Journeys with Autism

On Monday afternoon, I got my weighted blanket and weighted vest in the mail. They came at the perfect time. My husband was visiting his father for a couple of days, and I was missing him. I needed some hugs, so I was looking forward to seeing how comforting the blanket and vest would be.

The blanket is from The Original Bean Blanket Company and weighs fifteen pounds. It’s twin-sized and consists of a very soft blue fleece material with beans sewn evenly throughout. Here’s a picture from the company website at www.thehugshack.com:

The vest came from the OTVest company. It’s a dungaree vest with the weights attached to the inside of the shoulder area by velcro strips. It weighs four pounds. Here are some photos from the company website at www.otvest.com/index.html:

Most weighted vests have both shoulder weights and weights in the body of the vest. I ordered one of those as well and should be getting it soon. I’m interested in seeing the difference in the effects of the design.

Since the blanket and vest arrived, some of my daily patterns have started changing. For instance, when I get home from work, my senses usually feel pretty overloaded, but I rarely know what to do with myself. I have certain protocols: I empty my backpack, put away anything I bought, gather up the receipts, and put my cell phone on the end table. But I’m still quite unfocused and at a loss as to how to proceed. I generally end up on the computer or eating something, even though I don’t really want to read about world news and I’m not hungry at all.

When I got home from working at the store on Monday, I completely bypassed the computer and the food and got right under my new blanket. I immediately noticed how reassuring it was to have the weight on me. Then, very quickly, I began to register how over-stimulated my nervous system felt. I kept having the feeling of energy pulsating through me, like a recurrent wave. I could feel how hard my nervous system had been working and what a pitch of activity it’s at most of the time.

After awhile, though, I could feel myself starting to relax. I’ve tried all kinds of meditation and other methods for relaxing, but I was experiencing a much deeper kind of relaxation. It wasn’t just my mind relaxing or my muscles unclenching. It was my nervous system calming itself down.

I can’t remember how long I stayed under the blanket. It might have been a half hour. When I finally got up, I had a very odd feeling of being very refreshed and extremely tired. I felt calm and ready to focus on putting some dinner together, but I also felt how deeply tired I was. It showed me how hard I work every day just to deal with sensory phenomena and the world of other people. I used to think that only my mind was working hard, but now I realize that it’s basically all of me.

I went to sleep that night under the blanket and my quilt, and miracle of miracles, got a good night’s sleep. I seem to remember waking up in the middle of the night, but the next thing I knew, it was Tuesday morning. The only down side was that I woke up with a migraine that required two tablets of Imitrex to knock out. I had a similar experience the next night: a great night’s sleep, followed by a migraine. It’s possible that the migraines resulted from the decrease in stress. I’ve found that when I’m stressed out, I don’t get migraines. When I’m debriefing from the stress, they arrive. Sometimes, they arrive out of the blue, but this time, it seemed like a reaction to bringing down the stress level.

Today, I worked for a couple of hours at the local food co-op and then had to see my doctor about getting an insurance referral to the OT. By the time I got home, it was snowing, but I was feeling pretty good. I had a snack and worked out, and then decided to try out the blanket again. I was relaxing pretty nicely when my husband got home. We chatted about his trip and his dad, and then he began unpacking. I continued relaxing under the blanket. Then I woke up at 7:30 pm—two hours later.

I was amazed. I rarely fall asleep in the middle of the day or in the early evening. If I do, it’s because I’m so sleep deprived and overloaded that I feel as heavy as a rock. But today, I felt great when I got home and I wasn’t sleep deprived at all. The simple truth was that my nervous system was exhausted, as it is every day. After sleeping under the blanket for two hours, I woke up groggier than I’ve felt since I was a chronically insomniatic kid. My husband wanted to go out for dinner or a movie, but I couldn’t imagine having the energy to put my boots on, much less go out in the snow. So we had dinner together at home as I slowly returned to consciousness.

As for the OTVest, I’m wearing it as I write this post, and I love it. It puts very gentle pressure on my shoulders and feels very soothing. I’m not sure what I’ll do when the warm weather comes. The vest and weights will be too heavy. Fortunately, the weights detach as a unit, so I can put them on my shoulders without the vest. I’ll probably do that at home as the weather improves.

Great stuff, eh? Too bad I had to wait 50 years to experience it, but hey, it’s better late than never!

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg