\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\nAnd again that sense of alarm that you get when you’re on a public\r\ntransport, maybe a bus and the bus next to you – which one’s moving is it me or\r\nthe bus next to me? My visual system and my vestibular system are in conflict and\r\nI can’t tell what’s going on, I go into alarm. So these are just examples\r\ntrying to help us empathize with individuals who struggle with their\r\nvestibular information on a day-to-day basis and that state of heightened alarm,\r\narousal that they get into or that they exist in for most of the day, which would\r\nlook like an anxiety disorder but it’s not – it’s not clinical anxiety in those\r\nsituations, it’s anxiety that’s caused by a lack of integration of the vestibular system with perhaps other systems competing for information, not enough\r\ninformation and being too quickly and too often in a state of fight or flight or\r\nfreeze.\r\n\r\nThe same goes for our position sense – our proprioceptors which are\r\npredominantly in our joints and when we get compression or when we get traction\r\non our joints, we know where we are in space. I often would fall asleep on my\r\narm and go to that point past pins and needles when my arm is just like – is it\r\neven there?! and that – if you’ve ever experienced that – is really alarming, the\r\nalarm systems go off and your body starts to say this is not okay, I’ve lost\r\na whole limb here and you know what’s happened is that there’s that blood flow\r\nhas been a problem, the proprioceptors aren’t functioning very well.\r\n\r\nYour sense\r\nof proprioception keeps you locked and grounded in your own body and when that\r\nthe system is unreliable, it’s inconsistent, it’s not giving you great\r\nthe information then your arousal goes up and you start to have alarm bells going\r\noff in your lower brain saying I’m not safe, I need to be wary, I need to orient\r\nto everything that’s going on around me and that looks again that vigilance, that\r\nanxiety. But it’s got a sensory root in these cases, but we don’t call these\r\nanxiety disorders, we’re calling that a response to what’s going on with the\r\nsensory systems and we could go on with example after example. A really\r\nan important one to think about is the child who really has trouble with\r\nmultiple sensory systems at once and the most challenging environment for that\r\nthe child generally speaking is school because the school environment is\r\nloud, it has bells, it has visual clutter, there are things hanging from the\r\nceiling, there are Mobile’s, there are posters,\r\nthere are Halloween displays, there are echoes in the cafeteria, children are completely unpredictable and they knock you and\r\nthey push you and your nervous system is constantly vigilantly trying to keep you\r\nalive and you look like an anxious child an aggressive child a child with\r\nbehaviors but it come back down to sensory processing.\r\n\r\nSo this is where\r\nwe start to say with some of our children is the sensory or is this\r\nanxiety? When this child’s at school they cannot cope, their tolerance for stress\r\nis minimal because they’re using all their resources just to get through the\r\nday, or are they so stressed that they’re reactive and we need to figure out which\r\none comes first. And some of these children where the multi-sensory piece is\r\nthe problematic piece – so what we do with those kids is we reduce as much stress\r\nas possible, we cater to their sensory systems, we nourish their sensory systems,\r\nwe put them in the right therapy, we look at the other stresses in their life – are\r\nthey getting enough sleep? Are they drinking enough water? Are they eating\r\nenough food? How are their relationships? What is their timetable? How are they\r\ngetting to school? What’s their socioeconomic status? All of these\r\nstresses – we look at them, we nourish the sensory systems and then we wait and we\r\nwatch and we start to unpack.\r\n\r\nAnd if this child is able to adapt better when we\r\nnourish their sensory systems and adapt to the environment, then we know that\r\nfundamentally what’s going on here is not anxiety but the sensory\r\nstresses are so great that they’re causing an anxiety response. But if after\r\nadapting and treating for sensory anxiety is still very prevalent than we\r\nrefer – we find a really good mental health provider who understands sensory but we refer to them and we get them involved and we start unpacking the rest\r\nof the picture and what’s going on and that’s really important.\r\n\r\n
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