My Boat in Life
In this post I am going to compare my life and how I feel in different situations to a boat and how it handles different situations. The phrase that keeps coming to mind when I think of this is from Ephesians 4:14 "tossed about by every wind of doctrine". Now, I am not tossed around by doctrine, because I am solid in my faith, but if you were to replace doctrine with social life and interactions, that is exactly how I feel in my life.
When I am at home alone it is like I am in my calm little harbour or even in my boathouse, secure and safe, or tied up to the dock and safe from drifting away. I can control almost everything in that situation, including the sound levels and lights levels. My sensory information intake is very much under my control, for the most part.
When I leave the house on a "mission", whether it is work or running errands, I have my small little motor that helps me accomplish the tasks needed. Now, the motor in my brain may be weak or strong, depending on how I am feeling and how overwhelmed I feel. Each day has different social weather conditions. It may be quiet and easy to navigate or it may be loud and busy with strong winds and waves, making it harder for my little brain motor to get anywhere.
When I am in a social interaction or social situation, it is like my motor is off, because I don't have a "mission" or task that I am focused on accomplishing. I am just sitting in the water and drifting with the wind and waves. I need something or someone to be my anchor during those social interactions so that I don't drift away and be controlled by the winds and waves of sensory overload.
An anchor can be physical touch that helps to anchor me, both physical and mentally. It could also be something that takes my attention and helps to block out the rest of what is going on.
Some examples are: Holding hands so that I feel anchored and not alone in the middle of a situation. Having someone in particular to focus on solely while in a crowd of people, especially if there is human contact involved, like taking care of kids or babies. That gives me a mission in middle of a social interaction, so my brain motor can actually start to work and guide me.
It can also be something that takes my mind out of the situation entirely, like listening to a podcast or playing a game on my phone. This means that my interaction with the social situation is mostly turned off and the motor of my brain is busy in another area, not where my body actually is. Sometimes even watching TV in a waiting room can do this, like happened recently while my car was getting an oil change. I wasn't paying attention to anything else around me for a while and my brain was able to block out most of the surrounding noise for the duration of the episode. The "weather conditions" were more tumultuous than if I had been watching the same episode at home, but it helped me to have something to focus on during that time.
I used to have a few of these anchors to help me in social situations, but recent life changes for me and others means that most of those anchors are not available to me anymore and I don't know how to replace them. This means that I am not going out into the vast ocean of social interactions as often right now because I don't have the anchors needed to help me. I am staying closer to home more often now because the vast ocean of social interactions brings with it strong winds and waves of sensory overload that I struggle in dealing with. If my brain gets too worn out from sensory overload, then it takes lots of time and effort to repair it enough to be able to handle even basic things, like work and errands or even handling the minor waves that make it into my private harbour at home.