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Welcome to the ActuallyAutistic Wiki! This is a community-driven guide to all aspects of autism, allism, and helping build bridges between neurotypes. It emerged recently from the #ActuallyAutistic community on Twitter.
- Everyone is welcome to contribute to this wiki!
- You can edit any page without even having an account. Just hit the 'Edit' link on any page (including this one!). Important privacy note: editing a page without having an account or without being logged in will show your IP address publicly in the changelog/history of a page.
- The number one rule of wiki editing is to be bold. Go ahead – make changes — even large rewrites of big topics. Other people can correct any mistakes you make, so have confidence, and give it a try!
- If you disagree with what someone else has put, please consider adding a note of disagreement and what you think/would do after that section, especially if it could be something that varies by country or even situations or if you want to change it to/from an absolute (such as job interviews or eye gaze)
- None of the content here is sacred. Please just make changes! Some of the articles are just starter content or from a particular person's perspective. Earlier versions can always be restored if necessary. These are all collaborative documents.
- Here is a short guide on how to create a new wiki page from scratch! Please check first whether a similar page already exists to avoid duplicates.
- Here are some of our style guidelines if you're unsure about formatting etc. But don't worry or overthink too much about "getting things right", these are not "hard rules" – and everything can be edited, formatted & moved later without issue anyway! :)
- If you have some ideas on how to improve this project, feel free to use the Talk:Topic discussions at the end of this page! You can also create your own!
- Please remember that links are CASE SENSITIVE. When linking to a missing page, whichever case you use will be created when someone follows the link and makes that new page. Linking to existing articles is case sensitive for every letter except the first one. Lowercasing or capitalizing a letter other than the first one will break the link / not link to the page you want. Please read this guide on links if you want to use them!
ActuallyAutistic terminology
- Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)
- Allism
- Autism
- AuDHD
- Autistic burnout
- Autistic joy
- Echolalia
- Executive dysfunction
- Grok
- Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)
- Hyperfixation
- Hyperfocus
- Identity-first language
- Inertia
- Infodumping
- Justice sensitivity
- Late diagnosis
- Masking
- Meltdown
- Monotropism
- Neurodivergence
- Neurodiversity
- Neuropeer
- Neurotypical
- Parallel play
- PBS
- Person-first language
- Rejection sensitive dysphoria
- Ritual
- Routine
- Safe foods
- Savant
- Shutdown
- Special interest
- Spoon theory
- Stimming
- Miscellaneous terms - for similar/confusing terms and definitions that probably better in one place rather than multiple short articles
Incomplete List of Known Autistic Traits
- Accent Mimicry
- Atypical Autobigraphical Episodic Memory
- Aural sensitivity to Electronics
- Autigender
- Autistic Empathy
- Autistic Imposter Syndrome
- Autistic Relatives
- Autistic Social Bluntness
- Baby Face
- Bias Resiliance
- Cat Empathy
- Chronic Apologizing (Traumagenic)
- Comorbid Interference Traits
- Conditional Mutism (Selective Mutism)
- Demisexuality
- Difficulty in Chaining Lies
- Disproportionally LGBTQ+
- Dissociation
- Divergent Stress Triggers
- Divergent Touch Needs
- Ethical Fearlessness
- Eye Contact Avoidance
- Emotion Memory Imprinting
- Experiential Recreation
- Flat Affect
- Flat Facing
- Flat Tone
- Gravitate to other Neurodivergents
- Gullibility
- High Mortality Rate
- Hyper-Empathy
- Hypo-Empathy
- Inability to Intuit the "point of diminishing returns."
- Intense World
- Irrational Fears, Neurological
- Irrational Fears, Logical
- Median (Plurality)
- Neuroqueer
- Nonlinear Contradiction Response
- Nonverbal
- "Old Soul"
- Overlapping Autistic Traits
- Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA)
- Pattern Recognition
- Peritiosexual
- Phone Call Avoidance
- Preference for Autistically Coded Characters
- Preference for Certainty
- Preference for Infodumping
- Preference for Predictable Outcomes
- Prosopagnosia
- Plurality
- Reframing
- Social Anxiety
- Social Contracts
- Special Interests
- Susceptibility to trauma
- Stimming
- Sympathetic Animism
- Temperature Sensitivity
- Toe Walking
- Traumagenic Autistic Traits
- Verbal Footnoting
- Xenogender
- name? Willful Sensorium Override
- name? Conditionally Hard of Hearing
- name? Inability to understand wordplay
- name? obsession with wordplay
- name? animation fixation
- name? Lack of childhood memories
- name? unconsciously getting word order wrong
- name? Overthinking
Social Media
Outmoded terminology
While many autists have moved away from these terms, some continue to use them to describe their experience. Please remember that people may have complex reasons for the words they choose, and that differences in vocabulary are okay. In short, while it's important to understand how these outdated terms play to most autists, it's also not helpful to police other people's word choices.
Sociology
Psychology
Allistic communication & miscommunication
- Body language
- Common sense
- Double empathy problem
- Eye contact
- Facial expressions
- Getting coffee
- Literal interpretation
- Multi-channel communication
- Responding to "How are you?"
- Social cues
- Tone of voice
Dating & relationships
- Autistic love languages
- Dating apps / online dating
- Neurodivergent relationship
- Neurodivergent sexuality
Autistic culture
- Articles
- Autistic artists
- Autistic celebrities
- Autistic representation in fiction
- Books by Autistic authors
- Jokes about Autism
- Podcasts by Autistic creators
- Symbols of Autism
Comorbidities
Accommodations
- AAC
- Autism passport
- Clear instructions
- Hidden disabilities sunflower
- Noise-cancelling headphones
- Support networks and organisations
Culture-specific differences
Diagnostic journey
Problems with autism research
- Autism Speaks
- Autism stereotypes
- Bias
- Deficit model
- Functioning labels
- Ethics of autism research
- History of autism
- Stigma
How to help
I have no idea what the purpose of this section and the page below is supposed to be..?
Mental health
Information processing differences
- Aphasia
- Auditory processing disorder
- Dyslexia
- Dyspraxia
- Dyscalculia
- Dysgraphia
- Hyperlexia
- Misophonia
- Prosopagnosia
- Synesthesia
Office & work dynamics
- Corporate buzzwords
- HR interviews
- Job interviews - ended up writing like a short essay in this one which boils down to the importance of respecting diversity of thought on this wiki. Maybe it would be better suited to copy into another page, but not sure which?
- Meetings
- Networking
- Team building / work socials
- Water cooler
Articles and Threads
Senses
Many autistics have differences in their senses, such as maybe hypersensitive to sound but hyposensitive to smell. These articles should try to document examples of both types as well as potential ways to compensate.
- Hearing
- Gastro-intestinal problems
- Interoception
- Proprioception
- Sensory overload
- Sensory sensitivity
- Smell
- Taste
- Texture
- Vestibulary perception
- Vision
Yet-to-be-sorted categories
You can put stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else (yet) here.
Meta
Discussion
We can talk about the wiki itself in talk-pages[1]. Feel free to create your own for topics.