Sensory overload.

I've mostly finished my planning for school next year, and everything is looking fairly tidy, and there's still a month of summer left.   I could... read a book or something?  

The family is fairly busy: 

The oldest, only home for three more weeks before he moves into his apartment at college, is working two jobs and taking Calc III online; yesterday evening while Mark and I were taking in the last two episodes of a Monty Python documentary, he was slouching around with headphones and my college linear algebra textbook. 

(He's taking combinatorics next semester!  It's a kind of math I never had time for!  Vicariously thrilled.)

The next oldest is on the Scouting BSA high adventure trip, which this year is on bikes.  I hear through the parental grapevine that he's getting pretty worn out by the end of the day.   The youngest two are doing youngest-two things:  sandboxes, Minecraft, building toys.

Number three and I are preparing for a high adventure for her AHG troop:  four women and ten girls, we are plotting a four-day section hike on the Superior Hiking Trail later in August.   I am not the primary planner for this trip, and mostly am doing what other people tell me to do, which has been luxurious.  Also I am going to carry my own tent in which I get to sleep by myself (unless some disaster befalls one of the other tents) and this adaptation has made me feel very serene.

+ + +

The story of my middle age is one of learning to be more gentle with myself, less demanding; less pretense of ambition and self-importance.  I frown at it sometimes, because I'm not entirely sure that I haven't overcorrected:  that in learning to say "no" to things and setting boundaries on my time and energy, I'm not relying too much on other people's (perhaps excessive) impulses to say "yes," and not letting others bear burdens that must be borne by somebody, that I could pick up if I cared to.

It's tough to tease out.  Maybe it's a stage I'm going through, and I'll emerge with more purity of intention.   If so, I hope it happens soon.  I tend to fall into this trap of doing a lot, needing to be working all the time, busy all the time, not for kindness or a sense of community, but because I have this compulsion to not screw up---to not be seen as screwing up; a kind of modified perfectionism, where not everything has to be perfect, only the parts that I've decided have to be perfect.  Perfectionistic self-presentation, except that I don't care about looking like someone else's definition of perfect, only my own internal one, which includes a sort of curated collection of flaws.

Anyway, I'm trying not to be so focused on looking like someone who Has It All Together, and a big part of that has been, when it's time to sign up for tasks, to (a) take on the ones that I find energizing instead of energy-draining; (b) to ask for, hmm, what's the right word here, sensory accommodations.  

+ + +

Task selection, okay.  So one of the things that I hope is true is that I'm enough of an oddball that what energizes me is unappealing to other folks, so when I grab the tasks that I want, other people are breathing a sigh of relief that it isn't them.   When it's time to sign up for vacation Bible school, please let me work in the parish school kitchen, assemble snacks while obsessing about avoiding cross-contamination for kids with allergies, and run the noisy and steamy industrial dishwasher in the summer heat; please do not make me lead a room full of seven-year-olds in art projects.  When it's time to volunteer for the girls' troop, please let me schedule all of the boards of reviews and keep track of all the forms, or carry a thirty-pound pack on a section hike; please do not make me lead a room full of seven-year-olds in badge work for an entire year. 

My fingers are crossed that somewhere is someone saying It's hard to do all these lesson plans, but at least I'm not serving snacks!  At least I'm not running those boards of reviews!  At least I'm not in charge of the spreadsheet!   At least I'm not pooping in the woods!

As for the sensory accommodations.  Now I'm on shakier ground, but  I think maybe as a kid growing up, I was not exactly neurotypical?  And probably still am not, despite having learned some compensatory behaviors?  (I still feel perpetually a few years developmentally behind my peer set, which maybe is okay now that my peer set is in its mid-forties?  Don't know.) 

One of the small mercies of the twenty-first century is a bit more gentleness and accepting of children who have, shall we say, "sensory issues."  I think there's less "suck it up, kid" and a bit more of cutting the tags out of clothing, or selling the clothing without tags in the first place, you know?  What comes to mind for me is an offhand story of a few years ago.  A friend who sent her child to a local Catholic school told me warmly about the unexpected accommodation the school made for her child, of letting her child wear soft knit navy pants instead of the too-stiff, betagged uniform twill; such a simple way to make her life easier every single morning and her child's days easier every single day, such an obvious thing to do for a child who needed it more than most kids, something that really didn't hurt anyone.   And yet it's the kind of thing that wasn't always done for kids.

I'm trying to extend the same sort of thing to myself.

There aren't a large number of troubles I have.  I'm not beset by food intolerances, or much to do with clothing now that I can choose my own freely (except for the sounds made by nearby corduroy or a certain type of finish texture on a certain type of nylon---eek, I've got chills running up my spine just thinking about it!) But there are a few things that do set me off.  Certain odors, certain sounds, and the lack of an escape route or shelter from whatever human beings happen to be surrounding me.   There's almost a synaesthesia about it---a syn-dysthesia, more like it.  There are sounds that make my teeth hurt and put a metallic taste in my mouth.  There are smells that make the back of my neck tickle.  There's a sudden and intense suffocation from the nearness of other human beings.

It's been absurdly freeing to begin to think of these as not some kind of character flaw but instead as a sensory issue that I am allowed to accommodate in myself.   You know what?   I don't have to buy toothpaste that tastes too minty.  I don't have to use dishwashing liquid that has a scent that makes me want to flee the room.   I can turn off the radio if I can hear the newsreader's saliva gurgling in her mouth.

And if I'd like to chaperone the tween girls' hiking trip and it's not actually vitally important that we save weight so much that I have to share a tent with other adults... I can carry my own tent.  

+ + +

I realize I'm relying on other people to tell me if I'm causing a problem, this taking steps to alleviate the difficulties I have.  I don't read rooms very well.  I don't read minds, or faces, well at all; and I have practically no poker face of my own.  I am giving voice more often to something I should have said a lot earlier:  "Tell me if something else is needful; otherwise, I'll do this the way it works for me."  I don't mean to do what I want to do instead of what needs to be done, I mean choosing from what needs to be done, and doing it, with an eye to my charisms.  I would say I'm learning to set a boundary, except that it's not really a boundary I am setting for other people?  It's a boundary that exists in me; I'm learning to respect it.  

Not that I never cross the boundary---yeah, I do stuff that doesn't feel great, who doesn't have to do that sometimes?---but that I'm aware of the consequences and I understand where my real limits are.  How to feed myself on a regular diet of solitude and flow, so that I have the energy to do what needs to be done, among people, with kindness, maybe even pleasantness; instead of pretending I can live on air.

 

Comments

[Kate Cousino]

Honestly, if you read the original Boundaries book, the concept always was about recognizing the boundaries that already exist in/around your limits and responsibilities. It never was primarily about constraining other people, though pop self-help culture has used it that way. So this to me sounds exactly like setting good boundaries that prudently uses your gifts and strengths while respecting your limits.

[Melanie B.]

I think picking the tasks that are most in your wheelhouse makes a great deal of sense. Any good leadership should find out what tasks people are good at/prefer and assign them accordingly. It's possible there's someone else who loves doing the things you love as much as you do, but in that case, it would still be first come first serve in terms of who gets to sign up for the preferred task.

I've started to think about my aversions to loud noise as a sensory issue, too. I think it' helpful to realize it's really ok to not prefer some kinds of sensory input and that some people have lower thresholds at which they are overloaded.

[Jenny]

I always grab the treasurer job. You mean all you want me to do is cut a few checks, keep a balanced checkbook, and periodically issue a spreadsheet? Sign me up. Don't ask me about food. I'm the treasurer, remember?