Designing for Neurospicy Brain: Sensory-Smart Spaces ft. Jessica Blanco

Sensory sensitivities. Everybody has them. A neurotypical brain is better at without much effort or distraction, filtering your focus for you.A neurodiverse brain is not going to filter as well as a supposedly neurotypical brain. It's going to want to examine all the sensory input it's getting.

Hey, Danna, how you doing today?

I'm all right. Megan, how are you doing?

I'm good.

Good.

You're not at your desk today. You're on your couch.

I am on my couch. I'm not on my new sofa. I am on my couch because it's closest to the electricity and the microphone. My pottery has taken over my desk.

Okay, so your space is now being preoccupied by one of your hobbies.

Yeah.

And I'm sitting down, which might be a little bit dangerous because I'm usually standing up, fidgeting. I don't have any of my fidget toys around me. So let's see how this goes.

So, obviously, today's topic, we're talking about our spaces. But our space is from, like, a sensory sensitivity, neurodivergent point of view.However, I think we're going to get into a little bit of what that means with our guests.But before we bring her in, I think it's interesting because what you just talked about, like how you set up your space to handle fidgeting or standing up, and you have a new couch. I know. And so there's a lot of things that go along in our spaces that we either figure out that work or don't work for us.But sometimes we don't figure it out. We're, like, left going, why does the space feel not right? For me, I think for me, a lot of it is lighting.

Oh, yes.

I'm lucky that my husband has. We have smart lights everywhere in the entire house, so I can very quickly change the lighting in.This does drastically change the mood in the room and how we feel. Like if I've got the bright light, I'm working, I'm doing something that requires light and energy.And then sometimes it's just even the difference between a blue light and a yellow light. The warmthness of the light makes a big difference for me. You're living, basically, you have an open plan. Living room, kitchen, dining room.Do you rely mostly on natural light?

I. I feel like natural light is really important to me. I cannot deal with closed windows when the sun is out, even though one of the windows that we have here is hitting the dining table and kitchen.So we often do have to close it. But Yeah, I think for me, I think you hit the nail on the head. I'm very sensitive to anything that has to do with sound, light.Those are the two big ones, I think.

Smell.

Oh, my God, I'm terrible with smells. Stop putting perfume on people. Help us neurodiverse people to be around you.What I realized, actually, lately I've spent a little bit of time with my dad, both abroad and in my home. He came to visit as well. And in both spaces I had this interaction. He's very neurodiverse as well.And that we had two interactions where I realized, like, oh, wow, we're both lunatics. But also I'm so much more sensitive to it.But I think because I either got the family used to my lighting system or maybe because I don't know what, you know, it's very different. So my dad needs bright lights. He needs everything lights. He can't deal with noise, but he needs everything to be super lit, whereas we can't.Like, I. I feel like a vampire. I'm like, just get, you know, get away. I stop with the light. Sunlight give me all of it. But, like, actual indoor lighting, I just cannot stand.So usually in our living room, the light is off.The light is on in the kitchen and dining room area, which is the same space, but the living room is usually off unless I'm recording, like now or working on my ceramics. So I actually need that light. But he came and he, like, started fixing all the lights.And I'm using quotation marks because they were not broken to begin with. We just chose to have less lights. My kids walk through the door and they're like, what the.Like, I can't even see anything because it's so bright in here. So, yeah, lighting is huge for me. Also in my bedroom, I usually, usually, usually don't even turn on the big light.It's usually the headlights that we turn on. So I'm more of a dim light person. Unless I really need to see something. Yeah, it's a big one for me.So I. I need pitch darkness or just a little bit of light or just give me, like a raging sun in my face. I don't wear sunglasses or anything. It's very weird when it comes to me. I can't really explain it, but that's my little story. That's my TED Talk.Thanks for coming.

It's your TED Talk. Okay, thanks for your TED Talk. So we have again today, Jessica Blanco joining us. She's an interior designer.And what I think is interesting about Jessica and The way she's approaching things, which I had never heard of before chatting with Jessica, but obviously it's gotta be there somewhere, is really how to design our interior spaces to support our mental health. And if you haven't listened to it already, we have another episode that's just in general talking about everyone's kind of mental health.But we wanted to do a little deep dive because we're all neurospicy here.And that's, again, one of the specialties that Jessica's looking into is how do we design our interior design space to support neurodiversity or to support your sensory sensitivities. So welcome, Jessica.

Thank you.

Back. Thank you. Back. Hey, thank you for coming back.

Thank you for having me.

Back.

Back is good.

Back. Back is back.

All right.

I don't know. Wait, is that right? Sexy?

No, I don't know.

I'm mixing.

Back.

Straight back.

All right.

Yes, that's it.

That's the one.

All right.So, Jessica, you've been listening to us talk about our spaces, and maybe just to get us started, can you explain a little bit more about what designing for sensory sensitivity or neurodiversity means? And actually, no, I'm going to stop. I'm going to do five questions at once.I want to take a step back even further because we've been using the term sensory sensitivity and neurodiversity, and I think most people know. Understand what neurodiversity is. We're talking.Talking about people who are diagnosed with autism or adhd, where your brain works a little bit differently than other people's brains. But the point is, is that there's a wide. There's a wide range of that. It's called the spectrum, and that's been popularized in the social media.How does neurodiversity and sensory sensitivity, what are those two things? Are they the same thing? Are they different? Maybe. Let's start there. So everybody who's listening, comment along with us.

So I think it really depends on your level of comfort and the level of information you already have. Coming from an educational background, diagnosis is kind of important to help you understand what are the kids coming into your classroom.Also helps a lot when you're speaking with parents or therapists, and you can use terminology that brings everybody a step closer to understanding. So every time you have more words to describe what's going on, you can build a better toolkit together with people.However, diagnosis is a scary process for a lot of people. A lot of people might realize, hey, something's going on, but I don't see myself in any of those terms, and that's fine.Then, you know, for people who already have a diagnosis or people who are practitioners in a field, they use a lot of those diagnosis terminology because it kind of helps you start to understand there are similarities. If in ADHD there are similarities on autism spectrum disorder, there are patterns. With dys numeracy and dyslexia, for example.Every time you start to understand and use a word that falls in the neurodiverse category, you help practitioners kind of peel away another layer and target in what in their toolkit might work best with this person. That being said, a lot of people don't feel comfortable being labeled or they don't see themselves there.And then we can just focus on broadly sensory sensitivities. Everybody has them. A neurotypical brain is better at without much effort or distraction filtering your focus for you.A neurodiverse brain is not gonna filter as well as a supposedly neurotypical brain. It's going to want to examine all the sensory input it's getting. That's where we start talking about hyper and hyposensitivity.Some sensory information is going to be completely overwhelming. Some sensory information might not even register on the scale. And that's where you start to look at sensory sensitivities.Just focusing on how am I processing the information from my environment. Whether it's sound, light, noise, texture, sense, what, whatever it is, everybody is processing them.A neurotypical brain is going to filter it for you. Neurodiverse brain is gonna have more noticeable reactions to sensory information. So that's kind of where I fall.I just try to adjust to whoever I'm working with. What is the vocabulary they're comfortable with. Let's start there and let's start investigating from wherever they're comfor away.

Yeah, I can tell you 100%. There's been times when I have a bra on and I cannot focus on anything else because the bra does not fit well or I'm sweating or something.And it's like not do anything without touching and fidgeting and trying to get it into a position. And I feel like that is. I thought, oh, I don't see other women running around fixing their boobs in their bra all the time.And then I realized, oh, that's probably one of these sensory overloads that my brain just can't deal with until I get it out. Like literally take my bra off, which is like.

I mean, also the same as design in general. Like you, you should spend money on the things that matter to you. If your bra is not a good material, the support system doesn't work for you.You need to upgrade, girl. Like, just invest the money. I found out the money and get the ones that work.

I have now the bras that work well for me and I'm happy they're not the most fashionable looking bras, but I don't have to run around pulling my, pulling at my boobs and pulling at my bra out in the world. So I'm happy with the situation.

But yeah, so you brought this up and I think that's really important actually to tackle because you were saying, yeah, let's replace the bra. Now I'm thinking you're walking into a new apartment.When you walk into an apartment, you're looking at the lighting, you're looking at the space, right? But it's still empty. So it's kind of like, you know, if you're lucky, it's empty.So you don't have to see other people's furniture and imagine it, but rather like just have a blank slate, in my opinion. But then you go and buy lighting because apparently you need lighting in the house. And you buy a sofa. Sofa is easier because it is textural.You sit, you try it. Okay, great.But then you realize that something is bothering you, but you've already spent the money or you've already done what you are supposed to do. Like, where do you go from there?Because I feel like we all will walk in and we'll be told like, oh, yeah, you need a light in this corner, you need a light in that corner. But then you come in, you're like, well, I got the fucking light. I spent good money on it. I hate this. This is terrible. It's really aggravating me.Or I'm not comfortable in that space. How do you avoid going into that? Like, how do you avoid wasting money on a good bra that might not actually fit you?

Yeah, it's really hard.And it's like hard because once you get into design and you start looking at the layering of textures, lighting, moods, Ye, then I could do like a deep dive in any of those. So I'm going to try to pull it apart first. Lighting, we know so little about the quality of our light sources, it's terrifying.Like, we think, oh, we're trying. You're doing a good job. If you read, it's natural light, it's white light, it's low energy, it's dimmable. Right?Like we all have like keywords we're looking at the light bulb and we're like, great, okay. That is like barely scratching the surface of the kind of technology that's available today in our lighting.So LED lightings, they fluctuate in order to create a white light is actually a fluctuation of all the lights in the spectrum. And a neurotypical brain is not going to see that. A lot of adults, we've learned to filter out this fluctuation.A neurodiverse brain is going to be irritated constantly because there is an unidentifiable flickering of light which cannot, no, you can't see it. But literally, the technology in the light, it is flickering. That's how it's creating white light.It's constantly switching between lights and spectrum to make it look white all the time. Also, they're not created to match the sunlight.They have peaks of lights that either are more blue or, or more red than what we would experience in the natural, like, sunlight spectrum. So our brains also are suddenly exposed to something that we have been evolving for thousands and thousands of years.We don't have any tool against having too much blue light. Our brain is created to have only the blue light at the end of the day or at the start of the day, but blue light the whole day.Our brain never had to process that kind of information. So. And our eyes are literally like, directly connected to that sensory. There's no delay.Basically, we take the information in our brain is going to be confronted with it, whether we are aware that we're processing it or not. So the quality of lighting is so difficult and so important, and you can go on a whole journey.There are people who are going back to, like, retro lights because they're like, I just want a consistent yellow light. I, I don't care. I don't want flickering. I don't want to deal with having to adjust it.You can go on like a huge deep dive just on the quality of a light source. Easy things to do. When you know a light is too red or too white, you can adjust the lampshade. That's a simple way to filter a light differently.You can also just change out the light bulb. Spend a little bit more time looking at a light. Often they have a graph on the back that shows how close you they are to natural sunlight.You might be able to look at that and find something that's a little bit closer to sunlight. Ulto dimmable lights are just a great way to be able to bring it down, bring it back up. That's just Lighting. Right.We're standing in an empty apartment and I've already like, I get so excited. I'm like, let's look at the light bulbs. Okay, let's. It's not really finishing the whole project, but that's how deep it is.And I think that's like the same investing. When I switched from education to interior defense, I was so worried, like, oh, this isn't a service oriented job.And I have like a weird complex with asking to be paid for something that I don't feel like is maybe a service. It's not like bettering the world slowly but surely.I started to think, okay, but how is it when you walk into that empty apartment and you're trying to think of you're going to spend so much money trying to make it yours? What if you spent in the beginning money on an interior designer? They do a 3D rendering. They bring you material samples, lighting samples.I mean, the programs we have now in interior design, we can literally put a light bulb, adjust it to the light bulb we found for you, and show you how that light's going to spread in the room. There's so many little things we can do now to simulate how the space is going to look and feel before you spend the money.So what I do is just creating a plan and a list of materials and furniture pieces. That's it. That's all you paid for. I don't come in and stage it. I'm not doing the painting.All you do is have a list of things and then you can choose. Oh, you know what, I'm going to keep my couch. But I do think I will spend the extra on that light.And those are the kind of things you start to layer. Also, taking inventory, if you're moving into a new apartment, do you really need to take everything from the old apartment? Do you?You spent money on it. I get it.But nowadays with marketplace and flea markets or donating it, just dropping it off at a thrift store, there's so much you can do to help the circular economy and still not feel like you wasted something, but rather you donated it or you sold it for still got some money back, which is going to help finance the next step.

Yeah, what we're talking about here, it goes with all of things, right? Also sound and acoustics. An empty apartment sounds horrible. There's nothing in it to have the bounce or anything.And spatially like how we're going to put our stuff in, I think it's really smart to have some kind of plan which is Good.But part of it is you don't really know until you live in the space, I would say for one whole year, all of the seasons where the sun is at during different times of the day, during different times of the seasons.And maybe that's just one of those things where you just say, okay, we're going to move in with the furniture we have, we're going to live in it for a year, and then we're going to hire someone to help us because then we can articulate a little bit better what we want, what we don't want in our apartment here. We have only one room that has 90 degree wall, like 90 degree corners.Every corner in our entire apartment is not 90 degrees, which makes, like planning a little bit more difficult, but also puts us into this way of, like, how do we use this 45 degree angle corner for anything? Oh, we can put a tree there or something that is a little more organic.But I think that's part of we've lived in our place for almost 10 years and we're still changing things and redesigning things and going, oh, yeah, let's do it this way. Oh, that feels nice. And we've had this period of time since June where we've been playing around with the organization of our living room.And at some point we're like, okay, let's turn the whole thing this way and then let's do that for a month and then let's turn the whole thing this other way and let's do that for a month and see. And that's literally what we've been doing.We've been literally just moving the furniture around for a month, knowing that this is never going to be the last configuration, that we're just playing around and we're just seeing how it feels. And we finally found, okay, we really like the TV in this location, we really like the couch.Now, these are not the TV and couch that we're going to keep. But it's the point of, okay, we don't need to rush into this because we're in this experimental phase.And I know that's a luxury that we have because it's just the two of us and we don't have a family and we have the space to do it. So not everybody can do it.

But yeah, you also go into it knowingly.

Right.

My thought is like, there are certain things in certain rooms that will maybe irritate one of us and we don't necessarily realize, Right. We don't actually know what it is.Like, I bought A light so that people can see me better when I speak on zoom, right when I have my calls with my clients. And it took me a really long time to realize that that light is giving me a major headache every single time. And it's really.And it probably is what you said, Jessica. It's prob. Just flickering or something. I put it on the warmest yellowish light. I try to adjust to what I think is good for me, the lowest setting.And still, every time I turn it off, I'm like, I hate this thing because it's. Like, it's giving me a headache. I come out of a call feeling drained.Not because of the call, but because of this stupid light that's in front of my face.So I feel like when you go in knowingly, Megan, and you kind of go like, we're trying to figure out what is better for our space, for our living, for whatever. Like, we did that too, in our living room. We switched it up a couple times until we found the best way for us, which is probably even more feng shui.

Probably.

I have no freaking clue. But I also realized that my boys were in the same room together forever and ever. They turn teenagers. They need their own space.And they were in a very cluttered room, or not cluttered, but just full of stuff, because their kids in the room is small. And when we moved my oldest to another room, he's such a minimalist. Like, it's crazy. And he feels so much better in that space.So he didn't necessarily realize that he was uncomfortable in the space he was in before.But because we gave that option of, like, let's redo your room for the reason of lack of money, we didn't put a lot of stuff in there because we couldn't afford buying a new closet and a new thing. And he loves it. He doesn't even use that makeshift closet that we made for him. He doesn't use it.So I guess my question is, how do you even go into designing for neurodiversity, where it would be different to interior design, where you kind of go in with the intention, hoping to avoid these kind of situations, I guess, is my question.

Yeah. So I got inspired years ago when I was working with an autism specialist.His name is Nicholas Kirkeberg, one of the best specialists I've ever worked with on making. He's specialized in autism spectrum. But neurodiversity is a huge area, and it gets. There's lots of crossover.But he told me once that his job is to be a sensory Detective. Like, preschool teachers are really good at this because they do it intuitively. They work with kids who can't speak yet. So they're constantly.Could it be that you didn't sleep enough? Could it be that you're hot? Could it be that you're hungry?They're constantly working with little humans and starting to recognize little signals because there's no language yet. So they do it intuitively. They just start to figure out as kids on the autism spectrum if they're verbal or nonverbal.They will tell you clearly when something isn't working. That is the superpower of they will not get themselves into situations they do not like.And they will let you know way before this isn't going to work for me. So sometimes it's harder, I think, for people who don't have a vocabulary or are used to. Masking is a popular term for how we. We just conform.We just learn to function in the space we're in. We don't think about how it might be better for us. We just have always been like, okay, this is a situation.I better shut down all the information I'm getting from my body or from my feelings, and I'm just gonna function through this.And then when we suddenly get the opportunity to start taking out things that don't work for us and to see, oh, my gosh, is that a state of actual homeostasis? Because I've always been overstimulated or under stimulated.So I love this idea of being a sensory detective, totally taking it with me into working in design. And I'm just encouraging people to really, like you said, write down every time your kid has an outburst or you have that migraine or like, what?I mean, this is also a thing for people with chronic migraines. They keep migraine journals, right? And they write down, what did I eat? How long was I looking at a screen? Where was I before?Then they start to figure out, what are triggers for migraines. Potential triggers for migraines. Well, what are potential triggers for actually feeling good? Do we ever observe that? What might make me feel good?I just wanted to quickly go back to this example about like an empty room and the acoustics in the room, right? There are so many great things now for acoustic paneling.And there's lots of ideas that you can spend a bunch of money on really well engineered solutions. There are also super cheap, affordable solutions you can do.Instead of buying a wallpaper, you could have a fabric backed with paper glue and use a fabric for a wallpaper. Now You've created another noise softening feature.You could also use old pictures, like old canvas kind of style pictures that everybody used to have, like these IKEA prints and stuff. You know, take that, cover it with fabric, maybe even put a backing on it, like a cotton backing, and hang that.If you don't want to wallpaper a whole wall. There are also really affordable solutions to help with acoustics in a. In a big space or an empty room that maybe don't have to be permanent.And you can try out. You can play with fabrics that are interesting to you and use them also as acoustic paneling.I think there's lots of little things that we just don't think of trying because we already think, okay, I don't know what I want. Oh, I'm gonna have to invest a bunch of money off. Have to measure everything. Okay, well, do like a trial run first.Go to your local thrift store, get one of those old canvas things, stuff it with some kind of thicker material, filling material, wrap it with a good fabric that you really like, and hang that on a wall where, you know, there's a lot of echoing or hard sounds. Just see how it feels. Does the space feel better? That solution maybe cost you 5 francs.You can experiment with materials and colors, and you can start to soften the noise in a space that you're realizing is irritating you.

I really like the idea of going and doing this from a thrift store, because I saw exactly what you were talking about.Taking something that's framed with a canvas that you would normally just hang on the wall, but then buying a couple of T shirts from the thrift store or an old hoodie or an old pillow or any of those things, and they actually put it behind that and shoved it in there. Then you can buy an old pillowcase from a thrift store to back it, to shove it all in there.And then you can get a pretty fabric or a dress or something that, like you said. But you do the whole project from the thrift store and slap it up there and see what it looks like and how it affects the sound of your space.And I know that we've talked before about. You do these thrift store tours.And I think before in my brain, it was like, oh, you take someone to a thrift store and you show them how to buy a lamp. But there's these kind of projects that are also.You can actually do something a little DIY from thrift store parts that can also affect your space in your surroundings.

Yeah, okay, I'll go Quickly into colors. Because we haven't talked a lot about colors and colors. There are tons of studies on colors. What are the psychological effects?Interestingly enough, it changes for every culture on main imagine because we have. We're socialized a certain way. It also changes based on location.If you grew up in a sunny place, you might have different reactions, or you grew up by the beach. Obviously, your colors, what brings you joy, happiness, comfort, energizing. Those are totally different than somebody who maybe grew up in Alaska.So I don't try to go too much into the psychology of colors. I would rather focus on your individual response to colors. There's biophilic design is a concept that's been around for a while.It's about bringing nature.So using colors from nature, using materials directly from nature, bringing living elements into your home and how that is calming to the nervous system. There's a couple studies done that show it. It definitely our connection to nature has a calming effect on our nervous system.So bringing colors from nature, but choosing the colors that resonate with you. I love earthy tones. My husband finds them like, too like dirt. He doesn't want to cedar. I would have terracotta browns and greens everywhere.And he's like, okay, we have to find a balance. That he would like everything to be white and shiny. That's not my comfort place, but that's his comfort and calm place.So it's kind of constantly bringing in those, like, where can we compromise? What space is his, what space is mine, and how do we find a comfortable place in the middle?So I think also when you're thrifting, you should be regularly looking for houseplants. People get rid of houseplants all the time. And trying to buy a brand new houseplant is insane.

You touched color, which I love because we actually realized, for example, in our family that like bed sheets, the ones that you get kids, some like brighter bed sheets, colorful, kind of messy. And they don't sleep as well with these super bright colors. They sleep better with these muted. Yeah, earthy or. Or kind of like just muted colors.So we did realize that bed sheets

is a important one because I think too with like our kids, they might want the dinosaur veggie or whatever. There wasn't time.We had all minion stuff like, and you're spending a bunch of money because of the branding of the thing anyways, and you want to make your kids happy every now and then. So you're like, final splurge on whatever. But the quality of the fabrics is barbarian. Really Just disappointing.And my kids realized quickly because we only buy high thread counts for our bed because it just doesn't work if there's any kind of static in the bed or, like, peeling on the fabric. So just get a good high quality, and our kids realize, like, pretty quick, like, oh, your sheets are a lot better than our sheets.So I had to kind of start investing in better sheets for everybody. But when you think about it, when you're anyhow splurging every now and then on these.These marketing gimmicks for them, you might as well buy good quality sheets and fabrics for your kids too, because they sleep better, they're gonna have a more restful night. Some kids, you know, it's like the same thing, like, cutting out the tags. Like, some kids will come to you and tell you, this tag is itching me.But do you think the same about every time you sit on a chair or every time you put your head on that pillow? Are you thinking the same way? Is there something about this that's scratching on my skin, the largest organ of my body? We just don't.We don't spend enough time thinking or investing in those quality fabrics and materials. Textures, too, as like a acoustic element.So the quality of your carpets, your rugs, those also can have soundproofing functions when they're good materials. When they're cheap materials, they might just create static. They might not even feel nice to sit on the floor with.So you want that pop of color maybe, but I would rather go without a carpet than have a synthetic fiber carpet.

Yeah, the texture part in the sheets. Actually, we just had this conversation with my husband the other day.We go middle of the road with our sheets, and I think for my husband, it's mostly about the color and also staining or fading. Like, there's very visual element to it. But I also sometimes.Okay, I'm going to give you too much information, but we sleep in the nude, and we like sleeping in the nude. It's nice, but if I'm just getting over a bit of a cold or just sometimes in the winter, it is just too cold to get into cold sheets.I have a heating blanket that sometimes I'll put on just to warm up the space. But every once in a while I'm like, I just want to sleep with fabric touching my skin. That's not cool.Obviously, it's the same temperature, but we all know the effect of a cold floor versus a cold rug. It is a different feeling of temperature. We haven't really talked about temperature yet. In terms of sensitivities.But I would love to have flannel sheets for the wintertime because then I get the feeling of being naked. I get to be naked, but I also get the feeling of having a warmer fabric against my skin. But he doesn't like that.So it's back to always having to balance this with whoever you're living with or sharing a bed with and pillowcase fabric as well. A lot of people talk about how just having a silk pillowcase is really good for your hair and your face, but I cannot stand having a silk pillowcase.So I think this is all going, again, to everybody's kind of individual preferences and how to work around that. I work around that by having my own heating blanket or just wearing pajamas.So this is one of the things I like now is finding really good quality pajamas for those times where I'm just like, I just want to feel cozier. And I don't feel cozy climbing naked into a cold bed ever. Well, in the summertime idea.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I really think, like, that being your own sensory detective, right? This is working for me. This is not.I can't do the silk pillow sheets thing, pillowcase thing, because I can't handle on mismatch.Like, I don't need matchy matchy, but I need, like, if I have four pillows, they have to be two and two, and they have to match at least the comforter or the sheet. Like, not everything has to be the same, but there has to be a relationship. They have to speak a language together.And I can't have just one silk pillow hanging out in this family. No. Like, not. Can't deal with that. I also can't Couldn't stand it when my kids like pajamas, got mishnaf. Like, that is the absolute worst thing.And I'm not that picky about stuff, but I can't. When you know it's a pear, keep it a pear. I think that's super individual.If you're living with somebody who's maybe not great at pinpointing it, observe it for them and be like, have you noticed temperature?I mean, luckily, I think in the US we had better control of temperature in our environment than we do in Switzerland, because it was not typical in Switzerland to have an air conditioning. I don't know if you guys have air conditioning. We definitely do not have air conditioning.And I have not lived in the 15 years I've been here in a place that had air conditioning. But being able to adjust the temperature in your space is important.Like Some of us need warmth to sleep, even though there are studies that say a colder environment is better for sleeping. Okay, to each their own studies. I think it's really important to be able to adjust the space to the temperature you need for the different tasks.Like, when I'm working, I'm going to open a window. I don't care if it's freezing outside. It really helps me to have the cold, fresh air that's important.When I'm on the sofa, if one of my kids leaves the door open and I am, like, in my cuddle zone, I got my blanket, I got my pillow, and now there's freezing cold air rushing in. Unacceptable for this moment. But these are the compromises.So there are really important things you can look out with temperature and what the space is. Some rooms can be colder, some rooms, the windows can be left open longer. Those are really important things to discuss and to observe.It will change the way you feel in a space when you think about the right temperature.

So, Jessica, do you have any final advice for someone who's realizing that their home environment might be making their neurospiciness a little bit harder to manage?

I really am a big fan of trying to figure out what is your body telling you. And this is wild. I mean, imagine if we are all, we're not spring chickens anymore.Okay, we've had a few years, but I really feel like I just started learning full embodiment in my 40s. Visually, if you. You start with, like, changes or you've had kids and your body's got.Had to do a lot of different things for you, and you have stopped listening to it because we learned a bunch of coping mechanisms when we were kids. We learned how to function in spaces that maybe we didn't feel well in because we had to achieve something.And we've just had so many layers of conforming and masking and figuring out how to live in a world that maybe isn't always the best for us. And now we're adults and we have our own spaces or spaces for our children.And now we don't totally know what to do with them because we've never listened to what our body is telling us about how we're feeling. So spend time being your own sensory detective, being that for your children. How does my body feel in this space?Because my body is knowing something. It is interpreting all the sensory information that I have taught myself to ignore or filter out, and it's giving me signals.And start noticing those things, start writing them down. I do a Questionnaire with families, that's really, really basic.It goes through just all the different stuff, sensory processing areas, and it just asks people to spend a minute observing what do they prefer, what is exciting or not exciting, what is irritating, what do they have no reaction to at all.And then I kind of use that to help me gauge are there hypersensitivities, are there hyposensitivities, what are the spaces that have to be shared spaces? And where are the spaces that are really going to be tailored to each person's specific needs?And I think to do that, you just have to start really becoming embodied, listening to what your body's telling you and trusting the information you're getting and not thinking about the price. There's tons of clever ways to save money later.There's good resale markets now with Facebook Marketplace here in Switzerland, we have Ricardo, we have ebay, there's Tutti. There's so many places you can sell items that are in good shape but maybe don't feel right for you anymore. And so don't make the budget.The first point make how are you feeling the starting point when you're looking at your space?

That goes along beautifully with our constant knickering and nagging people to just listen to their own bodies. Just the. The beautiful ending to this great episode.

We could probably talk about this more. So maybe our listeners might also have some questions because I feel like we touched on a lot of different points.So, listeners, if you do have questions for Jessica, you can leave us a voicemail or send us an email. Just go to our website, freaking healthy.com and if we get a couple of questions, maybe we'll have Jessica back on to answer those.Otherwise, we'll make sure that you guys all have how to contact Jessica. She's got a really great Instagram and her website. She is in Switzerland.But I'm pretty sure that there's always a reason to touch base and get in touch with someone who you find is interesting. And I find Jessica, you are very interesting.

And then, oh, thanks, man. I do, I love to travel. So if somebody is like, I don't know if there's any chance that I'd love to come talk to you about my space.I'm always, I'm so. I'm always just give her to get

a plane ticket and leave the kids.

Give me a reason. Get on a plane, please. Yeah, because it is basically my process is the first consultation is anyhow free.It's just about senior space hearing what's going on for you. Then we talk about, like, your budget, what kind of concept do you want? And only at that point would I make an offer for getting you some renderings.And obviously, once I've been in the space, I don't have to go there every week anymore. It's just once I have the measurements, I've done a double check to make sure the measurements are accurate or the planning is accurate.Then the rest happens pretty much virtually anyhow. So all that stuff, it is possible to do it over long distances.

Thanks, Jessica.

Thanks, lady. Bye.