Welcome!

Trying again to create a substack...

while my doodle pukes on my rug… Hold on! Okay, she’s apologizing (see photo of her on my pink glitter desk chair). Only I don’t know how to post photos… wait,

This is Broccoli, my Australian labradoodle on the chair I sit on while I type this. And yes, she’s in front of red velvet curtains. Because I’m really into textures, and red velvet is my favorite!

Welcome to my autistic life, celebrating all the senses! As a writer I am obsessed with senses as the portals to connect with others (readers, audiences) and when I teach, I offer this handout on all the senses, in case you thought there were only 5. Asian countries allow for 6 which includes the mind, or Awareness. But I’ve compiled a list of 40 senses. So, to thank you for showing up here, writers and seekers, whoever you are, here is a list of 40 senses. Use them with abandon!

The Senses — How many do we have and what are they all?
We learn in school that we have 5 senses : sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste
But we actually have many many more: (here is a list of 40) IF YOU CAN ADD ANY, PLEASE DO SO BELOW in the comments!!!

6. The Sense of the Mind as in Awareness/Consciousness
7. Interoception - Senses inside a body includes hunger, thirst, the need to relieve one's self, etc. 8. Proprioception - Sense of the relative position of the body in space, and the strength of effort being used - the understanding to clap with eyes closed or to write with the correct pressure or navigate through a narrow space, AKA the kinesthetic sense
9. Sense of your FEELINGS/EMOTIONS — each feeling is its own sense! So 9 is really multiple. See https://cdn.gottman.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Gottman-Institute_The- Feeling-Wheel_v2.pdf for 78 feelings!
10. Senses of other people's feelings - emotional intuition/intelligence
11. Sense of Someone Watching You
12. Sense of Intuition
13. Sense of Danger
14. Sense of Timing
15. Sense of Temperature - Thermoception
16. Sense of Common Sense
17. Court Sense — the way the game is played well — anticipation/strategy
18. Sense of structures/walls around you - like a bat with echolocation, we can often sense furniture in the dark and walls or doorways as well
19. NOCIOCEPTION (physiological PAIN) from nerve damage or tissue damage
or CUTANEOUS - skin pain, from cuts, SOMATIC - joint and body pain, VISCERAL - organ pain
20. PULMONARY STRETCH RECEPTORS - an internal sense - these are located in our lungs and control our rate of respiration
21. Peripheral chemoreceptors in the brain monitor carbon dioxide and create a feeling of suffocation if it gets too high, the chemoreceptor trigger zone in medulla (in brain) senses blood- borne drugs and hormones and communicates with vomiting center, chemoreceptors in circulatory system measure salt and sugar levels and prompt thirst if they are too high
22. CUTANEOUS receptors respond to touch, pressure, temperature and vasodilation - the feeling we get when we are blushing
23. GAS from stretch receptors in GI tract
24. ACID REFLUX - sensory receptors in esophagus - swallowing, vomiting and acid reflux
25. from Interoception - sense of needing to pee or poop
26. I'd love a word for this - sense of foreign item in mouth
27. GAG REFLEX
28. HEADACHE caused by blood dilation in brain arteries
29. SYNESTHESIA - seeing sound or feeling taste or coloring music, etc30. VESTIBULAR - perception of our body in relation to gravity, movement and balance including acceleration, g-force, movement and head position - knowing you are moving in an elevator
31. ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE - dogs better than humans, detecting weather changes

32. ITCH
33. TENSION as in muscles
34. EQUILIBRIOCEPTION - balance, acceleration and directional changes

35. MAGNETOCEPTION - ability to detect magnetic fields (humans are not as good at this as birds)

36. TIME - Numerous experiments have demonstrated that people do have the ability to detect accurately the passage of time. One experiment showed that, without consciously counting or anything of the like, a group of 19 to 24 year olds were able, on average, to tell when 3 minutes was up within a 3 second margin of error. Interestingly, the age group of 60-80 tended to average perceiving 3 minutes pass at around 3 minutes and 40 seconds consistently within the test group. This would seem to indicate whatever mechanism we use to sense time slows as we age and thus as we get older time seems to pass faster to us. People with Parkinson's and also with ADD or ADHD have very different sense of the time passage.

37. Sense of AGENCY - the subjective feeling of having chosen a particular action. Some conditions, such as schizophrenia, can lead to a loss of this sense, causing a person to feel like a machine or even leading to delusions of being controlled from some outside source. The opposite extreme occurs too, with some people experiencing everything in their environment as if they had decided that it would happen.[22] Even in non-pathological cases, there is a measurable difference between making a decision and the feeling of agency.

38. Sense of mastery/ownership

39. HYGRORECEPTION - ability to detect humidity
40. Familiarity - a sense of the familiar and including Deja vu - the sense of the already seen/ lived

PLEASE Name More Below! Or comment on which ones you’re going to start using in your writing… or life in general… And if you’re a poet, use them as prompts. Create a chapbook or series of poems about unusual senses!

Onward Creatively, Emma