I wonder how it feels?

What is Your Temple?  What is Their Temple?

We all have 7 sensational senses that work together to create the template of who we are and how we operate in the world through input from how we see, smell, smell, taste, hear, feel, and think and be.  How would you be feeling today after you woke up took a shower if you felt pins and needles every morning.  You put your clothes on put you couldn’t forget about the tag on your shirt and the pants made your legs inch, would you always wear shorts and long sleeve shirts.    You ate breakfast but every morning it had to be the same thing and it Was NOT cereal nor could anyone around you eat cereal for breakfast.  You ate pudding and everyone else could eat what they wanted but it was NOT cereal so that you would not have to start your day all over in the after math of a crisis of anxiety around concept of “cereal”  No one around you understands what your feeling like, but everyone eats something other than cereal to ease your morning along.  You leave your house and wish you could walk around all day with gloves on because the air bothered your skin.  So there you are walking to the bus stop, middle of winter with snow boots, shorts, long sleeve tag less shirt underneath your winter coat with gloves on.  The sounds of the bus send thrills of anxiety up your back but you have to get to work and that’s just the morning before your day has begun.  How would you feel if your morning began under panic, anxiety, and feelings of attack just through the way your sensory processing was impacting your nervous system.  One may understand why you would flap your hands if you didn’t know what they FELT like unless you did so AND had gloves on!  You didn’t like to touch people so everyone at work had to understand not to touch you so as to not send you into a panic or frenzy to the bathroom to collect your nervous system.  Your wash your hands and put your gloves back.  You begin to get nervous and start to touch your mouth, after taking off the gloves to touch your faces with your bare hand and then placing the glove back on.  After OCD takes over and you touch your face a good dozen times you put your gloves back on and return to your desk just waiting for the time to click on so you could just go home, lock your bedroom door and watch your favorite movie, the same one every week until you picked a new favorite!  The day in the life of autism may not be exactly how its depicted here, but after my years of experience I can imagine if I personally had a sensory process disorder or I have always wondered how the brain of a child with autism operated, if I knew I would create a cyber-experience so I could see how it felt for myself.  But I do not know.  I can only imagine.  But can you imagine.  How would you feel waiting for the bus as it pulls up with the newest cereal box advertisement and screeching to a halt?  Would you wear earplugs and an eye patch around your eye to block your view from the evil words?  I bet I would but I also wonder how I would look running around shielding myself from the evil sights and plugging out all the nerve wracking noises.  I would probably just turn around and lock myself in my room before the day even began.  However the child or adult with autism or any sensory processing disorder could very well share a small reality that is similar to the stresses of touch and sound and sights.  As a child they seclude themselves so as to not operate under stress.  Most children do not want to willing go places with the help of therapeutic intervention.  They aren’t calling their friends or even thinking about who their friends are.  They are watching their favorite video because the video is a predictable sight that you know won’t send you into an inner downward spiral. 

My personal therapeutic mission is to find all the little ways just as some have to handle animals and elderly and children properly, but to create a new sensational way of handling some of the stresses to teach the person with autism to operate more fully in their environment while not controlling the input but how they react to the input and or the ways and tricks of the bag to help calm their nervous system.  Instead of removing the gloves in the bathroom, to touch their face when they are nervous about being touched they could have Chap Stick to hold and use.  There are so many facets to sensory overload and how it occurs.  It is a gradual process that can be manifested under extreme stress faster than if no demands are placed however, with therapeutic exposure the stress can be handled so extreme stress does not hinder their daily functions.  Thier inner temple can be stablized so the input of stress does not halt all activity because of anxiety on the nervous system.

The next 7 blogs will concentrate on each of the 7 sensational senses that make us who we are!