Everything Was Too Something: the Shape of Safety

Sensory–Movement Difference and the Architecture of Care.

A sensory reflection on classroom design, autistic memory, and moving spaces. What if we built from nervous system needs—not norms? What if classrooms could listen? On grief, design, and the quiet dignity of rooms that let us breathe.

Introduction: The Quiet Room

The blinds are broken.

They’ve been broken for some time now, but today I notice them differently. The southern light slants in through the bent slats, fractured and sharp, as if the sun itself isn’t sure what to do with this moment. I’m beginning the process of moving classrooms—haphazardly, reluctantly. No real plan in place. No map. Just a vague set of instructions and a wheeled trolley that keeps veering left.

I’ve called this room home for the last three years. It’s never been flashy, never Instagram-worthy. A little wonky around the edges, like me. Sparse by design, not neglect. Some called it “bare.” Others “calm.” A few students simply called it safe.

I liked it that way. Still do. The light used to be kinder, before the blinds gave out. The air had a rhythm I could settle into. Here, things had their place. I had my place.

But now I’m packing in starts and stutters. One corner half-cleared, another untouched. Books unshelved and then re-shelved in a different order because I forgot what logic I was following. I know it’s time. I know I’m not being evicted or cast out or anything dramatic—but still, I don’t really want to leave. The new room hasn’t been occupied in years. Nobody remembers who taught there last. It echoes when you walk in. The lights flicker. The air feels like something waiting to be deciphered.

And in the midst of this slow unravelling, I find myself procrastinating—naming it “break time,” but really just seeking refuge in avoidance—and I open a paper I bookmarked weeks ago. Steven Kapp, something about sensory–movement underpinnings and getting a grip on autism. The sort of title that could go either way. I brace for the usual: medicalised language, deficit this, abnormal that. But I keep reading. And there it is—this subtle, almost tender suggestion that maybe autism isn’t primarily about social failure, but about how our bodies move and sense and integrate the world. Maybe what others call deficits are actually divergences in rhythm, in regulation, in what feels possible in a given space.

I don’t know yet what I think of the whole piece. But something about it snagged. Lodged in me like a hook, soft and strange and maybe a little true.

So I sit here, half-packed, blinking into broken sunlight, wondering what it would mean to design classrooms—not just for learning, but for being. What it would mean if more of us were allowed to make spaces like this one. What it would mean if I didn’t have to keep building safety from scratch every time the floorplan changed.

Kapp, S. K. (2025). Sensory–movement underpinnings of lifelong neurodivergence: getting a grip on autism. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 19, 1489322.

Sensory Memory as Archive

My childhood quilt is older than most of the buildings I’ve lived in. Seven wool blankets stitched inside a patchwork of old trousers—faintly scratchy, absurdly heavy, and entirely mine. Long before I knew the term, it was a weighted blanket. It still is.

I shared a room with my older brother—my first bully, though we didn’t name it then. The room could be safe, but only in his absence. In the quiet spells, I’d arrange my corner just so. Light filtered in softly. My quilt held the weight of stillness. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

Until it wasn’t.

One day, he and his friends scrawled all over the wall—spray paint, marker, chaos. I remember staring at it afterwards, gutted. The room had been shouted at. It was no longer mine.

I didn’t know then what I was grieving. I just felt the order collapse, the rhythm break. My body knew. It always had.

School brought its own kind of disorder—walls cluttered with slogans, flickering lights, itchy carpet, voices pitched too high. I stood out without trying to. Too tall. Too odd. Too much. Bullied for being different, praised for being compliant. I ticked all the boxes except the ones that mattered.

No one saw I was autistic. Least of all me. I masked because it was safer. I memorised escape routes. Rehearsed conversations. Learned to hold still in the noise. And when it still didn’t feel right, I assumed the fault was mine.

Reading Kapp now, I pause on this: autism begins in sensory–movement difference, not social lack. Our bodies feel first. Before language, before labels—we register. And we remember.

The bracing. The flinching. The craving for empty corridors and quiet rooms. My nervous system has been keeping the archive all along.

What if someone had read the record?

What if we’d called it data, not defiance? Sensory need, not resistance?

What if someone had simply asked what I needed less of?

The Myth of the 'Print-Rich' Classroom

I’ve walked into those rooms—the ones the district holds up as models. “Print-rich.” “Student-centred.” “Visually engaging.” They’re meant to be inspiring. Celebratory. Alive.

To me, they feel like a trap.

The colours shout from every corner—bright butcher paper layered with border trim, anchor charts peeling from overused tape, motivational posters in competing fonts. Desks pushed into forced collaboration. Lights too white. Air too fast. Noise ricocheting from floor to ceiling. It’s like walking into a carnival that forgot to leave room for breath.

And my body—my adult, professional, supposedly adjusted body—starts shutting down.

It’s not a tantrum. It’s not regression. It’s not some failure of resilience or coping or professionalism. It’s a boundary rupture. A nervous system going into lockdown because its warning signals are being ignored. Again.

The irony is that these rooms are seen as evidence-based. These environments are praised. They tick all the district boxes. But best practice for whom?

Because what I see—what I feel—is that these classrooms reproduce the same sensory logic Kapp critiques in early childhood spaces: the idea that more is always better. That stimulation means growth. That silence means neglect. That if a space doesn’t sparkle, it isn’t doing its job.

But I don’t believe that anymore.

And the students I work with—those who rock, who hum, who seek quiet nooks and pull their hoodies low over their eyes—they don’t believe it either.

The Room I Built

My classroom doesn’t sparkle.

There are no glittery borders, no laminated charts flapping from the ceiling, no colour-coded bins announcing twelve ways to engage. The walls are soft. Muted. Uncluttered. What’s there is deliberate. Tactile continuity, not visual noise. Rhythm, not chaos. There’s a shape to the space that holds us.

And the students notice.

Some come in early—before the bell, before the noise, just to sit in the stillness. Some linger at lunch, reading quietly in the corner. More than once, I’ve heard it in passing: “Your room feels good.” Not exciting. Not impressive. Good.

They don’t always have the words for what’s working—but their bodies know. They exhale differently here.

It’s not minimalism. It’s design for regulation. It’s space shaped by need, not by mandate. By nervous systems that have spent too long bracing. There are routines, not rules. Soft light, not overhead glare. Desks that don’t scrape. Walls that don’t shout.

And there’s dignity in that. For them. For me.

Because I too breathe differently in here. I don’t flinch. I don’t brace. I’m not managing my own overwhelm while trying to teach through theirs. This is a space I can belong to—we can belong to.

What looks “understimulating” to a neurotypical observer is, to my students and me, a nervous system exhale.

It is safety. It is dignity.

The Move—and the Grief

I’m moving rooms.

There wasn’t much warning, and there’s been even less planning. The blinds in this one are broken, letting in too much southern light. The cupboard doors don’t quite close. I haven’t seen the new space yet, not properly. It’s been empty for years.

I know I’ll bring my approach with me. I know how to build a room that breathes. But still—this one mattered.

Spaces hold memory. The way the light falls at 9 a.m. in October. The corner where a student once read to herself every lunch. The desk I always left clear, not for decoration but because I needed one place without demands. Muscle memory isn’t just physical—it’s spatial. Rhythmic. Felt.

And now, I’ll have to remake that. From scratch. Again.

There’s grief in that. Not dramatic grief. Just the quiet ache of displacement. The knowledge that safety, for some of us, isn’t a baseline—it’s a build. And building takes energy.

I’ve packed most things. Labelled the boxes. Folded away the familiar. But before I left, I slipped my assortment of fidgets into a separate bag.

Worn smooth from countless hands. Picked up and put down during lessons, held tight during meltdowns, turned over absently during moments of calm. They’re not labelled, not standard, not on any supply list—but they’ve always known how to anchor us.

It’s the first thing I’ll carry into the new room.

Not because it will fix anything.

But because it remembers.

Conclusion – Diagnosis, Design, and Future Classrooms

The longer I teach, the more I understand that diagnosis is not just about services or supports—it’s about language. It’s about having a way to explain why the lights hurt. Why the noise pulls your breath thin. Why a tidy corner and a predictable rhythm aren’t preferences, but lifelines.

When we restrict diagnosis, we restrict the frameworks people need to advocate for themselves. We take away the words that let someone say, this space is hurting me, and expect them to endure it silently. We invalidate the blueprint they might’ve used to build something better.

Because when we say you’re not autistic enough, what we’re really saying is:

Your pain isn’t real.
Your sensory boundaries don’t deserve protection.
Your room doesn’t deserve to exist.

But it does. And it should.

So I return to the question I carry with me, every time I enter a new space:

What would classrooms look like if autistic people were the baseline?

What might change if we treated classroom design not as decoration, but as relationship?

What would happen if, instead of building spaces that stimulate, we built spaces that listen?

What would happen if we started from the inside out?