Autism and massage
People with autism may lack awareness of others. They can experience anxiety around others and as a consequence, the world around them may seem bewildering and they will experience difficulties making sense of it and appropriately interacting and socialising with people around them.

Furthermore, some people with autism have indeed difficulties regulating their own emotions. They will present as individuals with “immature” or unconventional behaviour patterns, aggressiveness and/or frustration and lack of self-control, especially when in overwhelming situations or environments. Whereas some people with autism will overreact to external stimuli, others will lack response to these same stimuli.

Therapeutic massage is a useful technique to provide people with autism with the sensory input they crave. Additionally, it helps them build positive relationships with other people and increase their self-belief and well-being.

Helping people with autism manage their emotions
Different strategies and activities should be planned in educational and therapeutic environments with people with autism to:
- To help them make sense of their bodies
- To help them understand their emotions and others’ emotions
- To help them express their feelings and emotions
- To give them strategies the can use to manage their emotions

Developing an understanding of emotions
In order to increase people with autism’s insight, professionals will have a crucial role. They must be alert and identify the physical signs that the person with autism might be experiencing even though he/she (the person with autism) might not even be aware of them.
It is therefore the professional’s role to identify these signs and to label them, thus contributing to the person with autism’s body awareness and insight. We will hear professionals making comments such as:
- “Your hands are sweating”
- “Your face feels hot”

Expressing feelings
At this stage the aim is to teach people with autism the conventional labels that are used to describe the occurrence of certain physical signs. The complexity of the labels used will depend on the development stage and on their language levels. Professionals will be using statements such as:
- “You are feeling angry”
- “You are feeling upset”

With higher functioning students qualifiers can be used to express the intensity of the feeling
- “You are feeling very angry”
- “You are feeling quite upset”

At this stage, we are helping people with autism make connections between the physical signs (what their bodies feel like) and the label attributed to that emotion.

My body feels (…) This is called (…)

At a later stage, more information will be incorporated, providing them with a more accurate representation (a bigger picture) of what is happening to them. Professionals will be gathering as much information as possible about the environmental situation which might have caused a specific emotion or emotion on the person.

Situation A happened My body feels (…) This is called (…)

In order to obtain the necessary information professionals will use reports from other professionals/related adults and will listen to the person with autism’s input. Comic strip conversations and graphics can be drawn on a flip chart to visually represent the situation.

Managing feelings
Once the person with autism has got the body awareness and insight that enable them to identify different feelings and emotions and once they have certain competence to express these feelings, we will focus on teaching them strategies to effectively manage these emotions.

On one hand, at this point they will have enough insight as to recognise pleasurable emotions and will have to be supported to increase their self-belief and control to increase the frequency or intensity of these emotions.

Professionals have made them aware of the links between a situation, body awareness and the appropriate label.

Situation : “I am having a massage”
Body awareness “My muscles feel soft”
Label: “I feel relaxed”

We have now given people with autism the confidence and self-control to know that they can choose the option that enables them to reach their state of well-being. They have also learnt that people around them can and want to help them achieve this, hence the importance of establishing positive relationships with others.

Professionals will continuously be reinforcing the idea that it is ok to need help from others and that asking for support is completely acceptable and, indeed, desirable.

On the other hand, people with autism will also need strategies to positively control their “negative” emotions, such as their frustration or anger. They tend to have difficulties making links between past experiences and present situations and therefore having the necessary insight to effectively manage their emotions, having the self-belief to actually know that they can put these strategies in place and having the competence to positively relate to others and ask for support can be a long process, hence the importance of professionals’ perseverance and consistency.