Archive for Weighted Vests

My Second OT Visit

March 29, 2009 Rachel Making Art, Occupational Therapy, Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), Sensory Processing Issues, Therapeutic Brushing, Vestibular System, Weighted Blankets, Weighted Vests

Note: For information about my first OT visit, see my previous post.

For my second appointment, I showed up slightly less of a wreck than I did at the first, but still in need of some grounding. This time, the OT used the Thumper, a big vibrating machine that she ran back and forth over my back. The vibration was so strong that I could feel it inside my ears. It was another piece of heaven.

Once I got more grounded, we talked about how the past week’s activities had gone and discussed new activities to try in the coming week.

Therapeutic Brushing
After hearing about my negative experience with the brushing, the OT agreed that I should discontinue it. Instead of the brushing, we tried using soft bean bags and tapping them on my arms and legs. It felt okay at the office, but when I tried it at home, it felt distinctly like hitting myself, which is a trigger. She had also mentioned that I might try using a soft fabric that I find comforting. I have tried using the velvet fabrics I have, and they feel okay on my arms, but I still resist the whole activity. Trauma stuff, I think. Anyway, I do what I can.

Drawing an Infinity Sign
When I told my OT how frustrated I felt drawing the infinity sign, she suggested that I just imagine a large one on the wall and track it with my eyes. I’ve been doing that every day, and it feels really great. I can actually move my eyes without moving my head! After 50 years of doing it the other way, that really amazes me. I even find myself playing around with the exercise at work. I’ll look at something, and then shift my eyes to another object without moving my head. Everyone is so busy looking at all the objects in the store that no one notices the strange woman in the linen department doing eye exercises.

Learning the Cross-Crawl
At this visit, my OT taught me something called a “cross crawl,” in which I lift my right hand and then use it to touch my upraised left knee, and then use my left hand to touch my upraised right knee. The point is to cross the center line in my body in order to get comfortable with the parts of my body working independently. I find this particular exercise very easy, as it reminds me of various karate exercises that also work with crossing the body’s center line.

Singing
After hearing that the vibrations from the Thumper felt like they were inside my ears, the OT told me to sing every day. She said the vibrations would help to activate and soothe my vestibular system, which controls balance and movement, and is based in the inner ear. I always sing when I work out anyway, so this has been an easy one to practice each day. I also want to relearn Torah cantillation. In fact, the book and a small keyboard have been sitting in my loft, beckoning me for months. I’m hoping to add cantillation to my OT routine at some point.

Proprioceptive Activities and Late-Night Snacking
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the propriocetive system provides information about the relative positions of the parts of the body. Engaging the proprioceptive system includes how we feel the joints in our body and the kind of pressure we put on them. The right amount of pressure is very soothing. 

I find that I do a number of activities to engage the proprioceptive system, such as using a weighted blanket and weighted vests, bicycling, taking walks, doing my artwork, and fidgeting with whatever object is handy. I wondered whether my tendency to eat a lot before bedtime is also related to my need for proprioceptive activities. My OT said that chewing on things engages the joints in the jaw in a powerful way, which is why I like chewy, crunchy things at bedtime. I’m using them to calm myself down.

I don’t particularly like using food for this purpose on a regular basis, and she suggested that I try a different proprioceptive activity when I feel food cravings without being hungry. It’s going to take a while to work out of the habit of using food to calm myself at night, but the amount I eat seems to be diminishing as I do other activities. Last night, for instance, I spent some time doing my artwork and ended up eating a lot less than usual before bedtime.

When all is said and done, I’m enjoying the process of occupational therapy. Because of my executive dysfunction, I’m still having difficulty consistently working the exercises into my daily routine. But I’ll get there.

2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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My First OT visit

March 29, 2009 Rachel Gravitational Insecurity, Occupational Therapy, Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), Sensory Processing Issues, Therapeutic Brushing, Weighted Blankets, Weighted Vests

Since my sensory assessment, I’ve had two visits with my Occupational Therapist, and they have been unlike any visits I’ve ever had with a health professional. No matter what state I’m in when I arrive, I know that she will offer me ways to ground and to feel held.

For my first appointment, I ended up on her doorstep feeling really crummy. I was having a flare-up of a very painful condition that no one has been able to explain. Perhaps once or twice a year, I get a terrible pain in my bladder, like I have a urinary tract infection, except that when I use the bathroom, the pain radiates from my bladder, right up through the center of my body, down my arms, all the way to my hands and the tips of my fingers. I yell and cry until it passes. I’ve been checked many times for UTIs, and it’s not a UTI. No one seems to know what it is. (If anyone reading this knows what it is, please tell me!)

I told my OT what was happening, and she said, “What would you like to try? The big heavy blanket? The Thumper?” I went for the big heavy blanket and immediately felt comforted. As I was lying on the floor, enjoying my little piece of heaven, the OT asked me a number of questions about my sensory diet. For some reason, I was able to rattle off a list, even though I hadn’t made one on paper yet. Here’s my sensory diet, so far:

1. Using a 15-lb weighted blanket when I get home from work and when I go to sleep at night.
2. Using a 4-lb or an 8-lb weighted vest when I need to ground.
3. Holding onto a velvet skirt and scarf, touching them with my hands and rubbing them on my face.
4. Bicycling on a stationary stand.
5. Playing with a gyroscope on a wire track, watching it spin around and around.
6. Playing with a magic wand that has spinning lights.
7. Watching my spoon mobile spin around and around.
8. Working on art projects–bending wire, putting things together and taking them apart, and watching them spin and sparkle in the light.

When I started feeling better, I got out from under the blanket and we worked on some exercises for me to do at home. These included therapeutic brushing, drawing an infinity sign, and lying on the floor watching a spinning mobile.

Therapeutic Brushing
My OT told me to try therapeutic brushing, twice a day, on my arms and legs. The purpose of the brushing was to “wake up” the nerves in my extremities, with the aim of helping to reduce my tactile defensiveness. She warned me that if I have any trauma issues, the therapeutic brushing might start unlocking memories in my body and generally erode my defenses. The brushing can also be very over-stimulating, even though it is supposed to be calming.

At first, the brushing at home seemed to go well, but very quickly, I began to resist it. I felt myself getting more and more anxious and over-stimulated as the week went on, and I began to feel somewhat raw and undefended. I came to the conclusion that after many years of trauma recovery work, I’ve stripped off as many defensive layers as I need to. The remaining ones are necessary and I’m not willing to mess with them. So, I stopped the brushing midway through the week.

Drawing an Infinity Sign
We worked on having me draw an infinity sign, tracking the pen with my eyes without moving my head. I found this exercise a bit frustrating. The purpose was to help me train my eyes to work independently of the rest of my body, with the aim of diminishing the dizziness from my gravitational insecurity.

I noticed that I when I used my left hand (my dominant hand) to draw, I tended to stare at the dot at the center of the sign and track the rest with my peripheral vision. When I consciously tried to track, my eyes seemed to go faster than my hand. When I switched to my right hand, however, I was able to synchronize my eyes with my hand, perhaps because I had to concentrate harder when I used my non-dominant hand. It’s also possible that my left brain is my visual center. I am the left-handed daughter of a left-handed mother, and that can mean that the typical functions of each hemisphere are switched. In any case, drawing with my right hand seemed to click.

Watching a Spinning Mobile
I was supposed to lie on the floor in my loft, watching my mobile spin and tracking the circle without moving my head. I tried it. Once. I immediately got nauseous and dizzy. I didn’t try it again from the floor. I can watch it spin nicely at eye level, so I’m sticking with that.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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Weighted Blankets and Other Joys

February 18, 2009 Rachel Sensory Processing Issues, Weighted Blankets, Weighted Vests

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:

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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

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