This is not my idea; it’s my husband’s because fashion chic is not my forté.  The color has to feel right.  The fabric has to feel right.  The fit of the clothing has to be right.  Ten minutes or three hours later, I rip those clothes off because they don’t feel right, and my breathing slows down because I was frantic about the feeling.  Matching clothing, which is the barest essential of fashion sense, gets ignored in favor of “feeling right.”

Right now, I am wearing a dark blue t-shirt with a complex art piece on it in yellow, red, mauve, and baby blue and my red, pink, and white plaid pajama pants and my pink and purple fuzzy socks.  Today, when I went to work out, I wore that outfit with my brown and pink Etnies (fantastically comfortable skater shoes).  Evidently, my color and pattern choices do not constitute an outfit.  My daughter can attest to this when, as a teen, she started saying, “You’re going to wear that?  Um, I think you had better change, Mummy.”

My husband joked that I need an adult version of Garanimals, which has animals on the tag so the wearer can easily identify which animal top goes with which animal bottom.  Comfort and wearing the right-feeling color are huge issues.  Maybe Garanimals and Soft Clothing need to collaborate to develop a line of adult Autti/Aspie clothing.

I will be an expert adviser for free clothing!

One last tip:  Do get skater (skateboarding) shoes.  I have a pair of black VANS and a pair of brown and pink Etnies, and both are über comfortable.  Also, since with my sensory processing disorder, I wear the skater shoes because they are flat and stable on the bottom with good support on the inside so I don’t lose my balance as often.  Mind you, I still never put my shoes on near the stairs.

Please stop talking, stop the movement, stop the multiple sounds!

Some sounds hurt your ears.  Some tastes are so repulsive, you can’t eat.  Some smells make you want to run away.  Visual clutter or movement is confusing.  Certain touches make you jump back.  Could you have sensory processing disorder?

You feel so many things as ultra-sensitive–some more than others.  When I was a kid through adulthood, I was sent for hearing tests because sometimes I couldn’t understand what people were saying.  It was like my head was in a spin and nothing made sense.

Now it does.  I found out later in life that I have sensory processing disorder.  The reason I wasn’t understanding people or didn’t “click in” to what was going on was because my senses were overloaded.

Just the feel of a scratchy tag in my clothes made me distracted enough that I couldn’t pay attention in class.  At home, my mother would repeat things and say, “Are you listening?”  Then it turned to, “Can you hear me?”  I would look at her confused and the hearing tests started.  It made perfect sense that I was sent for hearing tests because I wasn’t hearing what people were saying.

I would get confused and would get lost in stores when a second ago I had been following my mother.  Even to this day, I hold my husband’s hand when were out doing our shopping.  The store is so confusing in both visual and auditory that I start to feel panicked.  We rarely ever do Wal-Mart because it’s loud, people are wandering willy-nilly because Wal-Mart’s new sales idea is to make things hard to find, and they have TVs with commercials for you to watch at checkout.  I can’t even start to relax at the checkout line!  All I can think about is concentrating on my breathing so I can get through it and get out of Dodge (if you remember that TV show).

Sensory processing disorder (SPD) was in its infancy when I was, so the diagnosis and treatment didn’t exist.  Some years ago, my doctor wrote a prescription authorizing Sensory Integration Therapy, and I’m actively involved in the therapy with my occupational therapist.

It works!  Maybe I should say, it has worked wonderfully for me.  My medical insurance had a paperwork glitch for a few months (Are we surprised by that!), so I haven’t been to sessions for a few months, but I am definitely going back to continue the treatment.

That is why I invented The Cozy Calm Weighted BlanketTM, because I tried a less comfortable, but nicely heavy, weighted blanket that my occupational therapist put on me while I was in the ball pit.  I never felt so good so I made it my life’s work.

If you are an adult and this post resonates with you, do read more on my blog, then check with an occupational therapist who specializes in sensory integration therapy to find out if you have it, so the therapy can help.  Your doctor can then order the therapy.

I had avoided so many things in life because they assaulted my senses from choosing a job to making my (then) boyfriend change his laundry detergent.  Life can be so much better for people with SPD.

I'm not weird. I have SPD by Chynna Laird

Talk about echoes of my childhood and my present with my Sensory Processing Disorder (a.k.a. Sensory Integrative Dysfunction).

In the book, I’m Not Weird, I have SPD, author Chynna Laird uses descriptive words like:  hurt, screamed, pain, and scared. Those are words that I use to this day as an adult with SPD.

Sensory overload still erupts in a flight or fight response that makes me want to scream and run away.  What validation and relief I would  have felt if such a book had been written was I was a girl.

How lucky her daughter is that she has the SPD diagnosis.  In the book the fictional girl goes from the hurting words to words of relief.  Her parents are able to help her, and they accept her the way she is.  In my heart, I know that had there been an SPD diagnosis in my childhood, my mother would have read this book to me.

As a parent of a child with SPD, we hadn’t known about it in “his” younger years.  (My child does not wish to be identified.)  “He” hated to be touched.  Like in the book, he had to be taught to accept a hug, but only a certain kind–the very tight ones.

Later he learned that touch can soothe also, but always hard touch like a massage when I push my palms hard into his back muscles and neck.  I had to do that every night for years so he could get to sleep.

This book is too late to read to him, but it is perfect timing for so many parents who wonder what is wrong with their children.  It’s as much of an education for them as it is for the child, since, in parts of the book, it is written from the child’s perspective, so parents may be able to relate to their child a little bit more.

I must admit that when I first read it, I was sad–very sad.  I remember the pain, literally and emotionally.  One event stands out in my mind.

Forest Park Elementary School was a radical idea in the 70’s.  It was an open concept school, meaning children could move from class to class depending on their skill level in a particular subject, which my mother thought would be better for me rather than skipping any more grades.  But, the classes had no walls; it was literally an open concept.  The 360-degree noise burned my senses until one day, I freaked.

I ran to the bathroom and sat in the corner and leaned against the wall.  With my fists clenched and my body in a tight fetal position, I rocked.  The breath coming into my lungs hurt.  My head hurt so badly that my vision blurred.  A teacher found me and carried me to the front office where my mother picked me up.  At home, I hid in my room for hours until the pain abated.

After this happened many times, I was dubbed as having migraines.  Now I know that I don’t have migraines and likely never did.  It hurt; I screamed in my head for help; I was in pain; and I was very scared.  Yes, I did get teased.  My mother was mystified, and I remember her face looking scared too.  The doctors said there was nothing they could do.

If you know a child who screams, hits, hides, runs away, or has other unexplained outbursts, read about Sensory Processing Disorder.  If the child is diagnosed with this disorder, buy I’m Not Weird, I have SPD so the child can feel a sense of relief too.

Chynna Laird’s Website
Chynna Laird’s Blog

Related posts:
360-degree Noises
Family TV Watching and Autism