Hi,
Daniela !
I'd love to help....
I guess when I was a kid, my sensory difficulties stemmed mostly from other people - crowds, lots of chaos and loud noise, the unpredictability of it all, etc. There were many various and sundry objects I would carry around with everywhere as a kid, including but not limited to:
- Plastic toys, mostly of Lion King, Barney, 101 Dalmatians or Sesame Street characters
- A hardened lump of green Play-Doh
- Assorted stones
- A yellow feeding spoon
- Various books (one of them being a small green-covered copy of the New Testament)
- Seashells (I would hold them to my ear and listen to "the ocean", which also helped to counteract unwanted auditory input
- Stickers
...but what I carried around with me most often were my stuffed animals. My dad tells me that I've loved them for as long as he can remember. I suspect that immediately after I was weaned off of pacifiers/bottles, I went right to my stuffed animals for comfort (one reason for this is b/c I have a stuffed 101 Dalmatians puppy with a chewed tail and a bean bag rabbit with chewed plastic whiskers, both from my earliest years). I always carried at least one stuffed animal with me everywhere...the soft plush textures and having something to hug that wouldn't hug back (I didn't like being touched much back then) made me feel safe. I've never stopped needing the company of a stuffed animal in order to feel safe and sure of my identity whenever I go out in public anywhere, but when I started being criticized for it, I started carrying small, bean-bag sized stuffed animals with me in my pockets or bag.
...Now, as a young adult, and an exhausting decade and a half of trying to "pass," I still have more or less the same sensory processing issues as I did as a child - turns out that no amount of trying to "pass" made them go away. I still have an array of stim toys I use/carry around, such as Tangle toys, small flocked animal toys (like Calico Critters) and small plushies called "Disney Tsum Tsums." And yes, I still carry small stuffed animals in my pockets and bags, too.
I also wear chewable pendants. I say, if it helps you feel calm, safe and self-regulated, then go ahead and use it - don't worry about what others will say...until they experience the world as we do, they won't understand.
I didn't mean to ramble on, but I do hope some of this is helpful! Good luck on your project, and if you have any other questions, just ask!
