Hi Kmh158
So sorry to hear you're going through such stress. I know the following may sound incredibly simplistic and I by no means intend to take away from the complexities you face but some people are incredibly sensitive to sensory information.
- Some find it difficult to tolerate certain things they visually observe
- Some find it difficult to tolerate certain things they hear. Some can't even enter a shopping centre because of the combined noises that accumulate
- Some find it impossible to taste and tolerate certain foods such as ones high in sugar
You get the gist.
A heightened sensitivity to certain sensory inputs can be deeply challenging.
So, what to do? For some people, they find it helpful to become sensitive to other things, as a distraction. So, for someone who's got a thing about noise, they might enter a shopping centre with headphones on, focusing on their favorite music. For someone who cannot help but focus on a particular feature a person has, they might practice shifting their focus to another feature, one that gives them pleasure. This would take a lot of practice if the goal is to eventually stop focusing on what they regard as an outstanding or disturbing feature. This could take months to master.
Simply telling someone to stop looking at a particular feature typically won't work. You know yourself that if I gave you an image of a landscape and said 'Whatever you do, don't focus on the cloud in the top right hand corner', what are you naturally going to do.
Suggest to him the idea of refocusing as a possibility and see if he thinks this is a practice that holds possabilites.
Good luck 🙂
