Robert
Robert is a middle-aged man, whom we suspect to have sensory processing disorder in addition to learning disabilities, a one-sided visual impairment and other complexities.
He is gentle and playful with a great sense of humour and is just the best at blowing raspberries. We suspect he understands some quite complex verbal communication when not overwhelmed by sensory stimuli.
Some of the steps we have used to build up connection and closer proximity, while keeping his comfort zone and processing time in mind:
- Creating an environment that doesn’t disrupt his concentration or add unpredictable disruptions, which can add to delayed processing due to a higher stress level
- Sessions with prearranged and purposeful “no touch initiation by us” content that is verbally shared with him at the beginning
- An exploration of building-up closer proximity of our hands towards his, but without touch/making physical contact
- His fingertips touching ours, totally initiated and only by him
- Playful fingertips connecting, both he and us initiating
- Closer proximity in general, sitting together feet to feet/ knee to knee
- Gradual introduction of touch to chin, elbows, feet (areas that seem most acceptable to him) as response to what he’s doing and to embellish playful anticipation
- Head rubs and further exploration of other aspects of proximity, leaning in/shoulder to shoulder contact etc
- Faster paced interaction when possible. This is due to trust and being more relaxed which seems to aid his processing.
Processing time and sensory overwhelm often seem to make touch and connection more difficult. As we are aware of this, we had phases (months) of purposefully not using touch at all but sometimes offering our hands. He therefore learned that we don’t need it to connect and that it isn’t ever an expectation. As much of his life includes physical prompts, this seems especially important. We focused on other things like mirroring body language and echoing sound in a multitude of ways. I personally think that due to this Robert was able to get to a place where he felt safe, trusting and playful. Exploring closer proximity and simple hand to hand, or hand to elbow touch with us became easier for him as he knew it was never an expectation. The fact that there was always fluidity to go back to something else if he should signal that’s what he preferred on the day aided the coming together of the experiences.
We still constantly observe him and his responses every week and will go back to more distant proximity immediately he signals that this is what he needs on the day. Often after half an hour or so of mirroring, echoing and sometimes acknowledging songs he is then relaxed and often happy to go fingertips to fingertips again, or have us acknowledge him rubbing his head by rubbing it too.
One example: No touch but close proximity
When Robert looked in my direction holding his fingers instead of mirroring, I put my hands together and moved the fingers of both hands very close in front of his face, while wriggling them slowly. He focused on it for a long moment (about 30 sec.) and I put my face directly behind my hands being very close to him.
One example touch initiated by Practitioner
Him playing with his hands and me mirroring them closely.
Him putting his hands palm to palm together and looking at me, me doing the same coming closer with my hands but not my face.
Him doing it again and me putting my hands together and saying, “I will be a bit cheeky and try to catch your hands”. He kept his there and still. I caught his hands between mine and he seemed amused and relaxed and interested with a small smile showing. Later on, when we both repeated this, his smile got wider.
One example of how interactions are often now, after years of knowing each other and slow build up:
After careful observation and evaluation which confirms that he is in a relaxed and happy mood, smiling lightly when we test if this is the case with shoulder rubs or head rubs, We can now offer a variety of different physical contact on his chin and elbows, leaning in to him shoulder to shoulder, squeezing his feet to his rhythms, or even sometimes sitting behind him or back to back while responding to him. Often a variety of all of these will happen within our hourlong session and he chooses with looks and gestures and his facial expressions and body positioning.
For instance, Tiw sits on one side of him, and I am on the other. We often each respond to a certain action of Roberts which develops in response to him within the flow of the session. Usually there is an element of Tiw responding when Robert turns towards him, and me when he turns toward me, so it still holds predictability for him. This takes less processing on his side and can mean that there is more room for variations of our responses. Variations take more processing, as they hold an element of surprise. He seems to enjoy surprises, which often make him chuckle, as long as they don’t trigger overwhelm.
It could be me consistently rubbing his head when he rubs his, while Tiw responds to vocalisations and finger movements, or moves closer for proximity and explores shoulder to shoulder and arm to arm connections.
Luca Grys October 2025
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