Thoughts from a Therapist: Balancing Festive Fun and Sensory Needs
By Anna Willis, Active Play Therapies, 2 December 2024
In this month’s Thoughts from a Therapist blog, Anna Willis takes a look at the challenges of balancing fun and sensory needs throughout the festive season as well as ways of keeping her ‘social battery’ charged!
I’ve emerged from a particularly rough chest infection which served as a valuable reminder of all the sensory comforts of being well. I am more bothered by being ill as an adult than I was as a child from a sensory perspective. As an adult, I’m more in tune with my baseline status (interoceptively speaking) and when I stray from that, I find it a lot more discombobulating than when I was a child.
Speaking of discombobulation, the festive season has launched itself on us and we’re just about to dive into a period where we’re all off our regular schedules to some extent, things look different, sometimes smell different, and we find ourselves socialising with people we’re less familiar with in large groups.
Socialising can give some of us a boost, whilst for others it can drain our batteries. It can also be people-specific – individuals as well as numbers in a group. I like to use the battery metaphor with socialising – is this charging me up, or depleting me? If I know an interaction is going to deplete me, can I schedule in some downtime after? Can I control any aspects of the environment? I’ve just invested in some earplugs (Loops Engage 2 – you can hear through them but it blocks out some background noise) – mainly for mealtimes which is a really depleting time for my battery with 2 young children! But I plan to try them in other situations this December and see whether it helps slow down the draining of my social battery.
May all your festivities allow you to meet your sensory needs and support those around you to meet theirs where possible too!
Anna
PS You may also be interested in our recent blog ’10 Tips for Managing Social Pressures and Sensory Challenges During the Festive Season'. In this blog, we highlight some practical ideas for managing social pressures, fine motor tasks, and movement challenges throughout the festive period to make it a more sensory-friendly, inclusive and enjoyable one for everyone. Read the full blog here.
Thoughts From a Therapist is a regular series written by Advanced SI Practitioner Anna Willis about something that piqued her professional interest or inspired her in some way over the last month. Anna, an occupational therapist and owner of Active Play Therapies.