Sensory Integration Education

These tips for coping with anxiety are kindly provided by Anna Willis, Occupational Therapist and Advanced SI Practitioner. There are proven links ^1,2,3 between sensory integration difficulties and heightened anxiety and depression. With some insight into how your sensory processing can contribute to or calm your anxiety, you can learn techniques to help your or your child better manage feelings of anxiety.

1. Learn to Listen to Your Body (Interoception)

Interoception helps you understand and feel what is going on inside your body. People with sensory integration or sensory processing difficulties may struggle to interpret these signals. For example, they may not recognise that their breathing is fast and shallow or that they are uncomfortable because they are too hot. Interoceptive difficulties are also linked with trouble recognising what emotion you are experiencing.

Building interoception skills is often a good place to start with helping your child to cope with anxiety. Talk your child through how your body feels when in different emotional states. Describe to them, and listen, how their body feels when they start to feel worried. 

Bring awareness to how your body and their body feels in different emotional states. The first stage for the child is to recognise “I’m starting to feel worried”. This needs to happen before we expect a child to be able to put in place any self-regulation strategies. Find a simple outline of a body (lots of free body maps online) and help your child to express how their body is feeling and bring awareness to this (e.g. sweaty palms, tingly, butterflies in tummy, difficulty swallowing, racing thoughts, feeling sick, headache, tummy pain).

I find Kelly Mahler’s Interoception Curriculum resources are invaluable. 

2. Identify Anxiety Triggers

Identify triggers that make your child shift from feeling okay to anxious. Talking about their sensory sensitivities can help identify triggers. For example: Are they sensitive to loud noise? Busy places? Having their nails or hair cut? Going in a lift? Work out the sensory bases of these triggers: if they dislike hand dryers – is it really the noise or are they worried it may burn them? From there, you can also start to plan how to adapt the environment and daily schedules to meet their needs. 

3. Build A Calming Toolkit

Collaborate with your child to build a toolkit of ideas and items that they can use to help themselves feel calmer when they notice that they are beginning to feel anxious. Make sure to include a good mix of sensory strategies that help their specific sensitivities that you have identified. For example, if noisy environments make them nervous, your child can wear headphones or ear protectors. Your toolkit could include items such as favourite fidget toys, chewing gum, crunchy snacks, a cool drink, a calming scent or hand cream. To remember what activities help calm you or your child, it may help to have these written down (or a picture of the activity) as a prompt in your toolkit. Regulating activities may include movement break activities, going for a walk, playing with Lego, drinking a thick smoothie through a straw, reading a book or even having a cuddle.

4. Plan Movement (Proprioception) Breaks Into Your Day

Leading on from above, proprioception is too important to not have its own category! Proprioception is our body’s sense of its own movement and position. Proprioceptive input (movement) is the cornerstone of sensory regulation. Make sure the calming toolkit contains enough proprioceptive ideas. And schedule regular proprioceptive breaks into your or your child’s day. For younger children this can be climbing at a playground, riding to school on their scooter or jumping on a trampette. For older children and teens or adults, this can include gym equipment (indoor or outdoor), carrying a heavy bag, resistance exercises with a theraband or yoga.

5. Learn Breathing Techniques That Work for You

Breathe: remember to breathe! The physiological benefits of slowing down your breathing are incredibly powerful. Breathing techniques are crucial to learn for all ages. For younger children, it’s helpful to make it into a little game. Bubble mixture is your friend here. Ask the child to count 3 seconds while they breathe in, then breathe out to blow bubbles for 5 seconds. Other strategies for younger children include blowing bubbles through a straw into a bowl or cup of water, or creating an inflatable glove toy! Mindfulness exercises on breathing can help older children and teens - there are lots of apps and websites that guide you through these exercises. 

Using strategies that use touch can help give breathing a focus, such as lazy 8 breathing (from the Zones of Regulation) where you trace an 8 with your finger, breathing in on one half, and out on the other half. It’s best to encourage breathing out for longer than you breathe in for maximum physiological benefit.

Remember: all these tips will work best if adapted to your client's specific sensory needs. You can learn more about sensory differences in this free course: Discover Sensory Processing and Integration.

References

1. _{Engel-Yeger, B., & Dunn, W., Exploring the Relationship between Affect and Sensory Processing Patterns in Adults. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 2011; 74(10), 456-464. doi.org/10.4276/030802211X13182481841868}
2. _{Lane S. J., Reynolds S., Thacker L. Sensory over-responsivity and ADHD: Differentiating using electrodermal responses, cortisol, and anxiety. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. 2010;4(8) doi: 10.3389/fnint.2010.00008.}
3. _{Serafini, G., Gonda, X., Canepa, G., Pompili, M., Rihmer, Z., Amore, M., & Engel-Yeger, B. (2017). Extreme sensory processing patterns show a complex association with depression, and impulsivity, alexithymia, and hopelessness. Journal of Affective Disorders, 210, 249-257. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.12.019}