 I hate winter. I love the cold, I just can't stand that it gets dark at 5pm. It's very depressing. Good afternoon, Asperger's Grove. Viewers, watchers, tune us in. Welcome back. Today we're going to be addressing another episode of the Autism Dating series, the series for you, neuro-typicals, to learn how to have a healthy, well-balanced, lovely relationship with your autistic partner. Now, for anybody who's tuning in, who is autistic, which I'm sure many of you are, due to the fact that my channel is an autism channel, a lot of these things may help you in your own personal growth journey. Alexa Fimea is a real issue that not many people know about. So without divulging too much information, today we're going to be talking about autistic alexa fimea, insert gif of spongebob doing the rainbow. Imagination! So, to start off with, what is alexa fimea? It's this strange word that this strange man on the internet is talking about. Well, alexa fimea is something that is common to around 90% of autistic individuals. Yeah, 90% of individuals, that is a humongous amount of autistic people who struggle with this. Alexa Fimea, at its basis, is a difficulty categorizing and noticing emotion. Why do you keep talking? Alexa, stop listening. Jesus Christ. Put it in on my videos whenever she wants. In intimate relationships, the foundation of your life together is a combination of many different factors, but the main one being emotion. Hopefully, hopefully it's emotion, but you can kind of see where the issues might come in for a person who struggles to notice emotions, anything below the extremes, and also knowing what exactly that emotion is. There are a lot of things that make being autistic difficult in any sort of social relationship, but there are also things that are good things to keep in mind to make sure it's the best relationship that you can get. In my past, I have looked on quite a few secrets, secret Facebook groups for partners of autistic people. Yes, those exist. Please don't go looking, you'll probably give yourself a panic attack. It's not a very, it's not a very safe environment as you can imagine, but then again, some autism groups probably quite similar. One of the things that is highlighted a fair amount in these posts, these things that people are talking to each other about, is a lack of empathy, lack of intimacy, lack of attention, lack of any sort of validation that their partner loves them and that they care about them. I can see where this is a big issue, but there are some things that I want to go through, which I will go through eventually that will hopefully give you a lot of help in this area. So, without further ado, number one, the outward expression of sadness, the concern, the care, the happiness. All of these beautiful emotions are there. They're there in a lot of autistic people. It's just we sometimes find it a little bit difficult to express these emotions in any other form, other than words, other than signing, other than direct communication that is based on words. This is a really big thing because verbal communication, for me in particular and for a lot of autistic people I know, is a really important thing, especially when you're talking about emotions, especially when you're talking about experiences, the devil really is in the detail. You need to express those emotions with as much verbal power as you would express them on your face and for your tonality and for your body language. One of the things that neurotypical people tend to struggle with, some tend to not be aware of them, but if they are aware of them, it's still the struggle. And that is coming to grips with their outward expressions, their reactions to things, their emotional displays. When you tell something to an autistic person or to be honest, anyone in general, you sort of have a baseline expectation of what their reaction will be through their body and their face and their tonality. With autistic people, these are things that we've got to learn, that we've got to practise. So although they may be thinking very intensely and feeling those emotions and trying to empathise with what you're saying, it may not come across in that way. It may not present. It may just look like they're contemplating something rather than connecting with you. And that's not an issue with them not feeling it necessarily. It's just the expression of it. And that's a really hard thing for some people to go over. A lot of the assumptions that may be made is that this person doesn't care about what I have to say. This person doesn't care about my feelings. This person doesn't care about me. Me and my feelings. And that's quite an important thing in a relationship. So I would definitely try and think about that a bit more and mull it over and think about situations where this has happened to you and just do a bit more digging and try and get into your head. Although it may not present as how you'd want them to. If you're telling them something, they still may feel it. It's just not being expressed outwardly. It may be also, which is something that I experience. If someone's telling me something that's really intensely emotional and really important to me to hear, then I'm not going to be putting my energy into masking, into doing that outward expression. I'm putting my energy into understanding the words into trying to empathize, trying to think about them very intensely and also trying to formulate a response that is the best that it could be. So there's a lot of work that, particularly for me, that I would be doing to try and connect and try to understand and empathize. It just, in the instant on the spot, it may not come across as me caring. Number two. I can't believe you're still watching this video. No, I like you. I'm not angry. I'm not annoyed. I'm not annoyed. Stop talking to me about it. I'm not annoyed. This is number point. Point number two. As I said, Alexofinia makes it very difficult for a person to notice emotion. I like to do this sort of graphical analogy to try and help you understand. That sounds very patronizing. Apologies for that, but here we go anyway. So we have a graph from zero to 100. Perhaps if we were going to take the example of being angry, most people, their anger would increase a little bit and they can notice that that anger is there. The threshold for noticing is maybe like 10 or 20 on the scale of 0 to 100. So it's quite easy to notice those background emotions increasing and also knowing, you know, being able to know how you feel gives you a better idea of how you're presenting to other people. Whereas when you're autistic, when you have Alexofinia, the threshold for noticing it is probably somewhere sitting between about 70 to 90 percent, 70 to 90 on that scale. And so even if it gets up to about 65 percent and, you know, that's quite a significant amount of anger, we won't notice it. We may not be aware of it until a day later or hours later or perhaps a week later, depending on the amount of contemplation that we do want to. So that can lead to a lot of strange situations occurring between a partner and their autistic partner. For example, when I was a lot younger, I really struggled with my emotions. Obviously I've done a lot of work to try and improve them, trying to improve my noticing and categorizing of them. It's still difficulty, but a lot of instances will happen where I would get fairly angry, fairly annoyed. And I wouldn't perhaps know that I'm angry or annoyed, but I would display that outwardly. And so they'd ask me, are you annoyed, Tommy? Are you angry? And I'd say, no, I'm not angry, even though I'm frowning and I'm very overdrawn and giving people a dead eye. I could not comprehend that I was angry. I just thought, oh, my behaviors changed a little bit because of this happening. But I never attached that state that I was in with being angry. It's a very complex thing to try and explain to someone, but I think if you follow that sort of threshold zero to 100 scale, it's a very helpful to help you understand this sort of odd behavior where they might give you the silent treatment, where they might be very short with their words, where they might have developed a different tone of voice or facial expression or body language, you know, they might become very closed if they're angry or frown or they may have a very deep, low, unexpressive tone of voice. And you may ask them, are they angry? And they say, no. And you just absolutely flabbergasted that they have no idea. You think that they're lying. That's your repeated assumption. They're obviously angry. So why are they lying to me? It's probably because they don't notice it. It's not their fault. I'd say that in a lot of these circumstances, it's important to take a step back. It's not the best idea if someone is displaying anger to keep poking them, to ask them how they are, unless they're okay. And then you say, you look angry, you know, you show you're not angry. And they just keep going around in that and they keep poking the beast and they get more angry. And then they can tell whether they're angry because they've blown up. They haven't self-regulated enough. You need to give them space to withdraw, to contemplate, to think. Because if you keep pushing them like that, they're not going to feel very comfortable opening up to you emotionally about things. It's important to keep that in mind because it's going to drive a wedge between you both. If that's something that happens. And the first step in trying to prevent that from happening is understanding that they're not lying. They're not trying to make you feel annoyed or uncomfortable or anything like that. It's just they're trying to step back and manage their own emotions for self-reflection and contemplation. Number three, meltdowns and emotional regulation. But while I'm doing this, do some speedbagging. Wow. So we've talked a little bit about the dynamic between you two, the things that may come up, but you're not very happy about the dissatisfactions, the crossed wires, as we would say. I would also like to bring up that one of the problems of being a lexophymic is that the threshold for noticing emotions is so high. It's so high that you may even get to a point where you get to that 70% percent or 70, 80 threshold of noticing something, noticing those emotions, that anger. And once you get to that point, it's kind of too late. It's kind of overwhelming. It causes you to have outbursts or causes you to have a meltdown even. And this happens in a lot of areas of our life. It's not just interpersonal. If we have something that we're trying to do, for example, the most recent experience of this would be me trying to be trying to do judging for the the dimensions autism leaders award. I'd left it to the last minute because I'm an idiot. And I also didn't download the files that they sent and it had timed out. And it was the last day of judging. Thankfully, they extended it for me. But it was just so frustrating. I could try all with all my might trying to fix this situation. But how am I supposed to judge if I don't have access to the files? And a lot of autistic people can get to this point where they have a plan for the day and the first hurdle or the second or third hurdle, you can't get past it. You've got to stop. We won't stop. We won't stop until we are absolutely shaking from anxiety. That emotional regulation component is really difficult for us because even though we have ways that we can self regulate through stimming and through special interest and through for a lot of different methods. If we don't know that they're how are we going to to try and quell that when it's when it's not up to a pretty intolerable amount anyway. So if you find that your your partner gets into into those frustrations a lot of the time when they're working, when they're trying to do something when they're in a social situation, you have to be aware of that we don't have to. But if you want if you have their best interest, you need to be aware of that. You need to know you can if you can see that they're getting stressed and they keep going at it and they keep trying to do something. Then what they really need from you is to say you look anxious. And I think you need to regulate a little bit. Maybe don't say like that. That sounds very care alike. You need to take a step back and relax. Why don't you kick your feet up on the setting and we can watch an episode and then you can come back to it enough with a fresh face. And maybe even even in the situation, it might might also be helpful to help them manage it when you get so anxious, you know, anxiety is something that sort of encourages you to do something. You know, you're anxious about something, probably because you are able to do something about it, but you're not. And so in our modern day, it's not a very good emotion because it clouds our thoughts and makes it difficult to act logically it makes it hard to be comfortable and to go through that creative process if you're doing something creative. Maybe years and years and years ago, when we were in the jungles and the forests and, you know, pre modern man, then maybe that's useful because, you know, a lot everything was a lot more gross motor and physical and you know, it's it's good to have that adrenaline and that anxiety going in this day and age, probably not, especially if you're doing something complex, just having the presence of mind to just just help them de stress and help them notice that their anxiety is going up. And perhaps if they want you to help manage what they're going to do for the rest of the day, help reorganize that schedule and get them get them on track. It's not anything that you have to do massively all the time to a very high extent. It's just that little amount of help a little Okay, this is what's happening. You can't do anything about this now. So let's do this instead. Number four, always gonna look at my fingers because proper reception. It's not too good. Do you find that your partner can go from stone cold, withdrawal, withdrawal? Do you find that your, do you find that your partner has some weird switch on their brain that they can turn on and off one minute for the day for most of the day, they're stone cold, they're unemotional, they're short, they don't communicate very much, they don't express very much. And suddenly you get them in the right time, the right place, the right environment, and switches flicked on. And they are almost the opposite side of this, the opposite side of the scale, they overshare, they want to emotionally connect, they're a bit more needy, they want to, to tell you about things and tell you about how they feel about things. And it's, it's almost as if they go from hot to cold or cold to hot. Depending on the circumstance. I think the important thing to highlight about this, we're going to go back to the chart. Even even with complex emotions like love and care, those things are also subject to that zero to 100 scale I was talking about. It's not the best thing to hear. But it's true. We don't feel our emotions a lot of the time. And one of one of the misconceptions about autism is that we don't have empathy, that we don't have strong emotions. But it's not true. I am an extremely emotional person myself. But I also can present as quite cold and logical and perhaps a bit direct and a bit blunt. And, you know, it goes very much against my emotional brain, my thinking brain and my emotional brain seem to be very disconnected from each other. You can't, you can have this situation where where a person, they don't get that intrinsic reward from connecting just on a regular basis, a very low amount of connection. But maybe if they're in the circumstances where they're in a good mood, the mental health is low, the environment's right, they're with the right people, they feel comfortable. Then, you know, there are emotions that emotions go up steadily. And it gets to a point where they can feel it. And then there goes the hot, they turn hot, they want to connect with everybody and everyone. And they want to share, they want to feel and they want to socialize and communicate. And it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming, especially if you've only experienced that's called that sort of cold like side of them for the amount of time that you've been dating them. And then suddenly you get this crazy, crazy person who's wanting to connect emotionally just zero to 100. And that that scale that zero to 100 scale, it's a good thing to look back on because it may be that they do feel those emotions and they do want to connect, it's just overshadowed. They can't see it, they can't categorize it, they can't put this on, you know, they can't feel the emotion at a low level and say, Oh, you know, I'd really love to connect with someone like that. Get them as I said, get them in the right environment. Pow, it all comes out. So that does it for our four points. But do not worry. There is another point coming just very, very, very shortly, very shortly. But before that, let's talk a little bit about the channel. Oh, yeah, I know you want to hear about it. It's so great. So brilliant. The, the aspergist growth Instagram account. Yes, as you can see, there is a written version of this video that is up. Also, maybe not as detailed due to the Instagram word limit. But if you want to go follow my social medias, Instagram is the best place to find me. Of course, I'm on Facebook, Twitter, and all of that lovely jazz, all our aspergist growth. But Instagram really is the best place to go. If you want to keep up to date with with how I'm doing the things that I'm planning on doing the good things and the bad things that are happening. That is a place to go. And if you want to get in contact with me, my email is aspergist growth and gmail.com. And my website is Thomas Henley. dot co Thomas Henley dot co.uk. But I will stop rambling. Let's get into the final bonus question, the bonus topic, the bonus concept. Number five. So we talked a little bit about outward expression in terms of intimacy and relationships and emotional connection and all that. And yeah, that's that that's usually a difficulty for us in terms of outward expression. But you may also find that, you know, getting rid of all of that, they just really don't have the response that you were expecting in their words. The thing is, is that as I've addressed before, we need to put a lot more effort into understanding social situations. You know, a lot of the sort of empathetic empathic work that we do is is in hindsight. You know, that's how you how you learn things, we have to learn socializing and cognitive empathy, the ability to notice emotions of other people. Personally, we need to develop them over time. And so sometimes if you if you say something to your partner, like, perhaps, do you love me? Something like that something very needy and validating that I'm sure all of you have asked at one point in your life, including myself, and you may you may not receive the best response, you may just receive the Oh, response or that's great. I like you to response in order for us to respond best to strong emotional connections and strong emotional assertions like I love you to love me. We need a lot of time to think about that. And that's not necessarily something that, you know, we want to say, thank you for saying that, but I don't love you kind of thing, that they're putting in time to really understand what you're saying to them, what what the implications of it are, what the emotions involved that you're feeling, how they feel about it, and how to respond to it. And quite often, if it's something that's really important, we're obviously going to want to put more work into that process. Perhaps in that situation, you're just leaving person that you're dating after staying for like maybe a day or two. And then they say, I love you. And do you love me? And you say, Oh, I'm not sure. And then they leave, you may be thinking, Oh, God, it's over. This is horrible. And you know that I love them. And your brain starts going off and buzzing around and doing all sorts of somersaults and backflips for no reason. And it could just be they are valuing, valuing you and what you're saying. And they're trying to understand. They tried to put it into context and produce a response that would be most accurate to them and also as soft and as emotionally understanding as possible. So in that certain way, perhaps maybe you may not be receiving the reactions that you want at the moment. But you will receive them in time, hopefully, if they do care about you. And if they don't, then, you know, you don't have to stay with them just because they're autistic. They could be an asshole too. Anyway, hope you have a good day. Stay relaxed. Stay chill. Check out the podcast. Check out all the social medias and all that jazz. And I'll see you in another episode of the dating and autistic series. See you later, folks.