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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.
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ActuallyAutistic terminology
- AAC
- Allism
- Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)
- Autism
- AuDHD
- Autistic burnout
- Autistic joy
- Echolalia
- Executive dysfunction
- Grok
- Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)
- Hyperfixation
- Hyperfocus
- Identity-first language
- Inertia
- Infodumping
- Justice sensitivity
- Kinetism (ADHD)
- Late diagnosis
- Masking
- Meltdown
- Monotropism
- Neurodivergence
- Neurodiversity
- Neurokin
- 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
List of Autistic traits (incomplete)
I propose to de-clutter this section. For example, make a page for the Core Autistic Traits, and migrating the links in that section to that page. But doing the same for each section. --Fire Eider (talk) 14:49, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
I actually like being able to see all these links in one spot. It lets you scan and get a sense of things. But because the list is pretty long, we could potentially move this entire section to an `Autistic traits` page. On the other hand — it might not actually just be bad to have a fairly long "Main" page that serves as an index into content generally --AutExplorer (talk)
I also like this, for the moment. It reduces the barrier to entry because people see all the stuff that's currently available for editing in one central place and can then just click on something immediately when they think "Oh, I want to add my thoughts to that!" --Fochti (talk) 18:25, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Good points. I retract what I said earlier --Fire Eider (talk) 19:38, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Not every autistic person necessarily has many of the traits listed below, but these traits do tend to show up more often in autistic people than in non-autistic people.
Core autistic traits
- Autistic empathy
- Hyper-senses & hypo-senses
- Preference for certainty
- Routine / Ritual
- Special interests
- Stimming
Autistic nonverbal communication
Autistic verbal communication
- Accent mimicry
- Bluntness
- Conditional Mutism
- Difficulty lying
- Monotone voice
- Reframing
- Verbal footnoting
- Nonspeaking
- Phone call avoidance
- Wordplay
- name? unconsciously getting word order wrong
- Auditory processing difficulties
- Preference for infodumping
Gender and sexuality
Imperatives and neurological
- Resistance to bias
- Dissociation
- Irrational fears, neurological
- Divergent stress triggers
- Divergent touch needs
- Ethical fearlessness
- Experiential recreation
- Gullibility
- Inability to intuit the "point of diminishing returns"
- Intense world theory
- Median (plurality)
- Nonlinear contradiction response
- Pattern recognition
- Preference for certainty
- Prosopagnosia
- Plurality
- Susceptibility to trauma
- Sympathetic animism
- name? Willful Sensorium Override
Familial
Memory
Pychological
- Autistic imposter syndrome
- Cat empathy
- Rumination
- Overthinking
- Preference for animation
- Preference for autistically coded characters
- Gravitate to other neurodivergents
- Social contracts
Physical
Senses
Traumagenic Autistic traits
- Over-apologizing
- High mortality rate
- Irrational fears, logical (Contradiction...?)
- Social anxiety
- Pathological demand avoidance
Additional Autistic traits
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
- Ableism
- Gender
- Gossip
- Group dynamics
- Peer group
- Phatic expression
- Saving face
- Social power
- Social status
Psychology
Neurology
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 and relationships
Autistic culture
- Articles
- Autistic artists
- Autistic public figures
- Autistic representation in fiction
- Books by Autistic authors
- Jokes about Autism
- Podcasts by Autistic creators
- Symbols of Autism
Comorbidities
Isn't BPD short for Borderline Personality Disorder, not Bipolar Disorder?
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
- "Am I Autistic?" Guide
- Autism without trauma
- Non-derogatory DSM-5 diagnosis criteria for Autism
- Signs you might be autistic
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
- Synesthesia
- Smell
- Taste
- Texture
- Vestibulary perception
- Vision
Yet-to-be-sorted categories
You can put stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else (yet) here.