You Never Know How Someone Else Perceives the World
In our clinical services team meeting this week, our Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant (COTA) presented a sensory inventory checklist. As I took the test (thinking about myself), I found nothing really surprising. I have Sensory Processing Disorder, especially in the areas of vestibular, tactile, and interoceptive senses. This is not a big reveal moment for me - I was unofficially diagnosed when I did my internship and my mother had diagnosed me many years before while she was watching me interact with the world. She was watching me through her Occupational Therapist glasses and knew that I had something sensory going on. During my internship, I was the target of all experiments. As a music therapist, I was not allowed to do the diagnostic tests for official documentation, but I was allowed to learn how to look for specific responses. Since I was the only one who wasn't allowed to diagnose sensory processing difficulties (it wasn't an official disorder back in those da...