Sensory Processing Traffic Jams

There is no one right answer to solving life's issues, with everyone's experiences being annoyingly unique and thus inconvenient for me to try and solve easily. But I'm going to do my best to explain the methods I've found that will at least help you get closer to a more balanced and well regulated state. I can't get you to amazing without knowing your situation but I hope I can help get you to neutral at the very least. 

At the core of my version of autism care, is the question: why? 

The Why?

Let's imagine that you get overwhelmed by an alarm going off. Fair enough, it's loud and unexpected. But what I want to know is… why were you in a state where an alarm going off sent you into overload? 

I always imagine the brain as a series of roads, information being traffic. When the traffic jams up and the brain can't process anymore, you get overwhelm in all its wondrous forms. So, the alarm was the thing that pushed you over the top… but what caused all the traffic to build up before that? Why were your roads full to the point that an alarm couldn't get through the traffic jam to processing, causing the brain to panic and overload? 

The answer to that is the key to getting a bit more balance back in your life. We can often help ourselves more by looking at that build up, rather than the trigger event itself. If we can eliminate the slow, insidious traffic builds up throughout the day, then a single loud event will not be enough to overload you! 

With autistic folk, and to be honest most folk autistic or otherwise, the biggest traffic offenders can be broken down into three categories. Sensory, social and trauma. Every person is going to have a mixture of these three things, even if it's only little ‘t’ everyday trauma. So the question is, what is your mixture? 

Sensory Soothing

I personally think sensory input accounts for at least 80% of my daily issues. Sound, sight, touch and interoception, to name a few, are not my friends. I know they give me a lot of traffic that I just don't need. So, if I can make some changes to my environment, lower their traffic, my roads will see a noticeable decrease in traffic jams and the resulting overwhelm. I know for a fact this is the case in my own life, and it's also been the case for nearly every person I have ever worked with. 

Other people might experience more social or trauma overload than sensory, but I would actually always recommend starting with some sensory changes. It's the low hanging fruit of autism care, the easiest way to get quick wins with. So even if it's only 10% of your issues, improving your sensory experience leading to 5% more processing power, is a huge win! 

Energy Accounting

A secondary method to helping keep those roads clear is Energy Accounting. Try and judge how much energy and brain space your daily activities will take. If I am training a group of doctors and nurses from 10am-2pm, I know I am going to be very tired afterwards. So I’ll plan recovery time to help regulate myself. If my roads are going to fill up with traffic, I'm going to read/play games/hangout with friends to recover. Allowing yourself this regulation is key to avoiding overload and burnout. 

The world does not often add regulation time to most routines, not in a way we can access. We live in a neurotypical world and neurotypicals do not tend to experience overload in the same way we do, thus their recovery needs are very different. 

This means you need to make time for yourself, both in activities, and in recovery, whatever recovery looks like to you. If your brain hums happily listening to death metal, great! If it clears its traffic by doing crosswords or shadow boxing Mike Tyson, then awesome! Find what works for you, not what society expects!

Try using Sensory Soothing and Energy Accounting to try and gain just a bit more processing power in your life. It makes a hell of a difference, trust me.