Why Weighted Blankets Are a Game Changer for ADHD and Neurodivergent Anxiety and Restlessness

My Personal Experience

Hey Reader Friends,

Attention, please: It’s your ADHD OG Denise with my public service announcement on the powerful impact of weighted blankets for neurodivergents — ADHDers, AU-HDers, and Autists.

I always assumed I was a big weirdo for loving the feeling of the heavy lead apron at the dentist’s office. After my X-rays were taken, the hygienist would give me a strange look when I’d request to leave it on for the remainder of my appointment.

I didn’t realize I was self-soothing.

The running joke with my normie friends is that if certain people we know are posting crazy shit on Facebook, my normie friends want to send them weighted blankets anonymously. While I get the intent behind the prank, er, friendly reminder — that there’s this thing called stoicism — I would be delighted to get a surprise weighted blanket in the mail. Whenever my Feline Overlord, Indy, pukes on my weighted blanket, I have to get it dry cleaned, which means fitful sleep for a few days until I get it back. It would be awesome to have some spares.

(Meet Indy, my defiant felis vomitus, who also knows she is not allowed on my kitchen table, but believes Overlord status = she’s immune to her hooman’s household rules.)

When I went to Spain to visit my friend and writing partner Sara Perry, she wasn’t expecting the 30-pound package from Amazon that arrived at her front door. I’d never traveled overseas alone before, and I knew the one thing I would need to tamp down my anxiety: a weighted blanket.

It turned out to be a lifesaver, because the rental house we stayed in was ghosty. By ghosty, I mean stuff like my first night there, I felt the ghost cat make a heavy jump onto my bed, walk in a circle, and finally settle between my feet (I looked — there was no cat there). Sara felt it a few nights later, but she knew enough to shoo it away. (I didn’t know shooing away ghosts was an option.) And then there was the invisible hand that bumped my elbow hard as I was drifting off to sleep — still jetlagged and off of my Vyvanse — to make me pay rapt attention during Sara’s reiki master training course.

Why Weighted Blankets Matter

I started piling afghans and comforters on me at bedtime when I was eight years old. It never dawned on me that I was innately craving a solution for:

Sensory Regulation — My sensory system = me in a Barnes & Noble bookstore — totally overwhelmed, struggling to decide which book to grab off the shelf next. Weighted blankets remind my brain, ‘Stop. Freakin’. Da Fuck. Out.’ Deep pressure stimulation (DPS) tames sensory chaos.

My Autonomic Nervous System Effects — Weighted blankets tell my jumpy fight-or-flight system to clock out and let my rest-and-digest crew clock in.

My Neurotransmitters — Weighted blankets crank up my brain’s happy juice (serotonin and melatonin) while kicking my stress hormone (cortisol) to the curb.

It was about five years ago that the whole weighted blankets trend hit my radar, and I discovered I wasn’t alone in my oddball preference. Unfortunately, the trend was already waning. It’s a bummer that I can no longer walk into my local Kohl’s on any given day and buy a weighted blanket off the shelf.

This leaves me with an important decision: should I post some crazy shit on Facebook just to see what comes in the mail?

P.S. To follow Sara Perry’s and my new book, DAZE OF OUR LIES, under our pseudonym, Gabbi Blue, (genre: cozy mystery-meets-Bridget Jones’ Diary), follow us here: https://reamstories.com/gabbiblue