Autism
Happy Autism Diagnosis Day!
Spectrum identification was absolutely, hands down, no holds barred, the best thing that has happened in my life.
Is any of this familiar?
- Does your anxiety spike at the question, “What do you want?”
- Do you struggle with (remembering, doing, hating) personal care tasks, like brushing teeth?
- Do you stay up way too late because you can’t tell when you’re tired?
- Do you not go to the doctor because you can’t tell if something’s an issue until it’s a big deal? (Medical trauma aside.)
- Do you push through pain, exhaustion, overwhelm, satiety, because you barely notice them? Or they don’t register as important?
- Are you burned out and can’t tell what drains your energy and what doesn’t?
- Are you trying to unmask but can’t tell what’s you and what’s the mask?
- Are you time blind?
What's going on?
A lot of us who are neurodiverse don’t have a clear sense of what we want or need, because we’ve been trained for years to ignore our internal signals to survive
- in sensory environments that bombard us,
- in capitalist hustle culture that treats people like machines,
- and white supremacy culture that disregards personal sovereignty.
And while everyone is negatively affected by these systems, our more diverse neurological expressions create a more intense backlash.
Being able to push through is useful in dealing with unpleasant environments that we don’t have any control over, but it’s not useful in dealing with areas of life in which we do have some ability to regulate ourselves and what is going on around us. Our own homes, bedrooms, personal care routines, products we purchase, etc.
Gradually developing that internal awareness helps us reconnect meaning between things that happen and how they affect us. Like how it feels when
- we need to go to the bathroom,
- when we want to move something that’s bothering us,
- buy this deodorant instead of that one (or none),
- eat now or later,
- notice how long we’ve been on a screen,
- make a request, etc.
Which is why I made Sensory Moments. To help with this process of integrating your internal awareness, slowly and gently. (Fast and furious doesn’t work, and trying it generally triggers trauma.)
Simply noticing what’s going on in the moment, in one part of your body, is really all that’s needed to develop your internal awareness. It’s genuinely not any more complicated than that. It simply takes attention, over time.
You can do this on your own without paying anyone anything, but if a little reminder is helpful, or if getting examples of the kinds of questions to ask is useful, Sensory Moments can help.
So what are Sensory Moments?
You’ll get a short, daily email prompt to tune into your in-the-moment sensory experience.
It’s designed to take seconds, literally.
There’s no exercises. No getting up and doing something. No goals, “shoulds,” or comparisons. Easy to modify to your unique circumstances.
It’s simply about noticing what’s going on in one part of your body, or around you, in this very moment.
Gradually, over time, this noticing can subtly increase your own internal awareness at other times as well.
The whole sequence is an email-a-day for three months (though you can opt-out anytime).
What is Sensory Moments good for?
Sensory Quality of Life Improvement
Making the small tweaks and big changes that are needed to improve the quality of your sensory experience is most effective when you have a good sense of what’s going on inside you.
Burnout Recovery
Getting better at not pushing past your limits involves knowing when you’re reaching your limits, which involves growing your internal awareness.
Unmasking
- Knowing what’s you and what’s the mask, and what you want and need, is so much easier when you know how you actually feel.
Being Present
If you’re exploring ways to be present in the moment, this is an easy reminder to notice the now.
How does it work?
As you follow the prompts, or modify them to suit your needs, you’re checking in with a variety of sensory experiences that we tend to ignore on a daily basis. That our culture teaches us to ignore.
Gradually, over time, this noticing can subtly increase your own internal awareness at other times as well.
You might notice that you’re more aware of things like:
- getting hungry, or full,
- when you’re getting irritable, and why,
- when you’re sitting in an uncomfortable position, before it gets painful,
- when you need something, and what
- and because you’re getting words for these experiences from the prompts, you may start describing what’s going on better, both to yourself and to others.
This is a great supplement to go along with other things you’re already doing on your journey of figuring yourself out and improving your life.
This may be a good fit for you:
- If you’re looking for a way to figure out your own sensory needs, beyond earplugs and lights, and aren’t sure what your sensory needs even are.
- If you want to get better at knowing what’s going on inside your own body — maybe you’ve even heard about “interception” — but you’ve got three tips and you’ve done them all.
- If you’re theoretically on board with the idea that emotions are connected to bodily sensations, and want to get better at that, but don’t really want to deal with the whole “emotions” issue.
- If you’ve been exploring your own sensory stuff for a while, and want to go deeper, but don’t have the energy or money for intensive sensory “therapies.”
- If you’re looking for another way to foster present moment being.
This may not be a good fit for you:
- If you want an intensive, fast paced, or instructional course.
- If you’re looking for a complete sensory profile tool. (I’m making one — coming soon — but this isn’t it.)
- If even one more thing is way too much right now.
- If you’re looking for medical advice. This is not going to give you any advice. Of any kind.
- If you’re looking for personalized support. The prompts are designed to be general enough that you can tailor them to your own needs, but it’s not going to do that for you.
If body stuff is trauma-triggering for you. This is designed to be trauma sensitive, but it is directly addressing body stuff and if you’re not in a place where you can process that right now, even in a gentle way, this isn’t the right time.
The prompts are designed to be:
- Trauma sensitive
- Demand avoidance sensitive
- Alexithymia sensitive
Because I deal with all of those myself.
How much is it?
If I were to put a firm price-tag on this, I’d ask $20 for the full sequence of three months. But that doesn’t work for everyone.
So here’s what I’m offering. (It’s a new experiment; we’ll see how this works.)
– Now –
Chipping in an initial $1 (or more, you choose) tells me “you’re in.”
– Later –
After you’ve tried this for a while, you get to decide how much to contribute, and when. (There’s a discrete link in each email, you decide when to use it.) If you get nothing from this, add nothing. If you find it adds some, any, value to your life, I trust you to add a little more.
– Or –
You could chip in more to start with and not bother with adding later. Whichever works for you.
