How to Make Decisions
Last weekend I needed antihistamine tablets and and excuse to ...
Highly Sensitive and Neurodivergent: Complementary Superpowers
Leif looking down at his three-year-old niece, Olivia, November ...
Sleep Deprivation Is Bad Medicine
Recently I visited a friend in the ICU, recovering ...
Highly Sensitive Is Not Dysregulated
Picture this: you have a colleague with a hair-trigger temper. ...
Are You Breathing Poisonous Air?
For one liter of water a week, this fiddle ...
The Right Color Is Not (Always) The Pretty One
Perhaps the most beautiful shade of blue I've ever ...
Sybaritic Disease Control: The Case for Spa-Like Hospitals
Last month I finally got covid. Because of vaccines, it ...
Fluorescent Lights Are The Devil
The frosted, upward-facing sconces of this chandelier bounce light ...
Remembering Who You Are
The image on the left was created in 1654, ...
How Noise Affects Your Health
Chronic loud noise is more than an annoyance. Living under ...
Neurodiversity and Inclusion at Work
Panel discussion on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, at ...
Why Highly Sensitive People Hate Dating
Ever had a splendid first date with a Perfectly Nice ...
Neurodiversity At Work: Teams With Superpowers
Teams which include neurodiverse professionals are 30% more productive, ...
Decision Fatigue: Why Your Brain Gets Tired
Never schedule your parole hearing right before lunch. Decision ...
How Not To Focus
Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO and indicted con man: “I’m infamous ...
Architectural Digest Gets a Clue: Neurodiversity Is Key to Interior Design
Original artwork by Lena Helen. Orchid cultivated by Waldor ...
Yes, Your Surroundings Can Make You Smarter. (Or not.)
No Stupid Questions podcast drops some hefty research data ...
Native Perennial Gardens: 1. HOAs: 0
Tiny urban perennial gardens attract wildlife, pollinators, clean the ...
Genius Is A Package Deal
Once upon a time I was in the room when ...
How To End Plagues: Clean Your Air
Once upon a time, I melted down in a ...
Can Brown Noise Help ADHD?
It's going viral on TikTok: people with ADHD are ...
Your Brain On Clutter
It may seem intuitive, but research proves it: physical ...
Tolerance Is Not Inclusion
'Tolerance'! The horror! Who in the world wants to ...
Trenches
"Startin' riots with those looks," said the person behind the counter. "I was downtown last week," I declared...
Sensory Architecture: A Seamless Experience
Today most buildings are designed in pieces, by specialists who rarely talk to one another. Architect, engineer, electrician, plumber, contractor, interior designer: each designer's expertise is abstracted from the specific environment, and from the rest of the design.
How to Grow Big Houseplants
The light and humidity in the corner of your living room bear no resemblance to that of a West African rain forest, and you cannot fool the fiddle leaf fig tree into thinking so.
From Grunge to Gorgeous
March of 2020: lockdown. What I crave more than anything: a garden. What I’ve got: 100 square feet of broken concrete, surrounded by a broken fence, looking onto a vacant lot which the guy down the block insists is his. (It’s not.) I’ve gotten into a guerrilla gardening war over this lot, and lost.
Why Get Political? A Love Letter.
“Don’t mix business with politics.”If you follow Practical Sanctuary on ...
7 Simple Fixes for the Highly Sensitive Person’s Home Office
The amount of natural light we are exposed to, the air quality, ambient noise, textures, visual clutter and smells can help us manage our stress. Taking some time to align our workspaces can have a big payoff in terms of our mental and emotional resilience. You don’t have to remodel your home, fire your family, or spend a ton of money you don’t have on office furniture in order to radically improve your working and living space in a short time. Most of what you need is already available; it’s just a question of fitting the puzzle pieces together.
Sensory Integration: How To Decode What Your Child Is Telling You
So often, children with sensory issues are treated for behavioral problems, with or without acknowledging what sensory needs might be driving the behavior. When therapists focus on addressing unwanted behaviors without digging deeper, we can miss an opportunity to help a struggling child.
The ONE Biggest Mistake
You don't have to take down a wall to see radical improvement in your interior design. Just start with the simple stuff!
The Eccentric Genius: Neurodiversity and Design
Neurodiverse people have brains that differ from the majority, in the ways they organize and process information. This can include people on the autism spectrum, people with sensory sensitivities, and people with ADHD. There is a lot of overlap, and specific patterns of neurodiversity vary quite a bit.
Feral Artists and Eccentric Habitats
"...the two things that stood out about SFAI was that it provided no formal education and no practical support, either during your tenure there or upon graduation. Students were simply thrown into a mud pit and encouraged to rend one another."
Space, Power and Sexism
When we talk about space, we inevitably talk about power. ...
UPDATE ON PAST PROJECT
Franny Lou's extended the kitchen into the space formerly ...
The Obvious Thing
What can't I see? Long ago I had a boyfriend ...
All About Sound
Ecstatic dance: rolling around a vibrating floor with a hundred ...
Time’s Executioner
Friends with neurodiverse brains have told me that it often feels like they are living in the eternal present. Things happen around them, but it feels like watching someone dancing in a strobe light--a series of poses that might be connected, but there's no linear path that they can track.
How To Avoid Being Swallowed
It’s impossible to overstate how big an effect your environment ...
Decluttering Your Mind
This week I went on a decluttering tear. Sorting paperwork ...
