Making Sense: A Guide to Sensory Issues

However, my physical symptoms exist whether I un-think them or not. It’s like telling someone with any other neurological condition—like multiple sclerosis or epilepsy—that their symptoms exist in their thoughts and chemical makeup: it’s just not true.

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

Sensory Discrimination Disorder, which includes the difficulty of understanding the basic sensory qualities of people, places, objects, or the environment.

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.

they found a structural, biological basis for SPD.

Dysregulation is the temporary state in which someone with sensory issues is unable to self-regulate (energize or relax) and maintain a calm, poised, and ready state.

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.

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.

Their war cry is simply, Huh?