I’m still waiting for my Irlens glasses . . . meanwhile I am trying to learn all I can about my experience of colour and light.
Yesterday was a hot sunny day. My son who is 9 and also has Irlens Syndrome decided he wanted to go to the beach. I thought ‘Well, this is the first time we have been to the beach since our Irlens diagnosis so it might be interesting!’
We arrived at the bustling seaside town of Lyme Regis (our nearest coastal town) and I had worn a fleece and a summer beany because I am always cold and feel shivery in the sun. As soon as I got out of the car I realised that in my effort to stay warm I had forgotten to bring a hat with a brim to shelter me from the sunlight so our first stop was the hat shop! From a small collection of hats on a stand outside a little seaside store I chose a hat. I wouldn’t usually choose anything so quickly but the light from the sun felt unbearable and the buzz on the prom and the nearby icecream store was beginning to jangle me. There was no mirror, it was slightly too large but my husband said it looked good and I had no intention of taking it off so we bought it!
Under the refuge of my hat I still needed to find shade so we went up into the park that rises steeply and looks out over the sea. It is a considerable slope and there were many steps to climb. My legs felt like lead. Strange – they were fine when I got up that morning. Ah, it must have been the light. When we reached our shady spot I felt relieved. I looked out over the bay and thought about the colours. The blue sky was ok to me through my sunglasses that have a brown tint. The sea I could tell was a gorgeous combination of blues and deep turquoises but my reaction did not match my perception. I felt unmoved by the colours. They were ok to me probably because of their luminescence – otherwise I may I felt repelled by them. I then thought about how I felt in other ways. I felt very ungrounded and pretty disconnected with myself and my family. I felt like everything was too big – the sea, the sky – and I asked myself the question ‘What am I doing there if it doesn’t make me happy?’
By this time I wanted to go home but my son reminded me that we had to go to the beach. Oh no, I looked down at the beach and all the buzz and colours and the walk in the bright sunlight to get there . . . and then I conceded that I would give it a try.
When we had climbed down the slope and reached the streets running adjacent to the beach I felt ok but when we arrived at the beach itself I was amazed to find that the sand looked glary to me – sandy coloured and glary! Why had I never noticed this before? So many times I haven’t been happy on a beach but I hadn’t realised that it was the colour. It looked miles down to the sea and the blue didn’t look so good now as it had looked from up high in our shady spot. How was I ever going to make it? I felt upset that I couldn’t bear to go to the sea with my son. And I didn’t want to wait while my husband took my son to the sea. Why would I? I was hot and shivery and all the colours were looking wrong to me. I didn’t feel safe to just be left by myself. The beach didn’t feel like a friendly local little beach. To me under the glare of the sunlight and with the subtle visual distortion I was experiencing it felt more like the Sahara Desert!
A Revelatory Moment!
My glasses are going to help balance the colours. At the moment I feel that I am not picking up enough red and as red is a grounding colour I am not able to feel grounded. Colours that make me feel more expanded (blues and greens) look wrong because of the absence of red. Therefore I can’t enjoy feeling expansive either. Colours that make me feel safe – the earthy colours some way between grounded and expansive – yellows, browns and oranges – also look wrong because of the absence of red. So I feel I have no grounded place, no safe place and no exciting place to go. I am STUCK and all because of my perception of colour!
Is colour affecting your experience of enjoying the wonder of intimacy and the excitement of expansiveness? Maybe you have irlens Syndrome. If my article resonates with you please check out the website below.
Irlens Syndrome
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I had my second diagnostic yesterday which is really just a check that we had found the right lens in the first session. I still chose a particular grey but just a shade lighter than last time. It made sense to me because the time I tried the original lens it felt perfect in most ways but I sensed it might be giving me a slight headache. I confirmed this to be true yesterday and after testing again, arrived at the same colour – just a shade lighter.
