Sensory Squids

To celebrate the launch of Stimtastic, I’m giving away a whole bunch of stim toys, fidget and chewy jewelry and autism-related books.

Giveaway rules:

Reblog this post to enter. If you want to signal boost without entering, just put a “signal boosting” note when you reblog. 

Maximum of 3 entries per person (1 for a comment on the blog post announcing the giveaway, 1 for a reblog on Tumblr, 1 for a comment/like on the Facebook status)

The giveaway is open to everyone (over 18 or under 18 with parental permission), including those outside the US.

Giveaway ends Monday, November 24th at 11:59 p.m. EST

Each of the photos here represents 1 giveaway item/set of items. See the photo descriptions below for details of each giveaway item/set of items. 

10 winners will be chosen at random on November 25th. The first winner chosen will get first pick of the items. The second winner can choose from the remaining items and so on. The tenth winner will receive the remaining item.

No giveaway blogs.

You must have your ask box open so I can contact you if you win and you must be willing to provide me with a shipping address (PO Box is fine).

Good luck!

Image descriptions: There are 10 images showing the items being given away.

Image 1 shows 3 stim toys: a bendable toy with a hand on each end imprinted with text that reads “flappy hands are happy hands”, a tangle Junior, and a Klix.

Image 2 shows 2 pieces of chewable silicone jewelry, a necklace with a red twist shaped pendant and a red bangle bracelet.

Image 3 shows a tin of green colored thinking putty and a green fabric covered gel stress ball.

Image 4 shows the cover of a book that is blue, features a photo of a woman swinging her purse, and reads “Nerdy Shy and Socially Inappropriate”.

Image 5 shows 2 stainless steel spinner rings, one with a black infinity symbols and one with a black arrow symbols

Image 6 shows a bracelet made of stainless steel bike chain style links in blue and silver.

Image 7  shows 5 highlighters in the shapes of large Lego-style building blocks.

Image 8 shows 2 pieces of chewable silicone jewelry, a necklace with a purple donut shaped pendant and a lime green square bangle bracelet.

Image 9 shows a necklace with a small dog pendant that has a black body and silver head and legs as well as a paracord keychain in alternating red and black pattern.

This is the best little bit of software I possess and it was free. It doesn’t just dim the screen much further than your screen will allow, it changes the colours so that their warmer and various things. Basically less of the stuff that triggers your migraines! And…dundunderr it means I can still use my laptop when I have a migraine, just! It’s called F.lux

I left the house one day without any fidget toys, so I decided to find a new one. Fortunately, I ran into a small toy store and found something that looked promising. It was called Glux. It was essentially some weird putty that changes colors when you held it in your hands. I think it’s based on the warmth of your hands.

Anyway, the packaging said it could also bounce and shatter. Sounded intriguing. So I bought one. It cost about $6.

Firstly, it was pretty fun. I wasted a lot of time playing with it. It was like pulling taffy. It came in a plastic case so you could protect it when traveling. Unfortunately, it’s a dirt magnet.

Later that day when I dropped it on the carpet, it was completely covered in fuzz and dirt. I guess my carpet sheds a lot and was a little gritty. I tried washing it and picking it out by hand, but it was no use. The Glux was a goner.

I will agree that many tip-offs can lead to being diagnosed with an overall underlying problem.

My main point was that having ‘sensory-related mild discomforts’, with, as you described in your diagram, no lasting stressful impressions on the body and psyche, do not a disorder make.

The way I’ve personally learned about it, one of the main problems with SPD is that the body fails to ‘get used to’ stimuli that a neurotypical brain learns to filter out, classify as unimportant. Like the school bell ringing, the first time this may scare someone not used to it, but in people without sensory problems, after a while it simply becomes part of the background signals no different from seeing someone wave at you or noticing you need to go to the bathroom.

Also SPD seems to manifest in a breadth of problematic types of sensory input. What you mention are for most people very basic foods we’d stuff into our faces without even noticing when we’re watching tv. Most food aversions may either be: - just never learned to get used to the flavour or texture - bad experiences with the food, the brain learns aversions for food after having gotten ill soon after consuming something very quickly (example: by father resents OJ after drinking spoiled OJ straight from the bottle as a child) - psychological preoccupations (eating disorders, spending too much time analysing a mussle in your mouth and getting grossed out instead of swallowing it down, being a strongly emotional vegetarian refusing ‘living animals’)  - individual differences in taste acquisition and experience, and different sensitivities of the protective gagging reflex (some people are just more sensitive to bitter tastes or similar ‘warnings’)  All of these may result in a few foods and flavours people just ‘don’t like’. I hate the texture of mushrooms, and I can barely swallow witlof because it’s so bitter. However, I can determine that these discomforts stem from something other than SPD, and I don’t exactly freak out if someone makes me eat my veggies. 

This vast array of explanations and wide range of how affected people may be, both in breadth and intensity, makes it quite iffy to respond to someone asking about a single quirk that they surely have SPD. Unless there’s enough other evidence backing up that there’s an underlying neurophysiological messup causing the normal habituation, stress-control and filtering systems to fail, it’s like saying someone has a clinical depression because they like to sleep in long.

To me, it’s not entertaining the possibility that’s the problem, it’s rather the misinformation and the very weak differential diagnosing that to me fails to do the people finding this a problem in their lives justice.

I will agree that many tip-offs can lead to being diagnosed with an overall underlying problem.

My main point was that having ‘sensory-related mild discomforts’, with, as you described in your diagram, no lasting stressful impressions on the body and psyche, do not a disorder make.

Okay. I usually hate doing this sort of call-out stuff, but this really got to me. Do you have SPD or a related disability? Did anyone on this blog actually say "I have mild discomfort in response to annoyances that seem to be on about the same level as anyone else's, therefore I have SPD"? Because if not please stop talking about how anyone's "reducing a real problem to quirks."

Because you know what else really, REALLY hurts people with sensory disorders and other disabilities? All the time? Being told that their issue with something that they absolutely can't tolerate is just a mild discomfort that they should be able to deal with. 

Yes, everyone likes comfy clothes. But not everyone finds "uncomfortable" clothes physically painful to the point where they can't function normally while wearing them. 

Everyone has foods they don't like. Not everyone involuntarily vomits whenever they attempt to eat a tomato. 

Everyone finds repetitive noises distracting when they are stressed or the noises are loud or they are reminded of them and can't tune them out. But, unlike the clock-hater you're complaining about, not everyone is so bothered that they can't sleep when there's a clock anywhere on the entire floor, like the person you're complaining about. If you dislike ticking clocks but can "deal with it"? Congratulations, you have a much milder problem with ticking clocks than that person has. 

I don't have SPD but do have sensory issues as a result of a disability. I am actually one of those people who will vomit if I even try to eat certain foods. And when I go to a restaurant with someone I don't know well? And they see me picking around at my food and think I'm just whiny and make fun of me and tell me "everyone has food they don't like, but it's impolite to outright refuse to eat it"? That hurts me way more than some random person saying they have SPD when they aren't quite in the "worst 5%."

If someone complains about a sensory issue that is 1) actually well outside the norm, and 2) something they haven't been able to explain and really appears to bother them? And says that they think it's sensory processing disorder? Calling them a "special snowflake" is incredibly awful. 

Just as it would be awful to respond to someone who posts to a depression blog that they haven't been able to get out of bed and are crying a lot by saying they're a "special snowflake," that everyone has that problem, that they should deal with it and stop whining, and that they're harming people with "real depression" by even suggesting that they might have it. That's about the worst possible way to respond to someone who suspects they might have a mental illness. 

Just because the symptoms they list aren't quite as exhaustive and well-described as you like, doesn't mean that they don't have a real problem. If they didn't think  they had a real problem, they wouldn't be seeking out information about whether their problem is potentially diagnosable. 

As for other things on the blog, keep in mind that it's a space for people with SPD and not everything that people say has to include conclusive proof that an issue rises to the level of a disability. "I hate tomatoes" is a lot easier to fit into a stupid internet meme than "I hate tomatoes for non-standard reasons and to a degree indicative of a sensory processing issue, as is evidenced by the following incidents in which I had an extreme negative response to a tomato." It's an SPD blog, we know from context that that's what someone means when they say they hate tomatoes.