I’ve been thinking of ways to record the sounds that are forever these days triggering my nervous system into flight. Yet I’m conscious of the fact that by focusing too heavily on my triggers, makes my tremors even worse… it’s why the work of the nervous system is such a fine art, I find. Too much focus and we startle, too little and we eventually tip back into overwhelm… and eventually into burnout. It’s a truly vicious cycle. Dancing the fine line of attention without tension, is one I’ll no doubt spend my life trying to master.
So when talking around how I was struggling with how to start to try to make more sense of sound, and how it floods my nerve network so easily, my friend Rae suggested that whilst I stitch I simply swap out a thread, and try to capture real time data of how sound bursts my bubble.
She’s a smart cookie, that one!
This was my attempt at trying to touch on this idea… about how by paying attention whilst sitting in a safe space (like stitching), might gently bring about an awareness that will hopefully sink into my soil, into my sensory web, and soften the spikes somehow. So I made some circles, and started stitching… white for peace, red for pain ;) Simple.
Sensory boundaries
I often speak of my ‘bubble’, my safe space… to me I very much feel this as my personal sensory boundary. I’m sure you have one too… and for me I find it really interesting to explore what pierces it, expands it and makes it ripple on the surface. In a way I suppose it’s my interoception web that I touched on last week…
Stitching (and writing like this… creating in general for me) is maybe a way that I help to repair this web, to make visible this membrane of mine between myself, and the world… and I suppose that these red threads can be seen as tiny pins. I don’t just ‘hear’ the sounds, but I very much ‘feel’ them in my web.
What I’m hoping I’m doing with this practice, is that by stitching the pins, I’m giving shape to something that usually just passes through me. By making the invisible visible, I’m somehow tuning my teaspoon of awareness again (see last week’s reflection below if you’re interested).
What I noticed
Whilst stitching I had a few funny thoughts come up that I think it might be fun to share with you here, as I’d love to get your take on them…
Listening to background music (without words) helps strengthen the surface of my bubble. It makes the pins feel less sharp when sound breaks through.
Sound clusters, or echoes.
I’m not sure if my mind was making it up, but when I noticed a car, it felt like the waves rippled… the birds got louder, the neighbours seemed to start talking, every sound seemed to level up. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but I wonder if it’s a genuine ‘thing’… that the sound waves, actually ripple, and cause other noise making things to make more noise? I realise I could well be talking nonsense here… but it happened multiple times. Maybe that’s awareness for you… and once I focus, I feel / hear more… but just saying, maybe one day someone will sense that the sound wave ripple is a thing too ;)Jays are fking jarring. I love birdsong, but the jays that nest around our house are spiky and set my tremors off something rotten.
Aeroplanes (and cars, and lawn mowers ;) are painful. I don’t know if it’s because we live near Salisbury Plain and lots of other military airbases… but holy heck does that sound of low flying aircraft seriously trip my switch. It’s fascinating, and deeply frustrating, and I do wonder if with all our environmental awareness, that we might also consider the sensory aspect of our impact on our environments too.
Now that I've made enough noise here for today, I'd love to know if this idea of sensory journaling sparks anything in you, or even if you already have your own practice like this that you’d be willing to share? I love to cross-pollinate ideas that we can all play around with…
I really love this idea, Betsy, of illustrating the internal experience in real time...that the process is woven inextricably into the making (and I can't help feeling a bit guilty that one of those red stitches was likely caused by me)! You've also given me something to think about now with the concept of sensory boundaries. I suppose I usually think of my sensory boundary as being a tranquil bubble until transgressed upon by external elements...but I wonder now, also, about a space between the edge of my bubble and the outside world...a space in which there's perhaps a bit of mediation...so that it's not so much a bubble, but something like a cell with a membrane/wall housing tiny pockets that negotiate and exchange between what's inside and outside. I'll give it some more thought...maybe brush up on my high school biology, too! Haha.
You might find this piece interesting by Jackie Bennett: https://www.instagram.com/p/C5duxgIoHzP/?igsh=bWlyb2ptaWJ1dHI0