Category: LIGHTWATCHER STORIES

Expression is a Joy When You Can Connect

My son and I experience the spectrum differently to most people which affects the way we connect.

From January to the end of March I am struggling to see and feel enough blue light. I find it hard to process my own thoughts and what other people are saying. My 12 year old son keeps talking to me about his programming projects but unless I really focus and try super hard to understand by asking questions, the information feels like a blur to me. It struggles to get into my brain!

Then suddenly at the end of March, it as if the fog lifts. I can see and hear more clearly. However, rather ironically, when I see enough blue, my son stops seeing it. I ‘see’ this as a strained vacant expression in his eyes. He also becomes less hands on with things and appears less connected in his feet. I know he wants to take an interest in other people but he really finds it impossible to listen to any of my ramblings or suggestions! He is better playing with his friends online where the fun, humour and creativity manage to jump the gap between his desire and ability to connect.

At first when my son starts to struggle to connect, I feel all sorts of feelings – annoyance, anger and disappointment. But when I ‘get’ it, I realise these feelings are misplaced. My son is already in pain – feeling the pain of struggling to connect. He doesn’t need me adding to that. I have to accept him as he is, be patient and wait to hear his bright voice and see his quirky smile again. This will only happen when the light is more favourable for him. And lets hope that by then, it hasn’t become less favourable for me!

The Light Can be Kind, The Light Can Give, The Light Can Take Away!

I was wondering today why our 12 year old son, who has atypical spectral sensitivity, comes to life after dark but only in the middle of June and October to December! Why doesn’t he come to life after dark at other times of the year? I have been so puzzled because after all, even being colour sensitive, in the darkness, colour should no longer be an issue.

Of course, I have realised today, it is because the light has given to him or been kind to him on those days. In June, even though the light is very bright, it feels more balanced to my son and so he has a better day. He feels good and can enjoy doing more things that he is passionate about. The brightness and balance somehow inspires and energises him. So by the evening his energy is actually in credit. He has extra energy to enjoy.

In the winter, the light may not be giving so much but it feels kinder to my son. In the dimmer light, the feeling of imbalance no longer rattles him in every cell of his body, like it does at other times of the year. So by the evening he is keen to find his torch and go walking in the fields in the dark. Or he is up for a badger hunt! Or he wants to go on a late evening picnic! On these sorts of evenings we see our son as he really is – confident, chatty, energetic and full of humour. He suddenly relaxes in the kindness of the light.

How is the light treating you today? Is it being kind, giving or is it taking away?

My Power Comes from Imbalance, not Balance!

I wanted to be balanced – I really did – but that is not my destiny.

I live in a nearly continuous state of imbalance because of my reaction to the light spectrum. In fact, if the light ever feels balanced, I feel quite lost and don’t know what to do with myself!

Today for instance – another cloudy rainy day in the UK. Thankfully I perceive enough yellow light to feel open hearted. However, I don’t feel grounded (low red light), I struggle to feel I belong (low orange light), I struggle to feel support (low green light), and struggle to feel part of a team (low blue light). I always have my friend, the violet light, though, energising, inspiring and pushing me on to higher and greater things.

I can do much with my perception of yellow and violet light. I can get to the heart of things and put on my analytical creative hat. I can work with data and make deductions and build theories. I wouldn’t become the crazy analyst if the light was balanced. I am pretty sure I would be doing something a lot more mundane!

Balance is nice if you can get it but maybe a little ordinary. It is imbalance that leads you into the extra-ordinary and and if you hold its hand, it will take you on the most exciting journey!

Light-watcher Story February 22nd – Not Enough Green Light!

I wake up every morning and sense in myself what is happening with my relationship with the light, and how it is likely to affect me that day.

I have made a discovery this year about the green light. I can often find green hard to look at, and so assumed I had a tendency to see too much green light. However, I have come to realise that sometimes I don’t see enough. Just now in February as the light is not at its brightest, and I perceive a lot of blue and violet light, I don’t see enough green.

As I feel green light in my shoulder, neck and jaw, seeing too little green light can leave me feeling pretty crabby! I feel that I can’t relax my neck and shoulders and I have pain under my occiput. And worse than that, my sensitivities are heightened through the roof. I particularly can’t tolerate the sound of the taps in our house and today listening to my husband take a shower, felt like torture. I tried putting music on, moving somewhere else in the house, but nothing worked. I felt the sound like a drill in my head, sending a jangled feeling all through my body.

Even writing this post, I feel jangled by the sound of my keys and the light from the screen.

The good thing is though that I know now that my most jangled days are when I see less green light. And knowledge is power.

The hard thing is asking for help on a day when I struggle to feel support. And my day feels all about survival. How do you live in a house where there are everyday noises when you feel so sensitive?

I don’t like dragging people down into my problems. I like my family to be happy and to have a calm home. But on days when my sensitivities are extreme, the most I can hope for is that we support each other and help each other through our feelings of helplessness.

It is not my sensitivities that nearly break me on the low green light days. It is having to let go of my pride and my need to make everything OK and everyone happy all the time. I have to feel enough in my broken state.

Atypical Spectral Sensitivity and Autism

As a visionary, my daily experience is seeing mine and other people’s energy and this gives me clues as to what might be going on at a deeper level in myself and with other people. I have been observing people’s energy for 20 years now and I feel particularly drawn to observe the energy of people with autism.

I have seen the same pattern over and over again. The pattern I see is low energy in a person’s legs, low energy around a person’s heart but a lot of energy around a person’s head, neck and shoulders. I have wondered what this means. Why is a person not feeling their heart energy or their grounded energy?

After studying my reaction to the light in some depth over the last 3 years, I now believe I have some answers. We need to perceive enough red light to feel grounded. We need to perceive enough yellow light to feel emotionally connected. If we don’t perceive enough red and/or yellow light, it changes who we are.

With poor perception of red light, we don’t feel anchored and struggle to feel safe. This is why we become anxious and change feels scary.

With poor perception of yellow light, we feel less emotionally connected than others. We can still feel but we struggle to feel deeply. We need greater intensity to feel enough and then the greater intensity feels too much because we are not grounded.

We therefore seek a lot of intensity in our thoughts, which explains the energy I see around people’s heads. I believe this is related our perception of blue and violet light.

We become adept at sorting through concepts and ideas and we enjoy making connections with our thinking because we are struggling to make connections emotionally. We use ideas and concepts like hugs. We replay actions and thoughts because they are comforting to us. It is our way of connection.

I speak as if I am autistic but I am not. I do have atypical spectral sensitivity, though, and know how it feels to struggle with connection.

To read more about mine and my son’s journey with atypcial spectral sensitivity please take a look at my book.

Living by the Colours I See in the Light: The Joys and Challenges of Having Atypical Spectral Sensitivity

Anxiety – Does it all Really Come from Within?

If you had asked me the question – “Does all anxiety come from within?” a few years ago I would have said “Yes” without hesitation. And as a result of thinking this, I have had a lot of therapy and worked long and hard with my self development, expecting to resolve my insecure anxious feelings and thoughts.

A Story

Today I woke up feeling bright and breezy and decided it would be a good day to go with my family to a small seaside town and play mini-golf. Now, for our complicated family, it is amazing to just get out of the door, let alone make it down to the beach and participate in an activity! But I felt the light was good, my energy felt good and it was worth giving it a try.

As soon as I decided to go out, I felt my anxiety levels raise. I started thinking about all the things we needed – rucksacks, juice, chocolate, tissues, paracetemol . . .! I then told myself that this was just like any trip for us. We would take the same things for an appointment at the hairdressers! So I relaxed a bit. But I noticed I still didn’t feel as grounded as I had felt when I first got up. My legs were a bit achy and physical tasks like carrying things around the house were starting to feel difficult. I then realised the light had changed – I was perceiving less red light than when I first woke up. I wondered if I still really felt like going out. But of course, with a 12 year old who is excited about the prospect of mini-golf by the seaside, you don’t really get a choice. With the suggestion comes a commitment!

So . . I committed and off we went! When we arrived, I felt the same as I had done at home – happy, pleased to be alive but ungrounded. How does this feel? Well . . it feels like my legs aren’t as substantial as the rest of me. This feeling used to make me feel insecure but it doesn’t any more because I recognise it and understand it. At the seaside today, I knew I was safe and all was well and it was this knowing that I depended on. The real give away with how my perception of the light affected me, was just how much my legs ached when I had to climb lots of steps to get to the golf course. I felt as if I had run a marathon in the last 3 days, it was so painful. Also, when the energy is low in my legs, I have a tendency to pull muscles in my knees so I have to be super careful how I I use my legs and the rest of my body.

At the mini-golf I felt just OK. When you don’t feel grounded, it is harder to feel more than OK sometimes. it takes a distraction like seeing an amazing gull or getting a hole in one to feel more than OK. This feeling of just being OK can raise the alarm that something isn’t right but I am used to the feeling now and just stay calm and go with it. As I say, I know I am safe and that all is well.

My son, who is 12, has a similar experience to me. As he is a child and not always thinking rationally, small things can knock him off balance emotionally, and have massive impact on him physically. After the game of golf, we decided to go to the fish shop which was at the bottom of a very steep hill. I could see the pain on my son’s face as he walked down the hill, and the fear in his eyes that he might not make it back to the car. I remember this feeling so well from when I was a child. I would sometimes feel that I could not walk another step. But there is nothing wrong with our legs. Having rested a little on the drive home, my son got out the car and ran to check on his pet doves. I just got on with life as normal.

Not being grounded and having low energy in our legs does affect our daily life but it affects us much more when we try to go out and have some fun!

Anxiety definitely doesn’t always come from within. Sometimes we don’t know what is affecting us. We just know we don’t feel right. If that is how you feel, maybe it is time you start examining your relationship with the light!

We Can’t Really Find Connection. We Simply Have Connection!

Passionate about healing, I have always had ‘connection’ in my sights. I have been blessed enough to have a lot of insight about connection and disconnection and felt that in time it would all come together and I would feel truly connected.

However, this wasn’t to be my destination. I had to learn that no matter how much I healed, was self aware, stayed present with myself, none of it was enough.

I am not just me or not just me in relationship to others. I am also me in relationship to my environment. And this is where I get to feel what it is not to be in control. I can’t sort this relationship with my environment through therapy or self development. No, I have to surrender to it.

As a farmer has to surrender to their relationship with the weather and a fisherman to their relationship with the ocean, I have to surrender to my relationship with the light. I have to let it shape me and change me and bring out all the power that is within me.

I can’t choose to get up and ‘be’ creative. The light will make me creative or not make me creative. I can’t get up and choose to be a home-maker. The light will make me a home maker or not a home-maker. I can’t get up and choose to be a truth speaker or a leader. The light will lead me there or not lead me there. I am not in control. I can’t choose to connect with my emotions or with my intuition or with my more physical energy. And I can’t choose total connection.

Today I don’t perceive enough red or yellow light. This means that I can’t be really grounded or really emotionally connected, no matter how hard I try. I do perceive a lot of ultraviolet light that is giving me the energy to write this and a lot of orange light that is driving me to speak my truth.

Many of us are looking for total connection. We try to find it through yoga or exercise or the latest cleansing diet or using our breath. There is nothing wrong with these things but the truth is that there is no such thing as total connection when we are looking simply inside ourselves. We can try to apply all the latest health technology and fill ourselves with the latest super foods and vitamins and minerals but we will not find our place of total connection.

Connection is found in trust. When I can’t feel all the connectedness I want, I have to trust – I have to believe that connection is there.

Connection is found in knowing. When you can’t ‘feel connection,’ that can be frightening, make you insecure, and be disorientating. Knowing is FAITH that connection simply is there. It is more real than anything we can try to create or think we have.

No . . we can’t really find connection. We simply HAVE connection!