Sensory processing differences

Also called Sensory processing disorder, Sensory integration difficulties

The brain registering sensory input too strongly or too weakly. Behind a great deal of what gets called challenging behaviour.

What it is

Most of what gets recorded as challenging behaviour in care and education is a sensory environment nobody has fixed.

Sensory processing differences mean the brain registers input differently. Someone may be hypersensitive, where a strip light hums audibly, a label feels like sandpaper and a supermarket is genuinely painful. Or hyposensitive, where the person seeks intense input: spinning, crashing, chewing, deep pressure.

Most people are a mix, and it varies by sense and by day.

It is very common in autism, ADHD, dyspraxia and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and it also occurs on its own.

Signs you might notice

Covering ears, squinting, refusing certain clothing or foods by texture.

Distress in specific environments: assemblies, dining halls, shopping centres, hand dryers.

Seeking: spinning, jumping, crashing into things, chewing clothing, needing to touch everything.

Poor awareness of hunger, temperature or pain.

Meltdowns that arrive after an environment rather than after an event, sometimes hours later.

How it can affect day-to-day life

The cumulative load is what most people miss. A person may cope with the noise, and the lights, and the smell of the canteen individually, and be overwhelmed by all three together after four hours.

Sensory overload produces a genuine threat response. What follows is not a decision, so consequences applied afterwards teach nothing except that the adult did not understand.

The two commonest institutional failures are fluorescent lighting and open-plan noise, both of which are cheap to fix and rarely are.

Supporting someone well

Change the environment before you change the person. This is the whole of the practice.

Do a sensory audit of the room: lighting, noise, smell, temperature, visual clutter. Fix the worst thing first.

Allow ear defenders, sunglasses, chewellery and fidget items without treating them as concessions.

Build in regular sensory breaks before overload, not after.

Never suppress stimming. It is regulation.

Offer deep pressure and heavy work for seekers: carrying, pushing, weighted items where appropriate.

Ask for an occupational therapy assessment, which is the profession that does this properly.

Our neurodiversity and SEND pre-screening covers sensory and physical needs as one of its four areas, and the profile it produces sets the reading comfort in our own apps to match. Fiducia Life has a Calm Room for exactly the point before overload becomes a meltdown.

Where to get help

Ask a GP, school or paediatrician for occupational therapy referral.

The National Autistic Society and Sensory Integration Education both publish practical environment guidance.

For an adult at work, sensory adjustments are reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010.