Making Sense: A Guide to Sensory Issues

Sensory issues are life-long and come with different challenges at different stages of life. I believe that challenges depend on three important factors: 1. Neurology, or if and how the brain can rewire 2. Past history, or whether or not negative social and emotional patterns have been established 3. Phase of life and related environment, or the ex

There’s just less time to build a rich, complex history of traumatic childish torture and torment when a kid’s only had a few birthdays before her sensory issues are recognized. There’s also less time to establish her own negative thought patterns related to her differences and the way in which she is perceived by others. She hasn’t had decades to

A meltdown is anger and tears. A shutdown is dissociation and fear.

white matter the subway of the brain. It connects the grey matter, which are the parts of the brain that do the processing—like that of sensory information. Different areas of the brain need to work together for us to do things like think, perceive, and learn, and the white matter helps with this. In typical brains, this movement of information fro

This is often called depersonalization in psychology circles—feeling disconnected from yourself and your surroundings, or even derealization, feeling like the world is dreamlike and distant.

In SPD brains, white matter is in fact less well connected in some areas where we’d expect to see it, particularly in the back of the brain.

In people with SPD, the brain is less structurally sound when it comes to sensory processing.

This rest and regrouping time during a sensory hangover is something I call filling your sensory bank, which is essentially understanding your particular sensory needs (especially after having been dysregulated) and going out of your way to accommodate them.

Just because the sensitivities are invisible doesn’t mean they don’t exist.)