Yes, the title says it all. Alex who! The answer, Alexithymia.
Alexithymia is a trait characterised by the decreased ability or complete inability, to recognise and describe feelings and emotions.
Alexithymia is not restricted to your own feelings, but also can include recognising and understanding the feelings of others.
Individuals with Alexithymia can be described as lacking empathy, not understanding of others and cold.
Alexithymia is very often diagnosed along with autism. However, it should be noted that Autism does not cause lack of empathy, it is Alexithymia.
Why am I writing about this today?
Today I took my daughter (who is on the spectrum) to an appointment. We were there to do some work on the 'Incredible 5 Point Scale'. For those who don't know this work is based on a way of making feelings visual and relatable to an individual.
"The Incredible 5-Point Scale allows abstract concepts and feelings to be made visual, concrete, static, and personal. Once a behaviour is identified, it is task analysed or broken into concrete parts. Each part is assigned a number and/or colour. Then, in collaboration with the individual with ASD, these parts are assigned a label"
The scale ranges from 1 (fine/happy) to 5 (Anger/Shutdown). These can be adapted for each emotion such as a scale for 'anger' and a scale for 'anxiety'. This is because what we feel and how we react in these different emotional circumstances may vary. Not one scale fits all!
Our focus today was returning to school. We wanted to create a scale to show her feelings discreetly to staff and if she requires a break.
We sit and listen, then go through the instructions, nodding at the right places and taking it all in. We agreed to start with 5 and work downwards. So, 5 is when she is at her most extreme, needs a safe space and to be left alone. First question, "So when you are at a 5 what do you feel like?"
She just turned to me with big eyes and shrugged her shoulders, as if to say 'I don't know Mum, you tell me'.
With great assistance and good questions from her support worker, we finally got a 'body' feeling for scale 5. She explained she felt tight.
From then on we proceeded to fill out the whole scale. It was a great exercise to be a part of.
I suppose you could say that being a part of this appointment was a moment of clarity for me.
As a mother, an observer and being autistic it clicked. I have seen the subject banded about different Facebook pages and not really thought too much about it.
Seeing it visually is what did it for me - an epiphany.
Comments
Post a Comment