Sensory Processing: Just the facts

What is Sensory Processing?

In school, you might have learned about five of the senses your body has.  These are sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.  Your body uses these senses to take in information about the outside world and from within your own body.  This information travels to your brain where it is organised so you can respond to it. For example, if the clock alarm goes off, your hearing will catch the sound and your brain will tell you what to do – it is time to wake up!

The senses help our body by protecting it from danger and by making it feel comfortable.

Job 1- Protection: The senses help us to survive by avoiding danger. For example, your sense of smell will alert you to the smell of fire or food that’s gone off so you avoid these.  If the information from the senses triggers your brain to think you are in danger, then your body will kick in to survival mode – this is often referred to as fight, flight or freeze mode.

Your brain could order your body to defend itself, to escape or just make you stop in your tracks, depending on what’s happening or about to happen.  This will happen on automatically without you even realising as your brain takes over your actions to avoid the danger.

Job 2 – Feeling comfortable:  This is scientifically known as homeostasis – this means to keeping your body comfortable from the inside.  The easiest way to think about this is to think how your body will automatically sweat when you are too hot to cool you down.  Our senses also work to keep us comfortable when receiving information from the outside world.  If we are trying to concentrate but we are in a noisy place, we might move to somewhere quieter instead.

These are both normal processes that every human body does however everybody’s brain works in a slightly different way. For example, you might find a meal too spicy but your best friend might find that same meal tastes just right. This is called Sensory Processing.

We all have different ways of processing sensory information –there’s no right or wrong though.  This is what creates our likes and dislikes too for things like food and drink, colours, smells, music and temperature.  It would get really boring if we all liked the same things!

There are also three other senses that the body has that might not have been covered in school.  These are:

Sensory Regulation

Some people can feel ‘too much’ or ‘too little’ sensory information and these differences happen because of something called sensory modulation. This can be explained as a ‘button’ in our brains that is pushed when we are feeling enough of a sensation so it is noticed by our brain.

At the same time, our brains work hard to process this information so we can feel comfortable with it. For example, when listening to music, how loud does it need to be for you to hear it? You might need to turn the volume up or down until it is just right for you! This is called sensory regulation and we all do this all the time, every day.

For some young people and adults, the brain doesn’t modulate in the same way.

Sometimes, the brain might keep a lot more information and this may leave you feeling overstimulated/overwhelmed.  If your brain is taking ‘too much’ information at once, then you might start avoiding sensations for example, loud noises or clothing with labels on. This is often called sensory avoiding.

Other times, the brain might dismiss too much information which can leave that person feeling ‘too little’ and almost sleepy.  If your brain is sieving out too much information then you might start to look for more stimulation yourself.  This is often called sensory seeking and might be you moving in some way like twiddling, rocking, tapping, flapping or spinning to get more sensory input.

Both these situations can lead to some sensory challenges:

To feel comfortable with our own body and environments we might need to ‘turn up’ or ‘turn down’ some of our sensations so we can feel ‘just right’. You can do this by following the sensory advice below.

Sensory advice

Be curious about your senses.  Notice what you are doing and how it makes you feel.  We are often on auto-pilot so it’s worth asking yourself questions, for example do you like the room to be light or dark? Warm or cold?  Patterned or plain?

Note down what makes you feel good.  Also note down what you don’t like.  Remember there is no right or wrong, it’s just your sensory lens and how your senses make you feel.

What can you do to adapt things to suit you?  For example, if labels in clothes feel itchy, can you cut them out?  If loud noises feel too much for your ears, can you wear headphones or move away from the noise.

Do you do certain things to make you feel more awake and alert? What do you to make yourself feel calm?

What you can tolerate is known as your Window of Tolerance. Click here to watch an animation by Tracy Farrell which explains all about the Window of Tolerance.

How to get help

If you have any more questions on this area or would like to speak to somebody about this topic, have a look at the links or search for your local services in the blue box below. Alternatively, you can always contact your school nurse.

• w: A Sensory Life!
  
• w: SPIRAL Foundation
  
• w: Sensory Recources
  

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