Between Feelings and Sensations
- Curtis Blair
- Apr 17, 2024
- 2 min read
My journey of developing UX skills has taken an intriguing turn as I delve into the world of Neurodiversity Design and embark on a deep dive into Alexithymia, a condition that profoundly impacts the ability to recognize and articulate emotions. This exploration has led me to a fascinating intersection where the nuances of processing emotional signals and physical feelings converge with the double empathy problem, a phenomenon where differences in communication styles often result in confusion and misunderstandings.
It's crucial to acknowledge that miscommunication is a shared responsibility between neurotypical and neurodiverse individuals. This recognition dispels the misconception that neurotypicals are inherently effective communicators, while neurodiverse individuals are somehow deficient in comprehension. Both groups face challenges in interpreting each other, and it's unfair to place the burden of adaptation solely on neurodiverse individuals. This imbalance can lead to social stigmas, exclusion, and isolation.
To bridge the adaptation gap, I've melded the exploratory nature of design fiction, which envisions future everyday scenarios, with the expressive freedom of poetry's free verse. This innovative combination offers readers a firsthand experience of the challenges that come with interpreting a vastly different communication style, fostering empathy through shared experience. My aspiration is that by embracing abstraction, individuals can collectively address misunderstandings and share the responsibility for adapting their communication methods.
'Between Feelings and Sensations: An Alexithymia Poetry Collection' is not just a collection of poems, but a practical tool for understanding and expressing emotions. It provides narrative and vocabulary that can help us move from the subconscious to the conscious, identifying and expressing feelings. By sharing the often-confusing terrain of emotions and social interactions, this collection equips us with the tools we need to navigate these nuanced complexities.
TL;DR
I wrote a book exploring Alexithymia and Neurodiversity by mixing Design Fiction, a Futures Thinking tool that envisions different perspectives and situations to understand people, with free verse poetry. The aim is for readers to develop the capacity to relate to and interpret a communication style different from their own, fostering empathy from the experience.
