So, I've just started with the Wilbarger Brushing Protocol - yesterday I was taught it - next week I'll be taught ways to cheat and do parts of it alone if I'm the only one there. I've been instructed to not cheat and do anything alone yet.
So far I've been told to do stuff once a day, and that we'll do more after next week's appointment.
But what I've noticed so far is:
1. After I've brushed stuff is in fact calmer feeling like I've been told to expect.
2. My tactile sensitivity is different at least immediately after brushing today. Things feels rougher than normal.
3. After brushing certain sensations that last around will last even more than they normally do. They make me want to brush again immediately.
4. After brushing some types of light touch are more acceptable. Others are worse.
5. My boyfriend was having a hard time believing how hard he needs to press down with the brush for me. It's far harder on me than if he was making it have the same sensation on himself.
Thank you for sharing that. Can I ask a question.....I am not sure how to phrase it. When my son was being brushed it was like it just sent his system into overload do you find this to be the same?
If there's enough pressure on the brush, not for me. If there's not enough pressure on the brush, then yes. It's easy to not have enough pressure around joints if you're not careful though.
Between the brushing part and the deep pressure part, even with not having that type of immediate overload response, I'm clearly at heightened alert. If something touches me wrong in that period of time it could be really quick to overload - my hair touching my skin wrong is enough to overload me then.
My hair actually needs to be brushed before I do my brushing protocol, because if its at all tangled, then the tangles touching my skin afterwards is one of the types of light touch that is more overloading after doing the protocol completely even. However, someone's hands touching me on the arm lightly or such is more acceptable than without doing it -skin on skin contact is less twitchy.
We did the brushing protocol on our 5 y.o. daughter for two months. We stopped in vacation, only because we left the brush at the first hotel we stayed at, and we observed there was no difference in her behavior or ability to adapt to stimuli around her. As a result, we discontinued the brushing at the beginning of August and see no ill effects. So, for our daughter, who is a sensory seeker and has dyspraxia, the brushing protocol was not helpful. However, perhaps it is helpful for those who are over-sensitive.
Newest observation: brushing makes me tired
I'm needing extra sleep, and after brushing I'm tired, and just generally I've felt tired a lot more since I've started brushing.
Other observations (for every 2 hour brushing now):
1. I need more input than the joint compressions give. We determined this at my last appointment. I have been often wearing around weights after brushing because of this. We know this because I'm often itchy if I don't get more input.
2. The fourth day is the worst.
3. It gets worse before it gets better.
THank you so much for sharing all of that. You have no idea how interesting and absolutly helpful that has been. My son is extremely sensitive to being touched. You cannot touch his head, people who know him know they have to ask him if they can hug him, he cannot stand having his fingernails and toenails touched. I have to let him know in advance before a haircut. If you touch his shoulders his shoulders are practically above his head. Fabrics are a nightmare , you can forget denim, he lives in sweatpants all winter. Thank you again.
I can't deal with denim at all either.
We're doing a chart of improvement - severity for different things as well as frequency of problems, rated weekly.
Looking at stuff, every one of my depressive episodes or my meltdowns has fallen just about at the time I am supposed to be brushing. So I'm looking at decreasing the time between brushings to see if that helps. Now I'm doing every hour and a half instead.
My chart is showing clear improvements, though the hurricane messed with it.
It's unfortunately getting a lot harder to keep up with the brushing. The temperature is making it harder to brush. It's harder to brush when I'm cold. Doesn't hurt, just, is harder to make myself do it. Trying to find ways to make it work.
My emotional regulation spiked when I increased my brushing to every hour and a half. It was an immense change, and a really fast one. I'm supposed to be rating myself on a 0-4 scale (0 being no problem, 4 being extremely serious, critical problem, most of mine started at 3s), my emotional regulation started at a 4, and dropped to a 2 immediately upon increasing the frequency of brushing.
So people who are looking at brushing, do pay attention to when yourself or your children are having meltdowns or other emotional problems, increasing the frequency of brushing might be necessary, or might be a solution. In my case doing that for two weeks, even when I started losing traction because I'm now in an unheated home and not being able to cope with that, I'm still doing way better. It might not do that for others, but its something you should definitely keep in mind.
Thanks for sharing your observations. I'm going to talk to my daughter's OT about resuming the brushing as she has had an increase in meltdowns lately. I didn't think it correlated with discontinuing the brushing, but I suppose it could be connected, even though there was a couple of weeks in between when we stopped doing it and when the meltdowns began increasing.
They certainly might not. There are other things meltdowns correlate with. It's just one thing to watch out for. Watching for as many correlations as possible is a good thing. I'm going to start another thread on that now.