Living Well

One of the interesting to experience aspects of recovering from trauma and depression is the change in your senses.

I am not sure if senses such as sight, taste, sound, smell and even your skin’s ability to feel

actually become less and more acute in various ways or your brain simply stops interpreting data from the stream that you no longer pay attention to.

I became extremely sensitive to sounds, especually repetative machine sounds. clocks ticking, metronome or machine drum music, fans, airplanes – sounds vary in frequency and the shape of the sound wave

the drone of a fan compared to nails scraped down a black board

for vision, it’s colours that disappear and the world literally becomes more grey,

food and beverages become less flavourful

so from time to time, as my stress and anxiety levels lessen

as I become convinced to expect positive interactions with people as not only the norm

but as a given

I find that see more colours, more hues and nuanced shades – as well as suddenly having certain spectrums seem to return

such as one day, everything seemed to get yellower and brighter

but also sounds have become more distinct – ambient from background to foreground sounds

this week, I realized that I had not been hearing the full spectrum range – and this is a challenge when you are trying to listen to human voices in different pitches

if you can’t hear all the frequencies, you cannot parse for emotional content

to be able to respond appropriately or in kind.