Narration of the Lived Experience Alexithymia of Mothers with Children with Multiple Disabilities

Having a disabled child imposes a heavy psychosocial burdenon the family, and the mother feels the burden more. Thepurpose of this research was to narrate the lived experience ofAlexithymia of mothers with children with multipledisabilities. The present study studied the stories of mothers ofchildren with multiple disabilities with a qualitative approachand using the method of narrative analysis, and a semistructured interview technique was used to collect data. Theparticipants were mothers of multi-disabled children ofShiraz's special flower school who were purposefully selectedand had at least one multi-disabled child and were willing totalk about their experiences, the sampling process andinterviews until saturation (15 mothers) continued. The mainthemes of the experiences were discovered through theColaizzi method. Findings from the experiences of mothers inliving with children with multiple disabilities in 9 main themes(child behavior problems, stigma and social isolation, negativefeelings and thoughts, blaming, worry about the future,disruption in interpersonal relationships, support from familyand others, how Dealing with the child's disability, themother's lack of ability to manage herself and the child) and28 sub-themes that were coded as subgroups of the mainthemes were summarized.