It’s been a few weeks since I last slid into your inbox, and SensoryMe is just two weeks away from in-browser launch 🙌🏻.
In the meantime, I wanted to share a the 'why' behind SensoryMe. The idea came to me from my own experience of Burnout two years ago, when sensory sensitivity reached new levels and I could no longer tolerate everyday sounds, especially metal on metal or plate scraping. I started wearing sunglasses in the house because even daylight through the curtains was too much for my exhausted brain to process.
I told my GP I was struggling to function and all she could offer me was an antidepressant. A psychologist suggested a sensory assessment with an Occupational Therapist, but she quickly explained that since this isn’t available for adults on the NHS, it would cost hundreds of pounds. I had to figure it all out for myself, what to add, what to buy, what to remove to help myself feel better, and I know I was far from alone in that experience.
Autism and ADHD services in the UK are stretched thin right now and not because these conditions are rare or suddenly more common, but because services were built on the assumption they were. I see the effects of that from the clinical side every week: long waits for a diagnosis, and not much sensory support for people living well past one.
I wanted to create a tool that takes the practical sensory support tools recommended by occupational therapists and present them in a low-demand way that exhausted brains can explore at their own pace, where you will only see options that match your experience, and you can choose what does and doesn’t belong in your toolkit. I wanted you to be able to access the right tools at the right time, which is why the check-in feature is so important to me. No long questionnaires or big lists with no instructions.
In those moments of overwhelm where everything feels too much and you’re close to meltdown or shutdown, I want you to have a button you can press that tells you step by step what you can do to feel better, where you can make notes about what happened you can look back on any time.
The content, the features and the structure of SensoryMe has come from the minds of me, Dr Grace Roberts, a medial doctor, and our wonderful Occupational Therapist Alexandra Lawrence. We both have lived experience of Neurodivergence and physical disability and have used that insight to make SensoryMe accessible from the ground up.
There is no AI chat, no algorithm, no scoring and no assumptions. Just practical sensory tools you can try on your journey to feeling better.
Thank you for being part of this from the start, your support means the world to me.
I can’t wait to share this with you all,
Grace x
Ps. Dying to get your hands on it? The champions community will get the beta version tomorrow, Friday 11th September, to test and feed back on. 2 weeks before anyone else, at a lower forever price to say thank you. You can join us here.