Communicating 'big feelings' without words

As society's awareness of autism and neurodiversity increases, we are seeing many new and innovative tools appearing to help make life easier, better, happier, and more fulfilling. One of those tools is a simple app for mobiles and tablets called 'Relate', written by electronic engineer Taimur Khan of SendSorta. Khan observes that while communication is often seen as a key challenge for neurodiverse people, in his personal experience, the difficulty isn't just about speech - it's about the energy required to identify, label, and express internal states in real time. It's not easy!

Relate is a marvellously simple yet profoundly helpful app designed to bridge the gap between neurodiverse and neurotypical people - whether that's family, friends, employers and employees, or students and teachers. The possibilities are endless. We spoke with the founder, Taimur Khan, about how this tool is helping families and teams navigate the "missed signals" that so often lead to misunderstandings, meltdowns, and even conflict.

The Double Empathy Problem

To understand why a tool like Relate is necessary, we must move ourselves away from the outdated idea that neurodivergent people have a "deficit" in communication. Instead, we look to the 'Double Empathy Problem' - a theory proposed by Dr Damian Milton. His theory says communication breakdowns are a two-way street. In other words, it's not that (for example) autistic people lack empathy or understanding; rather, neurotypical and neurodiverse people often have different ways of experiencing the world and different "social languages". When these two groups interact, both struggle to understand the other's perspective. For example:

• The neurotypical perspective often relies heavily on subtext, body language, figures of speech and idioms, and of course "unspoken" social rules.

• The neurodiverse perspective often prefers direct, literal communication and may find the processing and understanding of non-verbal cues utterly exhausting or even impossible.

This mismatch leads to missed signals. A neurotypical person might see a neurodivergent person's need for silence as "coldness" or being "unfriendly", while the neurodivergent person might see the neurotypical person's constant questioning as "intrusive" or "invasive". What the Relate app does is provide them both with a neutral, objective signal (a 'red-amber-green' system) that bypasses those differing social expectations in a non-confrontational way, and provides both people with a clear, pre-agreed understanding of what's going on internally.

Daily challenges and the cost of masking

For most neurodivergent people, the daily effort to bridge the communication gap leads to masking - the process of suppressing your natural traits to "fit in". This isn't just a social choice, though; it's an incredibly taxing cognitive load, and it often leads to meltdowns or shutdowns which others often misunderstand as "rude", "bad behaviour", or "being over-sensitive". But why does that happen, and what's behind it?

• Alexithymia and processing delays

  Many neurodivergent people experience 'alexithymia', which makes it hard (if not impossible) to identify or name emotions as they are happening. When a person is overwhelmed, their brain may struggle to translate a physical feeling (like a racing heart) into a word (like "anxiety"). That means they know they have a "big feeling inside" but they can't express what it is verbally.

• The "coke bottle" effect

  Without a way to release this internal pressure or communicate it to others, stress, anxiety, and frustration build up. Taimur Khan describes this as the "coke bottle effect", where the pressure rises until it eventually bursts out at the wrong time, often as a meltdown (unexpected behaviours) or a total shutdown (withdrawal).

Supporting students with Relate and EBSA

One very significant area of future development for Relate will continue to be its application within the education system, specifically to address Emotional Based School Avoidance (EBSA). For many neurodivergent students, the school environment is a sensory and social minefield.

When the "coke bottle" pressure builds up in the classroom, a student may not have the verbal capacity to tell a teacher they are reaching a breaking point.

By the time a student refuses to go to school, they are often already in a state of high burnout or crisis. The Relate app offers a way for both student and teacher to intervene much earlier in this unfortunate process through low-demand signalling, allowing the student to update their status without having to articulate their feelings or speak about them in front of their peers.

It's essentially a pre-agreed system of support, with the meanings of the status colours being clearly understood by both the student and the teachers. Here's how this approach can help create a better understanding of what's really going on in a typical school setting:

Moving from pressure to clarity

The most effective tools are often born from personal necessity. Khan says he developed Relate because of his own experiences with social cues and emotional expression.

"I personally struggle to read social cues, and I also struggle to express my emotions until it is too late, especially when I'm overwhelmed", Taimur explains. "It used to build up like a coke bottle effect, pressure rising until it burst out at the wrong time".

He built Relate for his own family first as a simple, traffic-light method to show how he was doing without having to find the words. It helped his family so much that he decided to share it with others, noting that, "if it helps even one more family, the purpose is fulfilled".

Giving Relate a try

If you're interested in seeing how it works, or you think it could be helpful for someone you know or work with, Relate is completely free to use for individuals, although there's also an option to pay a small amount for a lifetime 'premium edition' that allows unlimited "nudges" to your connections. Organisations wanting to use it need to pay a small fee based on the number of people they want to use it with. Currently, it is available on the Apple App Store (click here) or the Google Play Store (click here). And if you'd like to know more about the app's publisher, SendSorta, or find out more about Relate and how it could be helpful, you can find them online here.

It's our feeling that, by bridging these common communication gaps through simple, non-verbal signals, apps like Relate can help reduce unnecessary misunderstandings and emotional pressure.

The whole aim is to empower neurodiverse people to share their needs authentically in the moment, which in turn means they can make deeper connections with others and get more relevant and meaningful support.