Creating a Sensory Room Experience in My Own Bedroom

Posted on by Astrid

It’s been a year since the day center closed. For the most part, it was a good thing for me. I, after all, was often overwhelmed in my day activities group. One thing I miss about the day center though, is the sensory or snoezelen® room. Today, I am sharing how I recreated a sensory room experience in my own bedroom. Since I am blind, I skipped the visual aspect mostly, but I’ll add some ideas for it regardless. That way, you can create a sensory environment for yourself.

Sound

In the day center sensory room, we have a really cool speaker system that’s attached to the bed. It isn’t likely that advanced, so with some speakers at the right position, you may be able to recreate it. I don’t own wireless speakers. However, I found that I can recreate similar effects with earbuds or headphones. I would recommend earbuds for better positioning, but since I don’t have wireless ones, I use my wireless headphones anyway.

I mentioned before that I use an app called MyNoise. This app has over 120 soundscapes and you can customize each individual sound to your own hearing. There are nature soundscapes, but also white noise, Buddhist-like and SciFi soundscapes. I prefer the nature ones.

Like I said, I don’t own wireless speakers, though I might want to invest in some at some point. My phone or computer speakers work okay when listening to music though. There are many calming playlists on Spotify and undoubtedly other music apps too. The ones I love most are Harp Music for Sleeping, Peaceful Guitar and Peaceful Piano. There are also a number of nature sound playlists.

I at one point wanted a music pillow. I may still buy one at some point, but I haven’t yet found one that’s big enough to be used as a sleeping pillow and also works with Bluetooth.

Smell

One thing that my bedroom has and the snoezelen® room didn’t, is an aromatherapy diffuser. I have posted many times about my love for it. Mine cost €40, but they start at as cheap as €15. Essential oils can be a bit expensive depending on the quality you choose. I am obsessed with creating my own blends, so I really like to have a large collection of essential oils. However, if all you want is a nice smell, fragrance oils are also great.

Touch

In the day center sensory room, we had a specially designed waterbed. That felt good, but my own bed is also a pretty good substitute. I usually turn up the head side of the bed slightly.

A thing that’s a true blessing for my senses though, is my weighted blanket. These come in different forms. Some are filled with plastic balls. Mine is filled with sachets filled with granules. It’s a rather expensive blanket at over €500. Thankfully though, my care facility paid for it. With the company we used, you can borrow the blanket on a try-out basis for two weeks for just postage. That helped me make sure it was the right one for me. Mine weighs 12kg, which is relatively heavy considering my body weight of 70kg, but I actually love it this way.

I put a flannel duvet cover over my weighted blanket in winter. When it’s really cold or I need some extra softness for sensory reasons, I use a fleece blanket too.

In addition, I have various soft toys. My favorite is an ordinary stuffed bear. However, I also have a 1.60m large stuffed bear that I got from my mother-in-law for my birthday last year. This one was probably quite expensive. Another of my favorite soft toys, is my sensory cat. This stuffed cat can be microwaved and then gives off heat and a lavender scent.

Sight

Like I said, I am blind with the exception of a tiny bit of light perception. I for this reason don’t benefit from visual stimuli. That being said, I do know a bit about making your room visually appealing to the senses.

My essential oil diffuser works as a night light too. It can be set to seven different colors and I believe also two intensity levels.

Of course, you may want to use your sensory room experience for more than just sleeping. I’m pretty sure in my care home’s makeshift sensory room, the staff put up some form of Christmas lights for the visual effect.

In addition, there are many different visual projection systems. My care facility owns the Qwiek.

Conclusion

I really love my makeshift sensory room in my own bedroom. Generally speaking, creating a true sensory room requires a lot of money. I am so glad though that I could buy some equipment myself or ask for it as a gift. That way, I was able to skip the unnecessary for me expensive things and find things I truly would use. I am very glad that my facility paid for the weighted blanket.

loopyloulaura

What a Day, What a Year! #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

Today I got my COVID test results. Thankfully, I’m negative. Like I mentioned yesterday, I went into room-based isolation with cold symptoms and a sore throat yesterday morning. That day in isolation was hard. I constantly imagined testing positive for COVID. That’d mean at least five more days in quarantine. It’d also mean I would have to alert my nurse practitioner and the facility’s behavior specialist, both of whom I’d seen on Thursday.

I felt intense guilt about possibly having infected my staff too. After all, when I was still only experiencing a sore throat, the staff tried to reassure me that I couldn’t possibly have COVID. It may be true – I had my second shot of the vaccine last week -, but I couldn’t be sure.

Can you imagine that, a year ago, we were just at the beginning of this pandemic? On March 12, 2020, the first local case of COVID-19 had been discovered. On March 13, the community service event that was due to take place at my day center as part of a countrywide volunteering initiative, had been canceled. The day center closed five days later, on March 18.

I hadn’t seen my husband since the first weekend of March I think and wasn’t going to see him again till sometime in late May. After all, at first visiting the care facility was discouraged, then it was completely prohibited except in rare cases when a family member was essential for a client’s care. My husband wasn’t.

I am so glad that now, during the second lockdown, care facilities remain open to visitors except when there’s an outbreak of COVID or suspected COVID, as in my case yesterday. I am so glad one of my fellow clients, who had her birthday on Tuesday, may receive a visit from her family tomorrow.

I had my own birthday on June 27, one day after the final restrictions to visiting were lifted, provided there’s no countrywide lockdown or COVID outbreak. Though we’re in a countrywide lockdown again, the lockdown policy remains that care facilities can be open. I credit the prime minister’s late mother, who died in a nursing home during the first lockdown or so I believe.

This post was written for today’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday (#SoCS) prompt of day/week/month/year.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 12, 2021)

Posted on by Astrid

And this time I’m extremely early with my #WeekendCoffeeShare. This week was rather eventful, especially the last couple of days. I just had my afternoon coffee today. You can probably get a cup of coffee, tea or a soft drink from the staff, but I’m so glad this meeting is actually virtual.

After all, if we were having coffee, first I’d share that I’m in room-based isolation. I started having a sore throat yesterday, but wasn’t sure it was the fact that I’d just had a screaming fit or it was actually a symptom of illness. The staff on shift yesterday tried to reassure me. Today though, I woke up very sniffy. I warned the staff, but at first she wasn’t concerned this time either. After she talked to a colleague though, I had to be in room-based isolation. The staff are now wearing protective clothing when entering my room. I’m usually in my room anyway when not walking. For this reason, if I do have COVID, it’s unlikely the other clients will have caught it too, at least from me. The staff though, well, they’ve definitely been at risk.

Thankfully, one of my home’s staff is one of my facility’s appointed testers. She swabbed me right this morning and the test should be at the lab right now. Please all pray that it’ll come back negative.

As for how I’m feeling, well, I’m okay. I’m a little sick to my stomach in addition to the cold symptoms, but overall it’s manageable. I don’t have a fever and my oxygen saturation was normal too.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that I didn’t have as good a walking week this week as I had last week. The reason is that, besides not being allowed out today, I wasn’t allowed outside of the home on Tuesday either. Another client had to be tested for COVID. Thankfully, his test came back negative. I heard this the next morning, but today the staff told me they’d been informed already Tuesday evening at 10PM. I asked the staff to wake me up if this happens with my test too (only if it’s negative).

If we were having coffee, I would share that I had a really productive appointment with my psychiatric nurse practitioner yesterday. The staff who’d seen the PTSD video with me last week, accompanied me. Together, we were able to explain my continuing issues with hypervigilance, flashbacks and emotional dysregulation. I was able to explain about some of my traumas, including traumatic experiences within the psychiatric system. My nurse practitioner was able to validate me from his own perspective as a former psych hospital nurse.

If we were having coffee, lastly I would share that I made a coconut-mango smoothie this morning. It didn’t taste as good as it could have and I’m not sure whether to blame my cold symptoms or the chunks of coconut that weren’t properly blended.

What’s been going on in your life?

Places I and My Family Have Lived

Posted on by Astrid

Today, I once again looked to a book of journaling prompts for inspiration for a blog post. One of the prompts in the first chapter of Journal Writing Prompts for Child Abuse Survivors is to list all the places you’ve lived. There may not be any need to elaborate on them, but I am going to share my thoughts and feelings that come up. For this post, I’m just going to talk about the houses I lived in with my parents. Otherwise, this post is going to be way too long.

First up is my parental house in Rotterdam. My parents bought the house a year before I was born. To be quite honest, I have very few memories of this house, even though I lived there until I was nine. I do remember my and my sister’s bedroom, which had a bunk bed in it. My sister slept at the top and I slept at the bottom.

I don’t remember most other rooms in the house. I know my parents must have had a bedroom, but I can’t remember its location relative to the kids’ bedroom.

I do remember the garden. It was small, but still big enough to play in. It had swings and a sandpit. I loved to play here with my childhood friend Kim.

I also remember the neighborhood. I played in the “thick street”, a square bit of pavement between two blocks of houses. I also often went to the playground across the road from there. When I had lost some of my vision at around age eight, I felt too scared to cross the road.

Like I said, I lived here until I was nine. Then, my family and I moved to Apeldoorn. We moved to a quiet neighborhood. The house we moved into, had a large kitchen-diner and a living room downstairs. We called the living room the “library” because it housed my mother’s huge book collection. Upstairs where three bedrooms, two large and one very small. One was my parents’ bedroom. The small room was my mother’s office, while the other large bedroom was my father’s.

My sister and I each had a bedroom in the attic. I remember not wanting to have my own bedroom at first, probably because I was used to my sister’s company when going to sleep. I eventually grew to like it though. I had the same bed for all of the years I lived here, one of the original bunk beds. My sister claims I got hers and she got mine after the move.

The other two smaller rooms in the attic were a laundry room and a guest bedroom.

We had a large garden. The first summer we lived here, my paternal grandma gifted us a wooden play set that had swings and climbing equipment. I could be found on the swings many hours each dry day until I was at least fourteen.

During the first few years that I lived in this house, I loved exploring the neighborhood. It had at least four playgrounds within a five-minute walking distance from my home. I would often roam about trying to find new playgrounds farther and farther off. When I lost more of my vision at around age twelve, that mostly stopped. Besides, of course I was too old for playgrounds then. I still went to the nearby shopping center regularly, often getting lost on my way.

I generally really liked the house in Apeldoorn. When my parents were trying to sell it and my husband and I were looking for a home, my parents initially offered it for rent to us. We however had the provision that it’d go off the market for a while. Of course, this wasn’t really reasonable. My parents sold the house in December of 2013. I am glad in a way now that they did, as now I have no need to be reminded of the house and my childhood when I don’t want to be.

My Twelve-Year-Old Self Would Be Surprised

Posted on by Astrid

Today, Emilia of My Inner MishMash had a very interesting question of the day. She asks what twelve-year-old you would never believe about your current self. This is the perfect question to get me reflecting on how I saw my life at age twelve.

Honestly, there is nothing about my current life that would be so far off that my twelve-year-old self wouldn’t believe it. I mean, I alternated between seeing my adult self as a professor and seeing her as a care facility resident. That first image, I saw as the “good” one. I would be a linguistics or mathematics professor. Never mind that, at least here in the Netherlands, mathematics isn’t a suitable university major for a blind person.

That second image, I saw as the “bad” one. I have probably written before about the sixteen-year-old girl in the media in around 1997 or 1998, when I was eleven or twelve. She had a low IQ, but not so low that she’d fit in with intellectual disability services. She also had severe challenging behavior. The reason she was portrayed in the media, was the fact that she was being restrained and held in solitary confinement in an adolescent psychiatric hospital. I totally identified with this girl.

Of course, currently, I’m not being restrained or secluded. I have some experience of manual restraint and seclusion, but not to the extent this girl did.

This gets me to the part that would probably surprise my twelve-year-old self most about my life right now: that I am relatively happy. For what it’s worth, I totally thought that, if I had to be in long-term care as an adult, I would be utterly desperate.

Another thing that would’ve totally surprised twelve-year-old me, is that I’m married. In truth, it still surprises me at times that my husband is willing to share his life with me. Though as a teen, I imagined becoming a mother later, I never quite considered a partner in my life. Besides, being married doesn’t at all fit in with the “bad” image of myself as a care facility resident.

Lastly, like I commented on Emilia’s post, the one thing that my twelve-year-old self wouldn’t believe about me, is that I found my faith in God. After all, I was raised atheist and was at age twelve clueless about faith. My teachers at the Christian school for the blind made me participate in prayer, something I had a huge aversion to. Honestly, till this day I struggle to pray at set times of the day because it feels more like a ritual than an investment in my relationship with God.

What would surprise twelve-year-old you most about your life right now?

Grateful for My Health

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone, how are you? Today, I want to write, but didn’t know at first what to write about. For this reason, I looked at the eBook Journaling with Lisa Shea, which is really a collection of eleven of her eBooks on journaling. In the one about gratitude, one of the prompts asks us what we’re most grateful for with respect to our health.

I often worry that I’m deteriorating. In truth, I may or may not be, but I have the health I have now. Here are some things I am grateful for about my health.

1. My mobility. I know, I know, I want it to be better. I wish I could walk with the stamina and speed that my husband can. Then again, he’s much taller and skinnier than I am and doesn’t have a physical disability. Considering this, I am so grateful I am able to walk over 10K steps most days. When I wrote a post on my old blog several years ago about what optimal health would mean to me, this was one of the things I listed.

2. My energy level. Generally, difficult as I may find it to see, this has improved much over the past several years. Ten years ago, I struggled greatly to even write one blog post a week. I also slept on average ten to twelve hours a night, sometimes more. Now, I rest for about an hour in the afternoon sometimes, but not always. I also don’t need the long nights I apparently needed some years ago.

3. My sleep. I said above that I need less sleep now than I needed some years ago. Part of the reason may be an improved sleep quality. Though my sleep is still disrupted a lot, it’s much less so than it used to be. I used to snore horribly. Either my husband got used to it or I snore a little less now. I think it’s the latter, as I rarely wake up gasping for air now.

4. My mood. I still experience meltdowns and emotional outbursts almost on a daily basis. However, it’s been months since I’ve been depressed. In general, I feel my mood is pretty good overall.

5. My skin health. Many people experience dry skin in the colder months and it isn’t helped by the need to wash your hands like all the time. I, indeed, do have dry and eczema-prone skin sometimes, but haven’t had a flare up of this since last summer. My hands feel remarkably smooth compared to others’.

6. My heart health. It could definitely be better, but it could also be a lot worse. My resting heartrate is within the normal range and so is my resting blood pressure. As regular readers may know, I had a scare related to possible hypertension last October. The doctor reassured me that it’s okay now.

Of course, there are still areas in which I could improve my health, but overall, I’m pretty content.

What are you grateful about with respect to your health?

My Random Musings
loopyloulaura

Also joining in with Grace and Gratitude. This linky really inspired me to write about gratitude.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 7, 2021)

Posted on by Astrid

Okay, I’m so very late with my #WeekendCoffeeShare post for this week. Sorry! I was in Lobith yesterday and, though I returned already before noon today, I really didn’t find the time to write. I have so many things I want to write about and yet none come out clearly onto the screen. So let me just ramble. There might still be coffee here or you can grab a soft drink. Let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I’m still struggling with hypervigilance and emotional flashbacks. If anyone is familiar with complex PTSD, I’d love to know your tips for dealing with these. I mean, I’m constantly on high alert and on the edge of flight.

It doesn’t help that I have no idea what triggered me. I mean, could it still be the dentist’s appointment at the main institution last Tuesday? I’m pretty sure that’s not it. In any case, I’m trying to cope the best I can.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that, on Friday, I showed a staff a case video from the Center for Consultation and Expertise on a woman with severe (complex) PTSD. It helped clarify some of the issues I’m facing.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I had a bit of a meltdown when I came back to the care facility from Lobith early this afternoon. I wasn’t happy about the student staff doing my one-on-one this evening. Thankfully though, the staff reassured me that the student or I could call for another staff if needed. It wasn’t needed ultimately.

If we were having coffee, I’d then try to lighten the mood by talking about the weather. It’s cold here for March, with tempts dropping below freezing at night. Still, it’s quite sunny. The weather forecast predicts rain for all of the upcoming week though.

If we were having coffee, I’d share about my husband’s great chicken wraps that he’d made me yesterday. They were especially great with tabasco sauce in them.

If we were having coffee, lastly, I would proudly announce that I got in over 10K steps five days in the past week and over 12K steps on three of those. Today and yesterday, I didn’t do so well, but I still got in over 5K steps each day. That’s what my husband says the scientific community has calculated as the real recommended minimum step count each day. My husband said the 10K mark was made up by the inventor of the activity tracker. Regardless, I did average over 10K steps over the past seven days. Unfortunately, my sister still beat me on Fitbit. Oh well.

What’s been going on in your life?

The Count to Ten With Me Book Tag

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! It’s been forever since I did a book tag. Today, I’m doing the Count to Ten With Me book tag, which I found here. I love numbers and books, so this should be fun.

1. First book in a series
I’m obviously going with After the Cure by Deirdre Gould, since this is the most recent series starter I’ve read (or am actually still reading). The beginning was a bit disappointing, but right now I’m finding it pretty interesting. Then again, I’ve never read post-apocalyptic novels before, so my expectations may be low.

2. Two or more copies of the same book
This is a pretty rare occurrence for me. I’d have to go with a book I scanned before eBooks or Bookshare became available to me and then downloaded after they did. The one that comes to mind now is Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation by Onno van der Hart, Suzette Boon and Kathy Steele. I have the first edition English one (it’s also available in Dutch) as both a self-scanned copy and on Bookshare.

I also have some books that I have both the Dutch translation and original English for. An example is Today I’m Alice by Alice Jamieson. I read it in Dutch on audiobook after I’d got the English print one from my sister. This is a memoir by a woman with dissociative identity disorder.

3. Three colours on the cover
I’ll have to pass this one by, since I have absolutely no idea what covers look like, being that I’m blind.

4. Four or more perspectives
The first one that comes to mind is Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult. I am not a fan of many different perspectives, although I loved this one.

5. A five star read
Bloom by Kenneth Oppel. This is also the first in a series, so could count for that question too.

6. Six (or more) short stories
Oh, this is difficult. I rarely read collections of short stories. I’ll go with Our Autistic Lives edited by Alex Ratcliffe. This is a collection of personal essays.

7. A seven on the cover or spine
Pass again, sorry, for the same reason that I passed #3.

8. Eight letters in the title
Ironside by Holly Black. Haven’t read it yet, but wanted to get into fantasy and thought since Holly Black is a well-known author, I’d start there.

9. Book ends on a page ending in a nine
I of course looked this up on Goodreads. Heroine by Mindy McGinnis has 419 pages. I really hadn’t expected that.

10. Ten books in the series
I have absolutely no idea. I don’t read long series at all. Until recently, I flat out refused to read any book that wasn’t a standalone. Now, though I’ll start on trilogies and tetralogies (haven’t finished any yet so far), much longer is hard.

I’m not tagging anyone, but if you’d like to do this tag, I’d love to read it.

Gratitude List (March 5, 2021) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

It’s Friday again and I badly want to write. I’m feeling quite distressed by emotional flashbacks right now. To turn my mood around, I thought I’d do a gratitude list again. As usual, I’m joining in with Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT).

1. I am grateful to live in a care facility. I feel very insecure about my living arrangement right now, but my staff reassure me that I don’t have to leave. I am so extremely grateful for my staff’s patience with my anxiety!

2. I am grateful my staff make sure someone comes to sub when a staff is ill or has other obligations. Today, my day activities staff had to leave unexpectedly at around 1PM, but the staff made sure someone came to take her place. In the psychiatric hospital, we’d just be left with fewer staff if this happened.

3. I am grateful for chicken Siam. A fellow client and staff cooked that up for this evening and I totally love it! This client can’t have the cashews that normally go in, so there’s more left for me. 😉

4. I am grateful I got my second shot of the vaccine yesterday. I am also grateful that I didn’t experience any side effects. In fact, I hardly even felt the needle go in, so worried at first that they were doing something wrong. I try to trust that I got the vaccine correctly though.

5. I am grateful for God’s presence in my life. I have been extra involved with my Bible reading lately. I am grateful I finally figured out how to bookmark, highlight or copy verses in the YouVersion app and how to add notes or prayers.

6. I am grateful for all the lovely treats the staff who left our home last week, left for us. We had winegums, candy bars, ice cream and more.

7. I am grateful for no rain this week. It’s cold outside, but usually sunny. For this reason, I was able to get in over 10K steps each day of the week so far (not counting today, but I will later).

8. I am grateful I’m done with dentistry appts for at least another several months. My experience at the dentist’s was pretty bad last Tuesday, by no fault of the dentist. Let me just say I’m glad I’ve got it over with.

9. I am grateful I got to talk to my parents on the phone on Monday and that they are well. I had a nice chat. I will need to phone my sister later too. My parents were going to visit her and her family on Tuesday.

10. I am grateful for the ability to chat to other clients, including those from other homes within my care facility. I chatted some with a guy from the home next to us while we met outside of the day center a few days back. We used to go on walks together with the staff and also have coffee at each other’s homes, but due to COVID restrictions we no longer can. I am looking forward to being able to hang out more with him and other clients once the restrictions are lifted.

Wow, this turned out much better than I expected and it certainly did help.

What are you grateful for?

#IWSG: Favorite Genres to Read

Posted on by Astrid

IWSG

Welcome to another installment in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (#IWSG) meeting. This past month, I’d set my expectations pretty high and, as such, was disappointed. I participated in #Write28Days with the aim of writing each day. Not surprisingly, that didn’t work out. I wrote 23 posts over the month of February. I also didn’t really broaden my horizons with respect to writing. That is, most of my posts were securely within my comfort zone. I really hope to be doing better this month.

Now on to the March 3 question: Everyone has a favorite genre or genres to write. But what about your reading preferences? Do you read widely or only within the genre(s) you create stories for? What motivates your reading choice?

Let me begin by saying my writing comfort zone is pretty narrow. I mostly write personal essays, if that’s even what my blog posts can be called. I would really like to write a memoir at some point, but I’ve been telling myself and others that for many years and yet never got down to actually doing it.

When I do write creatively, it’s usually poetry or very short pieces of flash fiction. I used to write some short stories and even have a young adult novel that I started writing as a teen yet never finished and that’s incredibly unimaginative I think.

My reading preferences do partly match my writing preferences, in that my favorite genre to read is memoir. Next to that comes young adult fiction about real problems, like the aforementioned work in progress also is.

I also read books that I couldn’t possibly be writing myself. Oh wait, I can’t really write a book at all, but oh well. I mean, I’ve recently developed an interest in science fiction and the like. I also occasionally read romance novels.

I rarely if ever read traditionally published poetry. That being said, I do love to read poems published on other people’s blogs. Same for personal essays and flash fiction. I mean, I’ve read a few books that were basically anthologies of personal essays, but I prefer to check out blogs for those.

With respect to what motivates my reading choice, I’m a true mood reader. I read a pretty wide variety of books, but they have to suit my mood at that time. I usually choose books based on the blurb. I can’t see the covers, obviously and I rarely read reviews on Amazon or Apple Books. When I do read reviews, it’s on other people’s blogs.

What about you? What motivates your reading choice?