in the moment, unable to connect to the world, trapped within a brain that is malfunctioning and a body refusing to take directions, a shutdown feels like a tiny death.

My sensory experiences are not a series of complex but mutable thoughts that I can work to wipe out from my consciousness, or a difference in chemistry that can be alleviated through medication. They’re simply the result of how my brain is built.

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

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.

Never put them down for their outburst—especially teens and adults. They know that flinging themselves on the couch or on the floor or curling into a ball and sobbing heaving sobs isn’t becoming, and so there’s a good chance that they’re already feeling really ashamed and silly.

The perception is completely unrelated to the sense organs, like the nose or the eyes, and related instead to the brain itself and how it interprets the sensory input it receives.

Hungry? Cold? Sleepy? Have a racing heart? Need to use the bathroom? You know how your body is feeling thanks to our eighth sense, interoception. This sense is key to our day-to-day functioning as a person living within a body. It helps us identify the state of our organs and what needs to be done to maintain homeostasis, or a balanced state.

Setting up our expectations well in advance allows us to figure out how to best tackle the sensory challenges at hand.

While I spend a great deal of time running away from some input and running toward other input, I wish upon all the stars in our galaxy that I could feel secure in my body moving through space. It’s something people without sensory issues must take for granted—the simple pleasure of really being somewhere, not just in mind and soul but also in a we