Sensory Spaces

Good afternoon. I hope you guys are having an amazing afternoon. So today we're in here for a pop-up to talk about sensory spaces.

Yeah, neurodivergent-friendly sensory spaces. I don't think that these are talked about— well, I don't think anything is talked about enough, but I definitely don't think these are talked about with the benefits that they can provide, not just neurodivergent adults, but neurodivergent kids and even the neurotypicals. Because I mean, it is a space to go and regulate. That's 100% what it's designed to do. So what are these spaces? And then how do we create them in our home or wherever we are so that we can accommodate ourselves?

So what does a sensory space look like for you? Because I'm gonna tell you that every single one of us is going to have a slightly different need here. So I'm gonna bring what Vida and I each need cuz they're different from each other. So what does your sensory space look like?

Depends on what I'm dealing with, but I try to make our home a neurodivergent sanctuary because there's 4 of us with very different needs. And then within our home, everybody's bedroom is their kind of Fortress of solitude, if you will. So my house, we have a lot of sensory seekers. So soft blankets, soft pillows. Everybody had, including my husband, everyone has a stuffy like that they like squeeze. I have weighted blankets. I have fans. I have, you know, air conditioning places that you can go or ice packs always frozen.

Everything.

And when in doubt, like the bathroom is generally nice and cool. You can turn off the lights and, you know, you can do different temperatures in there. But I mean, basically I really, really try to make our home our safe place.

So my husband and I have very, very different sensory needs. And when we had a child who had very, very different sensory needs, things were different. He has not. He lived in this house, but he lived in this house as a married adult. So that wasn't, we didn't set things up for him specifically when we moved into this house. So we have very different sensory needs and I have my own sensory space. My office is my sensory space. It can be as dark as I want it. I don't like things dark though. I will tell you, unless I have a migraine and I have one of those terrible migraines, I don't need a dark space. I hate dark spaces. Like dark spaces make me panic. Don't like dark. I don't sleep in the dark. My husband had to learn how to sleep with nightlights on and stuff because I can't handle the dark. Don't like it. Hate it. So my office has sheer curtains and a sheer shade where I can knock down the sun so that it doesn't reflect bad on videos and stuff. But it's still very, very bright in my office. And I had this office pink at one point, which I loved. And you all know I love the pink that anybody that knows me before, my office used to be painted. This color back here, this color pink. My whole entire office was this color, but it wasn't bright enough, so I repainted it. It's a very silvery gray in here now, and my ceiling's white and everything's white in here so that it's super, super bright because that is soothing to me. Now, there are other spaces in my house that are super dark. My husband leaves the light off all the time in his office. He hates it. And he's, he's got his pool table, which is very soothing to him, and all of his musical instruments, which are Soothing to him. Drums. We have drums. We have multiple drum sets in this house and multiple guitars in this house in loud. My husband likes loud when he needs to calm down. I do not. So I have earplugs.

I tell you what, if I had the space and the money, I'd have a pool. At the very least, a hot tub. Because I am a neurodivergent Little Mermaid, and that is my place. That's where I— like, we had a tornado in our town, like, last April, almost a year ago, and the Y is still not Open. It's Looney Tunes, but that's where the pool is. And every morning I would go and I would swim and I would regulate. And that's— and, and so my kids, teaching them to regulate, one of the things that's always on the table, and my son uses this more than our daughter, but we'll run about that much warm or hot water in the bottom of the tub and sit on the side of the tub and put our feet in it and regulate.

And it's— water is a major thing for almost all of us. I have a big soaker, a jacuzzi tub, so I can Jealous of your big tub. Fill, fill my tub and, and relax in it if I need to. And, and, and I will tell you from a sensory standpoint, I don't love water. It's calming me, not bathtub water is calming me, but from an autoimmune standpoint, my bathtub is my lifesaver. And I spend a lot of time in there with Epsom salts and all kinds of stuff because pain-wise, it is the thing that can help regulate my pain. So, but I don't love water. So that, but it was a thing for me to learn what energy do I need? What thing do I need in the moment to regulate Whatever it was that needed to be regulated. And when we have autoimmune issues, it adds that extra level of figuring out where's that tipping point? What is it that you need? Showers. I could stay in the shower for— I love showers.

No. And like teachers with classrooms and teachers that have kids that are generally, you don't have this in, in a high school unless you have kids that are, um, Prone to outbursts, but everybody has one in an elementary classroom. All elementary classrooms have the calm corner. They have— it's like maybe it's got beanbags, maybe it's got, uh, pillows or stuffies or like books for them to read. It is specifically designed for kids to go when they're overwhelmed and regulate. Sometimes it's got like soft lighting over there. And so it always cracks me up, like People get really up in arms about like the matinees around here have specific, uh, sensory hours, like where they, the lights will be different and, and things like that for generally it's for autistic kids, but it's for all neurodivergent kids and people. The Walmart has started doing sensory hours where they'll dim the lights a little bit because the overhead lights are, are So bright. So it's like elementary schools know what's up for emotionally regulating people or for people that are overstimulated. But people don't spend enough time around elementary schools. And so they— it's like, we're adults, we should do this. And it's like, no, no, no, no. The same things that work for kids work for adults. People just have to package them differently because adults get all offended when you use things that look like they're made for little kids. I personally like the little kid stuff, but I was a teacher, so.

I love little kid things. One of my biggest things for me is to always have sensory things at my desk. I always have, I have thinking putty and of 2 different textures of thinking putty. I have stuff with sparkles in it, which is really rough in one kind. And I don't have my stuffy in here because she's out there right now. I have all kinds of things. In here. Pop sockets. Pop sockets. I gotta buy more pop sockets because I broke my one that was just attached to my desk. I love pop sockets.

I have a lot, like my office is another sensory space. It's just set up for different kinds of sensory needs. It's generally not my calm spot. It's my like, let, let's hype Vida up so she can focus and work spot. But yeah, for sure. I'm like I said, it depends. The places in my house, it depends on what I need at the time.

And my days can be, I mean, sensory things for me, visual is one of my biggest senses. I am a visual learner. I'm a visual everything. So I have a YouTube channel that I watch that helps me. And I have a TV in my office. Obviously, I'm not, I don't have it on this week, but I will frequently during the day have this on and I play I love ocean, like animals in the ocean and watching that. Another channel I found was, it's like fireflies and butterflies. It's like an enchanted forest thing.

Wow.

And it plays just like that, the noises and ambient sounds from it. Same thing with the water one. And I have another channel that's a Star Wars one that does the same thing. You're watching star fields and nebulas and stuff like that. Things like that are super soothing to me, and I know that. So I use that in my office to help keep me regulated. Understanding what your needs are to keep you regulated. You wanna know what? One of, some of those things are really soothing. And where I learned that is when my son was in AEA, cuz my son is autistic. And I was like, found myself when they were teaching him how to self-soothe, I found myself going, oh, I like that. I want that. Why don't they do that for me?

See, that's okay. This is a soapbox I would get on. I would die on this mountain. Oh my gosh. Okay. So these things that we teach little kids to do, or these things that we have set up for little kids, it's because, right, they don't have the coping skills to be the, to be adults. But neurodivergent people and neurotypical people, they become adults and then they forget the coping skills they learned because elementary schools, things for kids, things like that, it's set up specifically To help people regulate. But the adult world is not set up like that. It's not like you have a ball pit in the corporate lunchroom, which would be amazing. But like, you know, some, some corporate places won't even put a soda fountain in there. And it's like, man, caffeine helps people. I mean, it just does. But if we had— I mean, I'm still a proponent of recess, even for adults. It's like— Go outside and touch some grass, like go walk around, do whatever. So these things that we have set up for kids, we should really use and look at for adults. And when you're building a sensory space in your house, ask yourself what you need. Katherine McConnell is one of our very best friends and she's a trauma therapist. Her and I had this conversation. I was like, do you have a sensory space at your house? And the thought had never occurred to her just because that's not something we do for adults. So she went home, she was super excited to make her sensory space, you know, because we all need a place to go and just be. And, you know, sometimes I want to go sit in my space and be a little kid because little kids had it going on. Like, didn't have to mask. I didn't have to do that. I could just sit in this beanbag and I could read books for 30 minutes and people let me alone so that I could regulate myself. You know, like, I wish, I wish more corporate spaces had sensory spaces. It's like, it would just be beanbags and cell phone chargers.

Cell phone chargers, earplugs, because I forget my earplugs and I need my earplugs. And I don't care if they're the stupid little foam-free ones that you can buy for industrial complexes. Just something some days that would be so amazing. You wanna know what the other thing that would make me so happy is if somebody had Textured tables. I will tell you the greatest thing ever. Vida bought this for me for my birthday. So one, it's pretty and it's cute and all of that. It's a floor tile. So it's spongy on the back. So when I push on it, it has some give to it, but it's hard plastic and it got a lot of texture to it. This sits on my desk for a reason. You know, I just run my hands over it.

That was supposed to be like pink and purple, but it kind of looks like murder.

It is pink and purple. It is fuchsia and dark purple. It just, it doesn't look like that on camera. So it matches my office perfectly. But the texture on the back of it is like rubbery and cushy and it feels like the bottom of Crocs, kind of like it, that's what it feels like. And then the front side has got, it's got like a lot of little bumps and texture on it. And I will sit here and go like this when I'm really frustrated.

Yeah.

What is your sensory need? And sometimes we have to touch 20 things and there are days that I don't wanna touch this. That's gross. And nope, that's gonna set me off and forget it. I will tell you the other day when I was doing the illustration with these things, I really didn't want to touch them, which is why they're also all over my office floor still.

Okay. So funny thing today, like my husband is an art teacher and he's super neurodivergent, everything. And he is, he's not autistic. Like he's just ADHD. I mean, he has trauma and the whole thing, but today is the day that he teaches the kids how to use charcoal. And it is, he gets a sense, a full body sensory ick with it. And he's just like, he'll do this like a little kid. Like he'll, he'll teach him how to do it. And then he'll be like, until he can go wash his hands. And the high school students are like, 'cause it's so far out of what he is normally, but it's that, it's the feeling, the texture of that charcoal. So just because you aren't normally Sensitive to sensory stimuli doesn't mean there's not something specific that won't, you know, weird you out or feel really good. Because again, he's not normally sensory seeking. But 4 years ago, I bought everybody in this house a gigantic king-size fuzzy blanket from JCPenney's because I was tired of them stealing my blanket or trying to get under my blanket. And there was 4 of them. It was hands down the best present that I ever got anybody. And every year at Christmas now, I've started a tradition. I have to get them a fuzzy blanket because they use it so much throughout the year that it loses the amazing new blanket feel.

Mm-hmm.

And so when I got them their new blankets, then I have to go behind them and sneakily take their other blankets out. And we're talking about 17-year-old teenagers and like 47-year-old men, like I have to switch out their blankets because it's a sensory need.

I love those blankets and we have them. We have like, my dog has his own because it has to feel like ours. It's a different color so that I know and I can wash it a little easier and stuff. But my dog has the same blanket as my husband and it's just different color because he also needs his— this— he liked our blanket too much.

Does make me laugh though that not everybody, not everybody knows that flea, like fuzzy blankets They don't feel the same after a while, and then you have to replace them. Like, it's—

I have to replace them about every 2 years, year and a half, 2 years.

Yeah. Because they just—

He lost it with all the old ones in his bed. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Mhmm.

Yeah.

Sensory spaces here at my house, I essentially have blanket forts. That's what it is.

We have, I mean, my husband has his office. I have my office. Our offices are very different. Vibes and feel— I mean, not just the artwork on the walls and stuff, because that's very different too. But my husband has— he loves carpet on the floors and loves big cushy carpet. Guess what I hate? I hate carpet. I hate socks. I hate shoes. And the best thing— and I cried, so let me get this out there first. So when I had to do this, I cried. I lost my hair, and I had long hair before, but I always had it up. It was in my face all the time. I hated it touching my face. I had— you want to— I love having short hair now. What is your sensory needs? Know what your sensory needs are. If you have neurodivergent children, figure out what their sensory needs are. Those sensory tables, like look on Pinterest. There are so many sensory things, activities you can do. Try them all out. Try the cheapest versions of everything out until you find out what their thing is.

Right.

And help, because you are going to find a child who can get out of overwhelm, who can get outta temper tantrums, an adult who can get outta overwhelm and avoid the temper tantrums that are coming up. And you know, when we're agitated and ready to stab somebody in the eye, sensory needs, if you're fulfilling your sensory needs, you can calm that down.

Well, and I mean, if you don't know where to start and you have young kids, when you do parent-teacher conference, ask the teacher about their sensory corner or their calm space, or where do the kids go to sit, you know, like when they have quiet time, like, you know, it's totally fine. And then Pinterest is a great, great resource for images. I know Rebecca asked if anyone had pictures of their sensory spaces. They're fabulous. And I'm really, really big about connecting with your inner child. So what kind of things did you like as a kid? You know, did you like blanket forts? Like, do you like enclosed spaces? Do you like pressure? Like the weighted blankets, that's like for pressure. They have sensory things.

Love that.

They have, you know, my daughter likes deep pressure and so she has a compression like tank top that she wears. I bought it because it was one of those shapers to suck my gut in, right? But it really, it never fit me and my gut's just there. So she uses it for deep pressure because she likes the way that feels. I cannot handle anything that's tight on my arms.

I don't like it.

So—

I don't like it. If you ever see me wearing long sleeve shirts, you will notice they're nowhere down here because I can't stand it. I can't handle it. Now, I love, I loved Play-Doh as a kid. So I— sensory putty is like, this is one of my favorite things on my desk. And like I said, I've got different kinds. I've got kinds with sparkles in it because that feels different. I actually want to get some of the slime with all the beads in it. I really need to get more of that because— and Vaya bought me kinetic sand, which is not currently on my desk because I accidentally dumped it all over one day. It's not mine. Mine's over there because I have been doing too many things lately. I keep dropping 'em, but no, find what the thing is that works for you. Like, and even know when it comes to your clothes.

Oh my gosh, that's a whole other thing. What are your safe clothes? Because just like safe foods, we have safe clothes. Like, is there a specific brand that you know how it fits and how it feels? And, and so like, especially if you're around a lot of autistic people or like have an autistic kid, my kid can tell you when— I can do it too, but it He can tell you when the— they change the recipe at like the corn dog factory, you know, like it doesn't taste the same. It's not the same. So safe foods.

I can tell when the water is not good because just turning on the tap water in my house, it smells so bad. And I just like, oh, that's gross and disgusting. And don't drink that because— But find what your sensory needs are. And sometimes that takes exploring. It took me a long time clothing-wise to realize that I don't have to be uncomfortable in my clothes all the time.

Here is the thing that I wish everyone remembered. We are adults, so we can create our own safety in our own space. We can create that with our clothing, with our own food, with our spaces inside our house. Like, you may not be able to create it at your job, but you can create it at your house. So we are not Victims of circumstance. You know, kids don't have a lot of autonomy, so they're kind of— they have to deal with whatever is around them. Adults have disposable income most of the time and can create their own. So ask yourself—

Even if your income isn't like— you're like, well, that's nice for you guys to say because you have more money than I do. This is what Goodwill is for and Salvation Army is for. Go, go on dollar t-shirt days and try 4 different kinds of material and figure out what you like.

I was just going to say that. So everybody in my house dresses really well, but it's because I take everybody to Goodwill every couple months. Goodwill, Salvation Army, like some people like Uptown Cheapskate. But here's the thing, you can try things that you never would have ever been able to try normally because everything is available. Now you have to look through it, you know, but still, I'm with you, Danielle. We have tried so many different things. We've found different brands. And the styles that we really like that make us happy that, you know, we can afford. So Goodwill's amazing. The clearance rack at stores are amazing. Like, and I, everything that I do, I mean, like I was a public school teacher, right? Teachers don't make a lot of money and their classes are not funded. So I know how to do everything on the cheap.

I lived in Very, very low income, single income family, poor, homeless at one point. I was homeless at one point. I understand what it takes to do things cheaply if possible. Goodwill. I don't need to shop at Goodwill anymore. And guess where I still go? Down here in the South. We have so many more options than I had in New York.

Like, they are amazing down here.

In fact, cool places.

In fact, when we go on vacation, I look for a thrift store wherever we go. Because you can find cool local things there. Okay.

There are 5 really cool ones here, like within 5 minutes of my house.

You have—

next time you're here, you'll have to come here because there are cool ones. Okay. Anyway, so you don't have to spend a lot of money doing these. The dollar store, a lot of these things in my little thing here, there's only 2 things in here that didn't come from the dollar store.

You have a Five Below?

Five Below has a lot of things. Dollar store has things also. What is that other place? Cannot think of the name of the other place. TJ Maxx. TJ Maxx. You can find all kinds of things there, believe it or not. Ross. And I encourage you to go to the dog toy section at some of those stores because you wanna know what? Some of those dog toys are actually amazing sensory toys for adults or children. Well, not for children because they're not made out of safe materials and stuff like that, but there are so many options. I'm sorry, I have to go. I have a coaching call. If you have sensory things that you love below, share what your sensory items are below.

Yeah.

Give people ideas. I will see you later, everybody.