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When I was a kid, story time at school always involved getting out the carpet squares, even though they were arranged on top of another carpet around the teacher, so it's not like the difference between sitting on two carpets instead of one was a big comfort reason.

I don't know if they knew it at the time, but maybe having all these tiny kids sitting on their own squares helped us self-regulate!

> > hunkering down in small, enclosed spaces is a kind of “swaddling” behavior left over from cuddling up with their moms and littermates when they were kittens. This isn't cat specific. The concept of boundaries is very important in healing trauma, and just in general is a key concept in human being's emotional development.

It’s a fine line though. Modify the environment and you get the opposite effect. I’m an MR tech and we sedate about 1 in 20 to get them into the scanner.

Obviously an MRI scanner isn’t anything close to a snuggle with mum, but it is a relatively enclosed space.

I've been in an MRI scanner. It's not a calming experience by any measure. The shape of the thing is all wrong, the parts that move are unnerving, and it emits a stress-inducing sound. This is one device that REALLY needs a UX person to take a look at its outer design.

A lot of patients every day end up asleep and a fair few say they wish it was longer. I’d be in that group. The noise is often described as a relaxing ‘white noise’ by this group.

The outer shells are different between vendors and the Philips ones I trained on definitely looked more ominous than the Siemens ones I use now.

The unnerving movement is partially due to the magnet interacting with the inner ear. It creates a sort of vertigo. Explaining this to someone who is anxious seems to help ‘it’s not you freaking out, it’s what magnets do to your inner ear and it eases after a few deep breaths’.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4409466/

I routinely fall asleep during longer scans. It may be because I've become very familiar with the process.

You don't like jackhammers above your head when listening to whatever cassette tape (I'm old!) you brought in being piped to your ears via ... Aquarium tubes?

Don't move equates to my face itches, immediately.

It really does. And MRI causes peripheral nerve stimulation when run enthusiastically. We love fast gradient switching but hate the movement.

Really? I rather like the German industrial techno they play while you're in it.

If mum screamed as loud as an MRI, nobody would snuggle with mum.

>I’m an MR tech and we sedate about 1 in 20 to get them into the scanner.

Another commenter has noted about the unpleasant sounds and ominous design, but I'm curious about your experience with other patient orientations - it occurred to me that a lot of the discomfort comes from going in head-first and on your back, that way you're losing any sort of autonomy.

I assume there are scans that require people be on their front and looking out from inside the machine (or otherwise able to see out of the machine directly rather than via mirror), do you find that patients for those procedures don't require sedation as often?

Breast MRI is usually done prone, and scans of the sternum or sternoclaviclular joints.

It doesn’t seem to make much difference, but maybe I just haven’t noticed? I did have someone who was too claustrophobic to have a pelvis scan request to go in prone (and look out). We for the scan but it was a bit compromised as the hip joints then moved with breathing.

Probably relevant, breast cancer and possible outcomes is a lot more scary than a sprained knee.

Some things that help include giving a mirror to see out, a blindfold or showing patients that both ends are open.

It’s definitely related to control somehow. Patients try to negotiate how far they go in or to come out for a few seconds. I always bring them out at that point, but once that starts it rarely ends with a complete scan.

Subjectively, the rate of claustrophobia is going up. This, despite scans getting quicker and scanners larger and more open.

Fascinating, thank you!

> “…concept of sitting in a physical boundary…does help with the nervous system and it's not cat specific.”

I second this observation. I’m immediately reminded of children’s playgrounds—not contemporary, but the ‘dangerous’ ones from my childhood.

I think there’s something about the scale of these spaces. They’re made for small people.

Cats are supposedly solitary animals (as opposed to the dog’s pack social tendency). Maybe their little kitty egos are tuned to private-scale spaces—-this is my box and there’s no room here for you. Pffft

Cats are solitary hunters. They're actually very social animals, but due to their small rodent niche they are very territorial as well (population density of rodents is directly proportional to viable population density of cats, so territory is a matter of life and death). The individuals rarely need meet save for mating, but regular social gatherings still occur and the relationship diagrams of each individual are far more complex than those of a member of a pack-based species. Humans' extremely long period of adolescence necessitates mated pairs and families, but I think our basic social pattern is more catlike than doglike in many regards.

Very interesting. Could you expand on why you "think our basic social pattern is more catlike than doglike in many regards" ?

>population density of rodents is directly proportional to viable population density of cats, so territory is a matter of life and death

Interesting, except that rodents seem to multiply like mad, whether in a crowded city or rural area, they don't seem to be in short supply.

Except maybe it's a holdover from cats' origin story of being desert creatures.

They multiply like mad, but the total numbers are kept in check by the number of predators.

Not a contradiction.

You raise a few good points.

> How safe and cozy can a cat feel sitting right out in the open on top of the water bill? Dodman describes it as something like the placebo effect. “This virtual box may provide some misplaced sense of security and psychosomatic comfort,” he writes.

Maybe I was a cat in a past life (or on the autism spectrum in this one), but I get it.

Urban environments make me very uncomfortable. It's even worse when I commute to them by train or taxi. Once I'm there, it's very overstimulating, and there is no space within them that I can call my own. I can't take a nap anywhere, I can't sit anywhere unbothered, there's just no place I can retreat to and say "this is my personal space; leave me alone or die." The problem is mitigated when I drive into the city, since my car serves that purpose. It's my space, others respect that, and the law would generally support my reaction to anyone that violates it. Meanwhile I'm just expected to deal with it when someone reclaims "my" seat at the library.

I have a pet theory (no pun intended) that the homeless suffer the same plight, which compounds existing mental illness. There's zero stability for them. Noplace is theirs. Set up a camp somewhere and get chased away, find someone else looting it, or the city destroying it. Shelters and even jail are temporary-- never theirs.

I have a bunch of cats and see them do what I think I do. Sometimes, one gets pushed around a bit too much. They'll fuck off and camp out on some paperwork, inside a stray Amazon box or on top of the fridge (which doubles as a vantage point). Each delineates what is very clearly a personal space for them. Usually they don't get bothered again, but if they do, they do a total 180, become the aggressor and fuck the intruder up-- effectively fighting from a defensive position...which is exactly the comfort I get from having a car in the city (which I know creates problems for everyone; I avoid cities as much as possible).

> It is also an exercise I found in a book for healing trauma : make a circle on the floor with some towels, or a rope, or other objects and sit in it. It actually works and can help calm down the nervous system. It is a "patch" you could say, a substitute for weaker boundaries. When you sit in the circle, you can feel your body and emotions more easily.

The "personal space" theory definitely isn't for everyone-- my wife can't relate to any of it and yet sensory deprivation is what works for her. When she's overwhelmed, muting one or more senses (blindfold, noise-cancelling headphones, etc.) is what brings her back down. Maybe it's a male/female thing-- rather than reshaping her environment like I do, she reshapes her own perception of it.

> Someone with no significant trauma and relatively good boundaries (physical, emotional) may not notice any difference.

Definitely!

> Urban environments make me very uncomfortable. (...)

You could have (just a theory, I am not a therapist) weaker boundaries. From what I read it is not necessarily emotional. It is said that really invasive surgeries for example can weaken this internal sense of boundary for some people, which is added stress into the system that really never goes away unless the person can somehow brings back a good sense of safety.

> I have a pet theory (no pun intended) that the homeless suffer the same plight

Oh yeah. Absolutely... it must be awful. To live on the street means there is a level of stress in their body that just never quiets down. Unless they are in a group perhaps with safe people, or perhaps in an area of town where they won't be bothered. Can't even begin to imagine what it's like.

I always remember one night I missed the last train, and I walked around in town, I was looking for one of those shop entrances where there is a small hallway and I was so tired, I figured if I get in a corner there outside of the main street lights, I could just try to sleep. But oh no, as soon as I walked in those spaces, lights would turn on automatically. It was awful... I never realized how unfriendly and so totally unsafe being out on the street at night is like. There was literally nowdhere I could hide in the dark and crawl into a corner. And obviously lying down on a bench at night in the park wasn't a sensible option.

But yeah it's really about having a sense of personal space.

Violence, invasive surgeries, or even sometimes natural disasters can severely affect someone's sense of safety.

I remember one streamer on Twitch he said one night a tree crashed through the roof and that he never slept quite the same since! Hopefully for people who otherwise have good support and a safe environments these things can heal over time.

> rather than reshaping her environment like I do, she reshapes her own perception of it.

I use noise cancelling headphones for years now. It does provide relief, especially with noise from unruly neighbours. When I put the headphones on, I am also in my space in a sense.

I think ultimately it has to do with the amygdala, and a "internalized" sense of safety, from past experience and relationships.

That explains yoga mats