In psychology, the term “disorder” is typically reserved for describing cases where the manifestations of a particular condition have reached a point where they directly impair a person’s everyday functioning. For example, experiencing a major bout of depression will certainly make one’s life more difficult, but a diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder will depend on demonstrating that one’s depressive symptoms are having long-term negative effects on one’s ability to work, form and maintain relationships and care for oneself.
For another example, we can refer to a diagnosis that has appeared on our blog before: Sensory Processing Disorder, or SPD. In brief, SPD refers to a condition of the brain where a heightened sensitivity to environmental stimuli leads regularly to adverse and disproportionate emotional and/or physical reactions to the point where, as before, the sufferer’s everyday functioning is impaired; hence, “disordered” sensory processing.
But suppose a similar effect was achieved not by disordered sensory processing, but rather by one’s sensory processing working a bit too well?
You see, while from the outside it appears that Sensory Processing Disorder is an excess of sensitivity to external stimuli, neurologically speaking the disordered processing is the brain’s struggle to properly integrate its sensory input among the various structures responsible for processing, which is to say it’s primarily an issue of communication between different parts of the brain.
Sensory Processing Sensitivity as Part of Sensory Processing Disorder is, strictly speaking, not a pathology at all; rather it is a body of language and research that presupposes environmental sensitivity (ES) as possibly a genetically inherited trait that describes the degree to which a person is receptive and responsive to environmental stimuli. Higher ES is characterized by things like heightened cognizance of subtle details in the environment (science-speak for “notices things others may miss”), easily getting overstimulated, and stronger emotional reactions (positive or negative) to environmental stimuli, among other things.
Astute readers may be noticing some overlap between high SPS and other presentations we work with at Dr. Sacarin Listening Center, such as misophonia or autism, but SPS itself is understood to be an adaptive trait found in over 100 species, and is theorized to have developed as a survival mechanism (presumably in a much quieter, pre-modern world). Research into SPS divides people into three rough categories corresponding to “low,” “medium” and “high” sensitivity; research from the UK estimates that roughly 30% of adults from that country are in the “highly sensitive” category. It is also important to note that while there are superficial similarities in presentation to pathologies like Autism Spectrum Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, research has shown that high SPS manifests among different structures and pathways in the brain from either of those, in addition to many others one might assume have a correlation, such as schizophrenia.
All to say, rather than being a “disorder” in the conventional sense, SPS is simply a fundamental aspect of living for the species that possess it, which naturally include humans. Which itself is to say that while high SPS in a highly stimulating environment can predispose one to stress and poor health (and, by extension, disorders associated with those), the opposite is also true: nurturing, low-stimulus environments have been shown to provide benefits to highly sensitive people.
Something Can Be Done to Help with Sensory Sensitivities
Now it’s all well and good that suffering the negative effects of being highly sensitive to environmental stimuli do not in themselves demonstrate that something in particular is wrong with you – but what does that matter to the one who is suffering? What can be done?
Naturally there are many different approaches to easing the suffering that may result from being highly sensitive in what is, at times, a brutally overstimulating world. From our point of view, since like misophonia there is not quite a single “condition” that can be “cured” as such, one of the best and most universal strategies for dealing with high SPS would be building resiliency. Building resiliency is something you hear about from us a lot, because it is a primary focus of the treatments that we specialize in at our clinic, including the Tomatis method, which is focused on training the brain to communicate more effectively with itself, reducing the cognitive load of everyday tasks and freeing up more resources for functioning at the peak of one’s abilities.
If you have been feeling that the baseline stress level provided by your environment is inhibiting your full potential, then it’s worth perusing our website and sending along an inquiry to see if the methods we have available at Dr. Sacarin Listening Center might be a good fit for you. Please read more about how we help at: Sensory Processing Disorder
