that little trivial things that never bothered my siblings, where HUGE problems for me and usually ended with me having a meltdown. I am so thankful and extremely grateful to my mom and dad for allowing me to be me as I have grown. When I told my mom about this little student in my class having a Sensory Processing Disorder (aka SPD), she started to do some research on what this disorder is, and found that I most likely have this condition. We then found out that I sure do have this condition. What is SPD? you might ask. It is where my brain is wired different in the way it processes information from my senses. I found this article online (the link is at the bottom of this blog, I recommend you read it if you want to understand me a bit better) in the article she uses the analogy of a sound technician at a soundboard. Except this sound technician is horrible at his/her job. Someone who has SPD the toggles on most, some or all of our senses are pushed way up or way down. Someone who doesn't have SPD their toggles are more evenly spaced making life a bit easier to handle. For me it kind of depends on the day as to which toggles of mine are pushed way up and which ones are pushed down. Sometimes smells are way overwhelming and I want to run from the smell, other times the smells don't bother me as much and I can actually enjoy it. It also depends on the smell as to whether or not I can handle it. For example I can not stand the smell of fish, raw meats, rotten food or sweaty smelly old socks and shoes. Those are the worst offenders for me. I can not bring myself to eat any type of seafood, because of the smell and texture, we will get into the texture part of things next. Just know that if it smells, I won't go near it no matter how good it may taste, because I can taste the smell. There was one time that I cut my left hand open, preparing dinner years ago (yes, it required stitches). It happened pretty fast, but I remember smelling my blood right off and it made me super nauseous. Yes, I am aware that I didn't have any food in my system at that point, but I am sure glad I didn't because I would have thrown up pretty bad if I did have food in my system. My mom looked really perplexed when I mentioned that I could smell my blood and that it was making me nauseous. That has happened more than once, where I can smell something that no one else can seem to smell. Okay, textures or my sense of touch. I am really picky with the type of clothing I wear, it can't be really tight fitting clothes because I feel like I can not move, like someone has me tied up. This causes my fighter reaction, instead of my flight reaction. I remember being super picky about what clothes and shoes I would wear. My poor mom had more fights with me then not over this. For quite sometime I refused to wear jeans, it had to be stretchy pants, and I didn't like to wear dresses too often either. I still don't enjoy wearing dresses, but when I am in the mood I dress up and have fun. But I will be wearing leggings underneath my dresses, mostly for warmth but it comforts me as long as the leggings aren't too tight and I can move freely. I don't mind if my undershirts are tight but it can't be tight around my arms or too tight around my stomach because then I feel like I am wearing a corset that has been done up too tight and I can't seem to breathe. And I cannot wear any type of lace, it feels like someone is rubbing sandpaper over my skin, to the point of my skin becoming raw, and that person won't stop. My mom has also struggled to keep my shoes on my feet as I was growing up, when the time came she asked if I would consider flip-flops, and I flat out refused because I don't like things in between my toes. Well, after trying a pair on and seeing how easy it is to remove flip-flops, I LOVE flip-flops. As I was growing up we went camping quite a bit, and I really enjoyed it, because it was calmer then the city and I could find numerous textures to feel and if it was mobile I could pick it up and examine it more. It seemed like I was one of the very few girls that would play with worms and insects, growing up. I loved the way the worm would feel in my hands and the way other bugs would tickle my hands as they crawled. But I didn't like to get dirty, my dad once told me that I had to be the cleanest kid because I hated to get dirty. I still hate getting dirty, with the exception of my feet, the bottom of my feet can get extremely dirty and I don't mind because I know where my legs end (more on that later). It seems that my sense of touch goes up, and at times is almost nonexistent, because it has to be extreme heat/cold or pain. When it seems my sense of touch is nonexistent, I am touching just about anything around me just so that I can calm myself down. I was that kid that didn't like to be too far away from the wall at school and church, now I know why. So, anytime I see a kid touching the walls or things around them I smile and think as long as they don't get hurt, let them. Textures also factor into my picky eating, if it's rubbery in texture or soggy or mushy or even slimy, don't ask me to eat it because I won't it will trigger my hypersensitive gag reflexes and that is never a good thing. I even bit a dental assistant once because she stuck her gloved fingers in my mouth and I HATE the feeling of rubber or latex, especially when wet because it feels like slime to me, something I cannot stand. I don't like the feel of rubber or latex even dry because it feels like someone giving me an Indian burn and not stopping. My sense of vision is quite high, 95% of the time I see everything at once however, there are times where I don't notice things that are, literally, right in front of me. There was one time when I was tiny, my mom and I were shopping and I noticed this little Mickey Mouse on the face of an alarm clock. I excitedly told my mom "There's Mickey!" I totally lost my mom at this point, I just kept pointing and repeating that I saw Mickey. So, my patient and loving mom took me over to where I was pointing and figured out what I was so excited about. She is still surprised to this day that I could clearly see Mickey Mouse from several feet away from where we were actually standing, but it now makes sense to the both of us. I love bright colors on occasion, but I do enjoy darker colors a bit more. When it comes to florescent lighting or any bright, bright lighting I find myself squinting to see it better and I do develop headaches when I am on a computer or watching TV for too long. While I sit at church I find myself getting headaches from the bright lights and there's nothing I can do to get rid of the headache until I get home and sleep it off. A lot of my headaches are like that, no cure just sleep. I can't even sleep with any kind of light on at night, when I get a new alarm clock (yes I am old fashioned, but I don't want to throw my phone across the room if I used it as an alarm) the lighting on it can keep me up at night. This is funny because I am terrified of the dark. My sense of taste isn't too bad, I can handle that sense more often then not. We will say that my sense of taste is pretty balanced most of the time. And as for my sense of hearing it is a lot like my vision, it's pretty high. I value my sense of hearing, so much so that if I were to lose my hearing I would struggle even more in life then I do right now. I love to hear everything around me, but sometimes it can be too much. I love to listen to most music, but hard rock or anything that loud, overwhelms me, much like my vision I can develop massive headaches because my mind is trying to listen to every word and sound within the song. Even growing up I jumped at the sound of fireworks. Every time my family and I watched a fireworks show, I HAD to be held to remain calm or I would have run off and as far from the big boom sound as I could. Even now I struggle with the loud sound that fireworks make, it feels like a cannon going off within my head and no exits for the cannonballs to get out.
There are three more senses that we aren't really aware of, these are the names and functions:
Proprioceptive System (muscle/joint movement, where body is in space)
Vestibular System (balance)
Interoceptive System (state of internal organs)
My proprioceptive system is quite low. I am constantly bumping into things, even when I think I am clear of any and all obstacles, I have always gotten unexplained bruises growing up and even now. I find that when I sleep I am on my stomach and my feet are hanging over the edge of my bed so that I know where my feet actually are. That is another reason I love going barefoot, when I have shoes on I notice that I drag my feet on occasion because I don't know quite where my feet are, or what they are doing. This maybe another reason that I don't know my own strength. I have been told that I am pretty strong and that I have fingers of steel. My vestibular system isn't too low, but on occasion it can be really bad. My interoceptive system has heightened as of late. When I was younger I wasn't really aware of my internal organs, but now I am, because of health problems.
So, all in all, my soundboard reads like this my toggles for vision, hearing, smell and interoceptive are usually quite high. Try imagining these senses are people/children and they are all wanting your attention for something. You're being pulled in several different directions, but all you want to do is give your attention to one of them and get through the problem, then move on to the other and when all is done sleep. Well, I am not that lucky but I can manage this life with some tricks to get through the stressful times. I once worked in a craft store and there is a section for fabric, well some of the amazing people I worked with thought that I could work the cut counter (where you take the fabric you want and get it measured for what you need.) but I knew that I couldn't work the cut counter and others seemed to know it too. Thankfully I was at the registers or stocking. I say this because my sense of sight, touch, and sound would have been so overloaded I wouldn't have been able to perform my job properly, but at the time I came up with every excuse I could to avoid being put at the cut counter. SPD can be a stand alone diagnosis, it can be confused with something else like Autism or SPD can be accompanied by things like anxiety and depression. I was originally diagnosed with generalized anxiety and depression, but I have always felt like there was more to it then just that original diagnosis. I wanted to know what exactly was causing me to feel tired all of the time, irritable and have severe mood swings on occasion, with is diagnosis everything makes sense. My weird quirks and differences with others and why I can become so exhausted for what seems like no reason in particular and rather fast. When I was a kid I didn't fight my mom too often when it came to nap time, and when school came there wasn't time for a nap, but when I hit the eighth grade naps came back into my life. I went from one teacher in elementary school (and being home taught), to four teachers in my sixth grade of school, five teachers in my seventh grade of school, to six or seven teachers in my eighth grade of school. My middle school wasn't a large school, but once I hit my eighth grade of school, it was two schools combined into one. More students then what I was used to, more movement, colors, smells and sounds, total overload of my senses. When I was in my classes if I became super bored and under-stimulated my brain was like a TV remote and the channel changing button was stuck and the TV was flipping channels so rapidly that I couldn't keep up. I would doodle on anything that belonged to me, write down song lyrics that were in my head at that time, touch the cold metal desk legs and the smooth top of my desk and found every dent/mark made by other students, I would and still sit on the edge of my set when I am nervous or needing to concentrate. Otherwise I am kicking my feet or shifting/fidgeting every minute and I start talking with my hands a lot, because my mind doesn't want to slow down.
All in all, I am who I am and I am doing what I can to make this life as easy as I can for myself and those who are in my life and want to be apart of it.
Until next time, thanks for reading!!
Warrior Daughter
PS Here is the link I mentioned earlier, it might help you a bit more in understanding what a Sensory Processing Disorder is and how it affects me.
https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/the-neurotypicals-guide-to-adults-with-sensory-processing-disorder/
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