Journeys with Autism

Since my sensory assessment, I’ve had two visits with my Occupational Therapist, and they have been unlike any visits I’ve ever had with a health professional. No matter what state I’m in when I arrive, I know that she will offer me ways to ground and to feel held.

For my first appointment, I ended up on her doorstep feeling really crummy. I was having a flare-up of a very painful condition that no one has been able to explain. Perhaps once or twice a year, I get a terrible pain in my bladder, like I have a urinary tract infection, except that when I use the bathroom, the pain radiates from my bladder, right up through the center of my body, down my arms, all the way to my hands and the tips of my fingers. I yell and cry until it passes. I’ve been checked many times for UTIs, and it’s not a UTI. No one seems to know what it is. (If anyone reading this knows what it is, please tell me!)

I told my OT what was happening, and she said, “What would you like to try? The big heavy blanket? The Thumper?” I went for the big heavy blanket and immediately felt comforted. As I was lying on the floor, enjoying my little piece of heaven, the OT asked me a number of questions about my sensory diet. For some reason, I was able to rattle off a list, even though I hadn’t made one on paper yet. Here’s my sensory diet, so far:

1. Using a 15-lb weighted blanket when I get home from work and when I go to sleep at night.
2. Using a 4-lb or an 8-lb weighted vest when I need to ground.
3. Holding onto a velvet skirt and scarf, touching them with my hands and rubbing them on my face.
4. Bicycling on a stationary stand.
5. Playing with a gyroscope on a wire track, watching it spin around and around.
6. Playing with a magic wand that has spinning lights.
7. Watching my spoon mobile spin around and around.
8. Working on art projects–bending wire, putting things together and taking them apart, and watching them spin and sparkle in the light.

When I started feeling better, I got out from under the blanket and we worked on some exercises for me to do at home. These included therapeutic brushing, drawing an infinity sign, and lying on the floor watching a spinning mobile.

Therapeutic Brushing
My OT told me to try therapeutic brushing, twice a day, on my arms and legs. The purpose of the brushing was to “wake up” the nerves in my extremities, with the aim of helping to reduce my tactile defensiveness. She warned me that if I have any trauma issues, the therapeutic brushing might start unlocking memories in my body and generally erode my defenses. The brushing can also be very over-stimulating, even though it is supposed to be calming.

At first, the brushing at home seemed to go well, but very quickly, I began to resist it. I felt myself getting more and more anxious and over-stimulated as the week went on, and I began to feel somewhat raw and undefended. I came to the conclusion that after many years of trauma recovery work, I’ve stripped off as many defensive layers as I need to. The remaining ones are necessary and I’m not willing to mess with them. So, I stopped the brushing midway through the week.

Drawing an Infinity Sign
We worked on having me draw an infinity sign, tracking the pen with my eyes without moving my head. I found this exercise a bit frustrating. The purpose was to help me train my eyes to work independently of the rest of my body, with the aim of diminishing the dizziness from my gravitational insecurity.

I noticed that I when I used my left hand (my dominant hand) to draw, I tended to stare at the dot at the center of the sign and track the rest with my peripheral vision. When I consciously tried to track, my eyes seemed to go faster than my hand. When I switched to my right hand, however, I was able to synchronize my eyes with my hand, perhaps because I had to concentrate harder when I used my non-dominant hand. It’s also possible that my left brain is my visual center. I am the left-handed daughter of a left-handed mother, and that can mean that the typical functions of each hemisphere are switched. In any case, drawing with my right hand seemed to click.

Watching a Spinning Mobile
I was supposed to lie on the floor in my loft, watching my mobile spin and tracking the circle without moving my head. I tried it. Once. I immediately got nauseous and dizzy. I didn’t try it again from the floor. I can watch it spin nicely at eye level, so I’m sticking with that.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg