BeaArthur wrote:
I have heard a psychiatrist claim that reducing exposure to sensory stimuli will keep those stimuli sharp, and that gradual (and not excessive) exposure trains the brain to somewhat tune out those stimuli - in other words, the brain gets used to them. This is known as habituation.
According to this view, protecting yourself too much from stimuli makes you more hypersensitive. So if you have exposed yourself to stimuli that used to bother you, and they are not bothering you now, then in a sense the sensory issues "cured themselves."
YMMV.
That might be worth a shot. I also think it could fail and put the client through unnecessary suffering, but if the client wants a cure badly enough and they want to try it, then why not? Just a matter of being ready to back off if it starts to get too uncomfortable. Probably better for the client to organise their own regime, as I can imagine it getting quite horrendous if it's too strongly led by a therapist who doesn't make quite sure the client's wishes are always paramount. Perhaps the main difficulty though would be controlling the background exposure that would arise from the person's everyday life so that the experiment could be run without interference. I've heard good things about a similar technique for desensitising people from allergies. It often fails because the client gets inadvertently exposed to the allergen from an unexpected source, which spoils the whole thing.
I've sometimes wondered about hypnosis as a possible way of reducing my sensory issues. Problem is that I very much doubt I'm a hypnotisable person.
If the sensory issues vary with stress levels, medical marijuana or CBD might be worth a try, though a lot depends on the person. It certainly appeared to work for a good few years in my case, but my main sensory issues are irritable skin and a kind of inflamed feeling, I have some sensitivity to light which may have been reduced, but light has never been a great problem for me anyway so I didn't really notice. Also in my case the cannabinoids ceased to be effective after a decade or so of heavy use - I used to love the way it made me feel so I took it to excess and presumably my body developed a resistance to it, so it became useless to me.
03 Jan 2019, 4:31 am
