The light is more blue than usual for December.
You may be feeling:
Very single minded, a bit detached, a bit lonely, a bit flitty in your thinking.
Suggestions:
Find meaningful ways to connect with others and let you voice out – what you really think and feel. Follow the thread of your thoughts and ideas and see what wonderful place they lead you to.
Our home improvements continue . . . the aim being more about feeling better than the house looking better . . . but I am open to both!
My last post was about the wonder of our white walls and how they help me to think clearly and feel brighter.
Well, today, our carpet arrived and the sudden new colour had quite a surprising reaction from me. To describe it . . . it is a sort of beige with a white speck like a highlight . . not an unusual colour for a carpet at all. It was my son who chose the colour. I would have had something a little more gold with a little more red in it. But no . . my son didn’t want to see any red. It had to be this carpet.
When I first went into our sitting-room I noticed the texture and the colour both at once and I felt like I was at the beach! I decided to be open-minded and realised the beach feeling was OK. I somehow felt lighter yet grounded at the same time. Our last carpet was a dark browny red and I realised it had made me feel stodgy and overly grounded. It has contributed to feeling that I work so hard but never get quite to where I want to go. I am staying earth-borne when I want to be air-borne. With out new carpet i feel like I might be able to fly after all!
The other noticeable thing was that I felt initially that the beige took something away from my snow-cave white walls. I felt as if any yellow or green was not allowed in our room. But when I checked out my samples for the slightly goldy beige curtains and settees I could see that yellow and green had something to say to me. They were telling me that I need them. I have noticed over the days of living in my snow cave that although enjoying being so clear thinking I felt a little emotionally detached. Seeing the extra colours come into the room I feel more in my heart and it feels right.
I really struggle with the medium frequencies of orange, yellow and green. They can appear off balance, too bright, too dull, as the season pass by. But I still need them and maybe I can take them in through other colours like beige and gold and this becomes easier within the context of my white snow cave!
If you would like to know more about my experience of colour sensitivity and how to help yourself feel better by gaining a greater understanding of your relationship with colour you might like to have a look at my book.
Firstly I don’t do know if I am a tetrachromat or not but I certainly see a lot of colours!
And there is something about doing a jigsaw puzzle with snow that really gets me going! I love working with the different shades of white. I can’t do the puzzle on a cloudy day – when I can’t pick up all the light frequencies – only a day when there is enough blue and violet light around to make the whites ‘sing’.
Hi,
I haven’t blogged much this year as life has been so crazy that I just didn’t know where to start!
In the last year and a half my life has been turned upside down and it all started when I realised I have a very strange experience of seeing colour and seasonal light change. And just to make things a whole lot more complicated my son, who is 11, has something similar but even more extreme!
Essentially we don’t seem to be seeing a balanced spectrum and when we don’t see a particular frequency well we can’t enjoy looking at a colour that has that frequency in it. For instance we have blue curtains in our lounge and they look OK to me in the summer when I can see clearly blue and green in the light. However in the winter I see less blue and so they appear more green. This imbalance sets off all sorts of nervous system symptoms that I am just not in control of.
The more I have unraveled this conundrum the more amazed and scared I have been. How do I live in the world when I can’t always engage with colour? ‘I must find solutions’ has been my constant thinking. I can dress according to the light and eat food according to the light. This has helped a lot. Then I have sorted out cupboards and drawers and nearly exhausted Ikea’s supply of Sockerbit white boxes! If I can’t see it, my heart can’t grieve over it! And finally we are neutralising our house and not leaving one stone unturned. I am even replacing 32 sockets (well, someone is!) with sockets that have no red on the switches. Our home isn’t going to be bland though. I still need the colours of wood and a few paintings but I need a lot of white – as long as it is the right white – and I can’t see blue, green or grey in it and my son can’t see red in it!
We don’t yet know how all of this will change our lives but every time something dark leaves our house and this week it was fourteen 60’s brown doors (!) I see my son look a little lighter and I feel a little lighter too. I used to find solace in a lot of colour and pattern. I thought I found it comforting but how wrong was I?
Comfort comes from being in the ‘right’ place with the ‘right’ things and the ‘right’ people. Transforming our home is going to be a big change but I think I am happy to relinquish the clutter and be laid bare!
Today we went for a walk with our ten year old son. We went to a beautiful park where there were walk ways and water and ducks and lots of lovely places to scoot. I was in a very ‘connecting’ mood and pretty happy as long as everyone was living on a feeling level!
We were just on our way back to the car when we discovered a new piece of path. There were brick walls either side and it was like an old railway embankment. The walls weren’t straight though. They were leaning backwards at about a 10 degree angle. As soon as I stepped onto this path. I felt discomfort. Where had my happy, secure feelings gone? I told myself it was just a bit of new path – something to get excited by, not scared of. However the feelings continued. I just didn’t like the brick walls. I think it was the angle that disturbed me. My brain just couldn’t seem to process what my eyes were seeing. My chest felt tight and my energy felt displaced. I really didn’t want to continue but my son was so happy scooting and my husband so happy exploring that I did. The only way out at the end of the path was a gate to a very busy road so we turned round and came back. This time I didn’t look at the walls. I just looked at the ground in front of me and although I felt restricted, I felt so much better.
Now at home writing this 2 hours later I am still processing my experience of the walls. When I was there my chest was tight. When I was driving home the tightness moved to my lower back. Now it is as if the feeling is trying to move out through my hips.
5 Minutes Later . . .
Amazingly when I looked for pictures to go with this post and I found the one above, the pain cleared from my hips and I felt I could breathe again. Part of me didn’t want to look at the picture but part of me found it healing. it was somehow a relief to see the big picture of the sloping wall. I could now see at as part of the overall environment that it is rooted in. My brain at last could make sense of what my eyes had seen and my body could relax.
Thought . . .
We can spend a lot time focusing on every little detail of our life and trying to make it whole. However when we see the big picture we can relax and trust that although the details don’t seem to add up, wholeness can still be present.
So . . . wholeness isn’t dependent on every little detail being correct Keep looking at the big picture and a feeling a wholeness may surprise you!
Hi everyone,
I have been investigating the relationship between light/colour sensitivity and sensory processing disorder.
My son and I both have an usual experience of seeing the coloured light waves in the atmosphere and we both have sensory processing disorder. The way we see light affects our perception of colour and can give us multiple nervous system symptoms. By understanding what we see we are able to minimise unpleasant symptoms and better enjoy our relationship with light.
I have put all our experiences and insights into my new book ” I Can’t Sit on That Red Chair!” I hope you find it helpful.
Click to Buy at Amazon – paperback
There are times when the only thing that resonates with you comes from you. On those days everything around you feels too much for you.
Today everything around me is too much and if I was to describe the ‘too much’ I would have to relive it and that would be TOO much!
This is how it is being Highly Sensitive. Some people call it a disorder or a disease. For me it has become a way of life. 🙂
How frustrating it must be for people who aren’t highly sensitive to watch and try to interpret the behaviours of the highly sensitive!
My husband and I are always having a discussion about when is anxiety really anxiety when it comes to high sensitivity.
To discuss this here lets first define anxiety
A definition I found:-
“a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.”
I would add that when we are anxious we experience physiological changes in our bodies causing us to feel and think in a certain way.
The other day we took our son aplaca walking. I knew I was allergic to horses so don’t go horse riding but I thought I would test out alpacas to see if I was ok with them. I felt pretty good walking them so assumed I had no serious allergy. Then when we went back to the farm to return the alpacas, there was a horse standing between me and the alpaca enclosure! My first thought was “Oh if I get near the horse, it will nullify my alpaca allergy test.” So I stopped in my tracks and expressed my concern. I didn’t feel I had much time so I knew I would need to send some anxiety signals to people. This is quite simple. I just make my movements jerky and my eyes big. Inside I was as calm as a cucumber but nobody knew! Having deliberately moved 4 paces back from the horse I then calmly suggested to my husband he go and enjoy his cup of tea while I sit in the car.
I often use this anxiety signal trick. I use it when my husband says he is going to clean the bathroom sink with caustic soda! He says it has no smell but he clearly doesn’t have my brain! I have to alert him quickly that there is a problem and get him to take it seriously. My son uses this trick and probably learnt it from me. If a window is open and my son feels a fly may come in, he feels he has very little time to get the desired result of me closing the window. He has to react now and it has to be dramatic. “Oh no, the window – close it!” he squeals at the top of his voice. Or “Just get that crust off my plate!” He knows the crust won’t hurt him but something about it makes him uncomfortable so he has to send a signal. I know essentially he is calm because two seconds later he is smiling and chatty.
So my secret is out!! Me and my son turn up the drama deliberately to get our needs met. I don’t think this is dishonest though. It comes from a place of desperation, a sense of knowing just how hard it is for us to live in the world with all the sensory stimuli around us. And it saves us lots of explanations and lots of words and lots of time.
So next time you see a highly sensitive person seemingly over-react, look deep into their soul. Are they really anxious or are they just sending an anxiety signal to get the help they need?
How can you be tested to find the right coloured tints for yourself when you have an extreme sensitivity to colour?
When I was tested by an Irlen diagnostician I had quite an extreme reaction to most of the lenses. Just picking them up in my hands I would feel a change in my nervous system. This could be anything from a knot in my gut to tightness in my arms.
In my first diagnostic I felt really fortunate to find one pair of lenses that I didn’t react to – more than that, they felt pretty good – so I purchased them. I waited 2 weeks for my lenses and when they arrived they still felt good.
A month passed and my glasses started not feel so good . It felt like the light had changed as it was later in the summer now so I went through the process again. And like the last time, I found one pair of tints that worked for me with the light. 4 months later they didn’t feel so good. We were well into the light of Autumn. I found myself going through the process again. And true to form I found one pair of tints that worked.
So . . . now I had 3 pairs of glasses and I decided to record the days when I could wear them. After charting for a while I was disappointed to see that there were lots of days when they didn’t feel right. It felt as if there was some sort of interference but I didn’t know what.
After a winter of no glasses we arrived in spring and the days started to get brighter. I felt quite defeated, I started to talk about the blue light and how it was bothering me. This was when my husband suggested I get some glasses to block the blue light. I went on Amazon and looked at the array of blue blocking glasses. I thought ‘How would these ever work with me as I am so super sensitive?’ I chose a random pair in a random style somewhat half-heartedly. They arrived the next day and I was really scared to try them knowing how bad it can feel if I wear the wrong Irlen glasses. but nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I dared to put them on. I was pretty amazed that I actually wanted to keep them on! Things looked very clear and I felt more alive somehow like I was suddenly watching TV in high definition.
I now have 3 pairs of blue blocking glasses – one for more violet days, one for more blue days and one for warmer dimmer lights. They all eliminate all of the unpleasant symptoms that I have been suffering with for many years. They are all just glasses that I bought off the shelf that I tried and tested myself.
Whereas the Irlen glasses seemed to warm things up and bring out the reds, the blocking glasses block the blues. This eliminates my unpleasant symptoms and allows me to take in all the red I need. From my experience I am deducing that I naturally see too much blue and violet. This can happen at any time of the year. Irlen glassses only work occasionally as I am just too sensitive to the changing lightwaves. Blue blockers work in the spring sometimes and are amazing in the snow!
I have always suffered with separation anxiety and still do as an adult but slowly slowly I am finding my way through the complex maze that is this condition.
For me the anxiety is that bad that I haven’t wanted my husband to go out to the corner shop or the doctors without me. I have trailed along here, there and everywhere because I have been too afraid to be by myself.
I have wanted to change but just haven’t been able to make that first step.
But this year I decided to have a play with the anxiety, to try to test its boundaries and get inside it to find its heart.
The first thing I decided to do was to make sure my husband recognises it as a real problem. If we run out of onions and he says “I could always go up the corner shop but there again you probably won’t let me out.” then we have lost before we have started. In the same way if he goes out and comes back 10 minutes later and I say I struggled and he laughs because to him it is funny to miss someone in such a short time, then we have no where to go from here. I feel humiliated and guilty and the pattern starts once more. I must say at this point that my husband is possibly the kindest man on the planet so if he has misunderstood my needs I know it is because he is human.
So . . I explained to my husband that the anxiety is obviously a problem, otherwise we would have had a very different lifestyle a long time ago.
Next I decided on a realistic step. When I look out of my work room at home I can see into the next street (a gap between some houses) and by road this a 10 minute walk from our house. I thought it would be fun if my husband walked to that spot and then waves at me. We tried to add the fun of the tracker on his phone but unfortunately we couldn’t get this to work. My husband left the house, I timed 10 minutes and then sure enough there he was waving at me from our chosen spot.
How did I feel in those 10 minutes? Empowered, confident, happy!
Where do I go from here? I don’t know yet? I gave up guilt when I admitted I had the condition and so there is no standard to achieve for me to feel good enough. We will go where the adventure takes us.
The important elements in taking that first step were HONESTY, SINCERITY, KNOWING AND ASKING FOR MY NEEDS, PLAYFULNESS . . . AND BEING PREPARED TO MOVE FORWARDS ONE STEP AT A TIME!
So . . what is at the heart of separation anxiety . . . . I think, a feeling that you are silly because you don’t like being by yourself!
