Winston Churchill & Sensory Processing Disorder (Spd)

Winston Churchill stands as an example of depression, mania and low muscle tone, the combination of which is a red flag for sensory processing disorder (SPD), a common condition in which you misperceive and misconstrue sensori-motor information and behave out of proportion to the messages coming from the environment.

Low Muscle Tone & Depression

If you have low muscle tone, you are typically hypo-responsive and need a pow of sensation to get your system charged and going. If you don't get it, you feel lethargic. For instance, if it's dark and quiet in your bedroom in the morning, you might have a hard time getting out of bed. This combination of low muscle tone and under-responsivity sets you up for depression.

Fleshy Churchill felt hounded by depression — his “black dog.” To deal with his low moods, he often went horseback riding, a powerful means of vestibular and tactile-proprioceptive input, and swimming, which permits easier mobility and provides water pressure to hug the body. These sensory inputs organize the nervous system and balance mood by releasing neurotransmitters like serotonin, the feel-good hormone, and dopamine, the reward hormone.

Mania

Hypo-responsiveness also sets you up for mania because you might become hyperactive to generate enough sensation to get engaged in the world. In a well told anecdote of reckless sensation seeking, he flew off a bridge and landed in a tree when he was eighteen, to prevent his two cousins – hunters flanked on either side of the bridge – to catch him, the deer. He woke up with a concussion and ruptured kidney.

Clumsiness

Churchill was also clumsy, another red flag for SPD, and hated sports other than horseback riding.

Poor Emotional Modulation

Quick tempered and easily bored in school, he was an abominable student and a discipline problem, indicating a problem with emotional modulation, another sign of sensory processing issues.