Occupational therapy assessment
OT trained in sensory integration is the gold standard for formal sensory processing assessment. Adult sensory OT is less developed than paediatric but increasingly available. Private OT assessment typically £100-400; some NHS routes exist but waitlists are long.
Building life around the profile
Significant-sensory adults often need more structural accommodation than less-affected adults. Career fit matters more (some careers are essentially incompatible). Home environment matters more. Relationship sensory compatibility matters more. The accommodation isn’t optional; it’s how you stay functional.
Bring a sensory log to the assessment
An OT assessment gets sharply better if you arrive with two weeks of data instead of memories. Memories compress badly — you’ll remember the worst meltdown and forget the forty small avoidances that actually define your profile. Log four things daily, briefly: which channels took a hit (name the eight and tick them — visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, vestibular, proprioceptive, interoceptive), what the trigger context was, what you did about it, and how long recovery took.
Note seeking behaviour too, not just aversion — the OT needs to know you crave deep pressure and motion as much as they need to know fluorescent light hurts, because sensory-integration approaches use the seeking channels as the route into regulation. Include the engineering you’ve already done (the foods you’ve dropped, the routes you take, the clothes you rebuy identically), because a well-accommodated life can present as a milder profile than you actually have. Ten minutes a night for a fortnight is enough. Adults who arrive with this kind of log tend to get an assessment that describes them rather than their worst week.
Formalising accommodations at this band
At the significant band it’s often worth converting informal workarounds into formal accommodations, because informality evaporates under a new manager or an office move. In the UK, sensory processing differences that substantially affect daily life can fall within the Equality Act 2010’s disability definition, which turns accommodation requests into a legal conversation rather than a favour; Access to Work can fund equipment, and occupational health referrals put recommendations in writing. In the US, the ADA’s reasonable-accommodation route works similarly.
You don’t need to lead with legislation — most requests resolve informally — but knowing the floor exists changes how the conversation goes. Put requests in writing, tie each to a channel and a function (‘noise-cancelling headset, because sustained open-plan noise degrades my concentration and I recover slowly’), and keep copies. An OT report helps here too: it converts ‘I find the lights hard’ into documented clinical findings. The pattern to avoid is spending years being quietly heroic and then hitting sensory burnout with nothing on file. Paper early, while you’re still functional, is far easier than paper during a crisis.