When we have SPD it’s not as simple as getting used to the sensation.
For us with SPD - SPD is real pain. We feel our senses more than a ‘typical’ person without SPD or HSP etc. A loud noise isn’t just loud, it’s like you just took a drill to my head. A perfume isn’t just overpowering, its painful – it fills my head, my nostrils causes hay fever, and instant headaches. You can’t desensitise this out of me – or make it any less. Believe me, I’ve tried to do it to myself… it didn’t work – it made it worse.
When a child is holding their ears and crying or screaming or rocking back and forth in the foetal position etc – this is a good clue that something is painful to them – not just annoying or irritating, but really painful. Whether that’s someone who won’t shut up, or a sensory experience, their own internal processing, or something that triggered them will be different for different people – please don’t assume that doing this kind of behaviour is only ever a sign of sensory pain – it can indicate emotional and other pain too.
When at school, our senses are heightened, because as disabled people who are rejected all the time – our nervous system goes on the alert to protect ourselves. Our bodies detect danger in all forms – even in sensory forms. That includes all senses, not just sight, smell, hearing, feeling, tasting – but all of them – including proprioception, interoception, vestibular, exteroception. We may need more input for those senses or we may need a lot less… or we may need less of things that trigger us, and more of things that regulate us – that depends on the individual and their individual needs and senses.
The average ADHD person is told off more than 80% more than their peers- this puts the ADHD’er into a constant vigilant state of awareness, this causes their senses to go into hyperalert state as well. They will need access to stimulation and regulation possibly more than a peer who is not berated as much – because the ‘typical’ persons nervous system isn’t in hyper alertness all the time.
The hyper alert state causes exhaustion very quickly, and we can’t control it, we can’t turn it on and off at will… our nervous system controls it, not our brains. If we feel safe and happy: the nervous system turns it off. If it feels unsafe or threatened, it turns it on.
The school environment is one that turns that threat/ unsafe feeling on. There are peers to fit in with, teachers to obey and understand, curriculum to fear not understanding or being picked on for not understanding it. There’re our own disabilities that cause RSD and our own rejection of ourselves- which also activates that on switch. There’re our disabilities that cause us to be awkward and not fit in (Uncanny Valley Principle). And a whole lot of other crap that goes on and on, things like our pre-existing trauma, cPTSD and earning a reward (or punishment, that truly is unsafe and sets our nervous system into overwhelm or shutdown).
When this happens, we sense our senses more, or sometimes we have a shutdown of those senses. Our senses also help us regulate, so if we have an overload or shutdown of those senses – we can’t regulate. If we can’t regulate we start showing “behaviours of concern” and we become unable to learn.
What does this look like (the f responses to trauma: fight/flight/flop/freeze/flood/fawn/flex):
It looks like ‘regression’/ meltdown or shutdown or inability to do a task – a person might have or display:
Incontinence accidents (shut down or possibly overwhelm, freeze, flop, flood)
Aggression/ violence/ talking back (over sensing or overwhelm, fight/flex)
Crying (could be either shutdown or overwhelm, fight/flood)
Silence and situationally unable to speak (shutdown or overwhelm/ flop/freeze)
Running away/ eloping (overwhelm, flight)
Apologising, perfectionism (overwhelm, fawn/flex)
Falling asleep (overwhelm or shutdown, flop, freeze, flood, flight)
We may run from sensory experiences or run to them. A person running to them is trying to gain control, gain stimulation, gain regulation. A person running from them is in pain – and are trying to also gain control (over themselves and their environment) but also trying to get away from stimulation, from others, from pain.
They will not be ‘ABLE’ in either case until they have achieved their need. They will keep figuratively and literally running toward that thing, or away from it, till the need is met.
Stopping or preventing the running doesn’t help, it just sends them further into the desperate need, and into meltdown/shutdown.
This is why scheduled breaks don’t work, this is why children need fidgets and sensory input for our senses during class (not just in break time). This is why children need sensory blockers like glasses, hoodies, headphones during class not just during break time.
Don’t schedule breaks, work their tools into the lesson/ or allow their tools all the time. I beg you to start using them yourselves to ‘normalise’ them. Kids will need these things but won’t use them from fear of appearing different or ‘weak’ or ‘weird’. But if the teacher uses headphones, has a fidget in their hand while talking – this normalises it, so that kids are able again.
Most kids will avoid using things that help them because it ‘outs’ them and differentiates them from their peers, which causes bullying. But if all children see adults and people in positions of power using tools to aide themselves (like glasses, wheelchairs, hearing aids, fidgets, headphones, and other disability tools) this creates safety and the ability to learn. We can’t listen or learn without these tools, but we fear being ostracised and bullied more than we fear a teachers roth, or not completing work in class. These tools help us to stay regulated and not show those “behaviours of concern” – without them, our behaviours increase.
Help us to be able. Do you wear glasses? When you first got them, did you feel odd? Did you feel better when you saw other people wearing them? Do you remember your first day at school? Do you remember thinking that you looked or felt odd in your uniform for the first time, but felt better when everyone else was wearing the same uniform? Do you remember the first casual day at school and how nervous you were in case what you wore stuck out and looked ‘different’ or singled you out as different? Of course you did. We even do it as adults… did we dress appropriately for a wedding or an interview? Did we say or do something that set us a part in a social situation? Were we accepted or rejected based on that?
Autistics and ADHD’ers know this feeling better than others, we deal with the Uncanny Valley Principle daily, hourly, by the second. Because it only takes a second to make a first impression, and we are rejected on that first impression. Every. Single. Time. There’s actually been studies on it, to prove that NTs reject autistics at first glance, it’s incredibly sad.
This pre-judged rejection teaches us to make sure that there’s nothing else that makes us stand out, especially a disability tool that may help us – but labels us as autistic.
Think about it – if you see a child in a doctor’s waiting room with headphones on (and maybe staring at an iPad) – you assume autistic child – don’t you? I bet you do. Because that’s what a stereotype is. It’s an unkind way of assigning something to someone because of something specific. They look a certain way, or do, or have a specific thing. We as autistic adults are choosing more and more to stand out – to ‘neuroqueer’ (look up Dr Nick Walker and her book “neuroqueer heresies” if you want to know more). We choose to stand out and use our tools in public because adults don’t bully as much (as it’s discrimination and prosecutable by law), and because we know that we can’t cope without them. We use our tools sometimes in spite of being ostracised for them. That’s a privilege not all have.
Some of us can’t do this, because it’s unsafe to neuroqueer. Due to persecution and danger from police, and especially in schools where fitting in is paramount and means the difference between happiness and being miserable, bullied and even hated for 13 years. Help us to neuroqueer in school, where our education is important, and we have the right to an equal education – but can’t because we fear this type of persecution and being ostracised and bullied.
We can’t get rid of our senses, but we can help ourselves to calm our nervous systems by dampening our sensory input (not dampen our senses – but minimise the inputs) - so we feel safer – thereby increasing capacity and lowering the probability of overwhelm or shutdown. Help us build safe environments and schools where learning is key and ‘fitting in’ is a thing of the past. If we can help our hyper/ or hypo senses to cope in these environments, we are able to lighten the load of our nervous systems and lessen those inputs that cause those “behaviours of concern” when our nervous systems are triggered by an overload or underload of stimulation. (Check out my other blogs on understimulation).