Difficulty Making Friends

What we see

Some clients struggle to maintain friendships either at school as adults because of inadequate sensory or emotional performance. We tend to see a common list of things that people having difficulty making friends or relating to people face; those things include:

• Poor pitch perception or listening (weak auditory processing)
• Difficulty expressing themselves
• Daydreaming
• Misunderstanding what has been said around them
• low self-esteem
• Anxiety

Pitch perception & Socialising

Pitch perception is perhaps the most important skill supporting the capacity for children to socialise effectively. Pitch perception allows us to differentiate a higher from a lower tone. This allows us to distinguishing between a question and statement, a joke from a hurtful comment. Those with poor pitch perception struggle to interpret the meaning of what they hear and they tend to be anxious and immature.

Poor pitch discriminators can also experience a chronic anxiety about what is really meant by those speaking to them. So the school playground becomes a minefield. Such children are easily upset by seemingly quite small matters in their daily routine.

Many of my clients have difficultly following the ebb and flow of conversation because they are struggling to process the flow of information. So they withdraw as a survival mechanism to daydream and are away with the fairies. Some struggle to participate in the conversation around them because they find it difficult to fluidly express themselves in a timely manner.

Anxiety is common in classrooms and on the playground and undermines the capacity to think, respond, engage emotionally and interact.