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adultingautistic · 4 years

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Hi! Adult diagnosed with autism just recently and I’m trying to understand more terms used by the community! I have masking, stimming, and samefoods learn but are there other common ones I should know about?

Oh wow! This is a good idea, a glossary of sorts!

At first I was like “HOW WILL I EVER THINK OF THEM ALL?? MY MIND HAS GONE TOTALLY BLANK, WHAT’S AN AUTISM???”

But then I realized I already HAVE a pretty extensive list- it’s my tag list for this blog! So, here ya go, starting with the 3 you listed:

masking

stimming

samefoods / samesong / samemovie

sensory input - the 5 senses, and how they interact with your brain. When you see/hear/feel/smell/taste something, that is “input” into your brain

Bad Sensory Input / sensory hell - Autistics experience horrific sensory input in a way that allistics just do not, and there are no words to describe it, so we invented our own. Bad Sensory Input is something that is far, far more horrible than just “unpleasant”. For example, smelling a dumpster is a bad smell, but smelling mint for me is a Bad Smell, it makes me react very violently and almost puke, and I would much RATHER smell a dumpster than have to smell mint, so for me, mint is a Bad Smell.

sensory sensitivity - Describes the condition of being affected by Bad Sensory Input

sensory overload - When your 5 senses are receiving too much information for your brain to handle. Can lead to a meltdown/shutdown

autistic burnout - When you’ve been dealing with overload situations over an extended period of time, and run out of spoons (the energy it takes to do day-to-day things)

spoons - Not strictly an autistic term, but used by the entire disabled community at large. Wikipedia explains it really well

self diagnosis / self dx - Because of a huge number of difficulties in getting professionally diagnosed, the autistic community accepts and advocates for self-diagnosis, that is, a person saying they are autistic based on their own personal experiences and research, without the diagnosis of a doctor

special interest / spIn (abbreviation, that’s a capital i) - More than “just a hobby”, an intense interest in a particular subject that takes away from learning about other subjects (causing “narrow interests” in the person), because so much time is spent on the special interest.

hyperfixation / hyperfocus - When you are so engaged in the task you are doing that your brain has no room left to process other stimuli, such as hearing the world around you, realizing you need the bathroom, realizing you’re thirsty, etc

emotional overload - When your emotions become so intense it can send you into meltdown / shutdown

emotional dysregulation / emotional regulation - The inability to “reign in” emotions; having emotions that are much too big for a situation, having emotions that are a huge overreaction to a situation, or also a huge underreaction

auditory processing disorder - A hearing disorder that occurs when there is nothing wrong with the ears, but the brain struggles to interpret sounds. Greatly affects the ability to understand speech.

echolalia / echologia - Repeating of words or phrases that you’ve heard, for various reasons. Echolalia is repeating the words out loud, echologia is repeating them only in your mind

face blindness - A deficiency in the ability to recognize/remember faces

executive dysfunction / executive function - Poor executive function causes a person to struggle with planning, organization, remembering to do tasks, etc

propioception - the ability to feel the position of one’s body in relation to itself and the world around it. Struggling with proprioception causes a person to be “clumsy” or “accident-prone”

meltdown / shutdown - A reaction to sensory or emotional overload. The brain taking drastic measures to protect itself from more input, as it cannot handle any more. Meltdowns are outward survival actions such as fight, flight, or hide, including kicking, screaming, or running away. Shutdowns are internal reactions, where the person no longer responds to outside stimuli.

nonverbal - Nonverbal autistics are people who have very limited speech or are not able to speak

going nonverbal / becoming nonverbal - Many autistics are “partially” verbal, meaning they can speak when not stressed, but if they become overloaded lose their ability to effectively communicate with speech (called ‘going nonverbal’). Can be a symptom of a meltdown/shutdown. While I’ve seen this term used in the autistic community, @garbageonionpeople pointed out “I’ve seen a lot of nonverbal autistic ppl say they’d rather if people who are not nonverbal use something like “lose speech” instead of “go nonverbal”, since it gives the word an implication of impermanency”.

nonverbal communication / nonverbal cues - The parts of human communication that are not speaking, such as body language, facial expression, and gestures. Autistics struggle to both interpret and display these forms of communication.

accommodation / self accommodation - The changing of an environment or behavior to alleviate autistic symptoms so that the autistic person can function in a less stressful way

abelism - Bigotry that stems from the attitude that disabled people are somehow worth less than non-disabled people. The idea that disabled people are the ones who need to change to fit into an abled world is abelism.

allistic - a non-autistic person.

empathy / hyperempathy /hypoempathy - Empathy is the ability to feel the emotions of others. Autistics tend to have either high empathy or low empathy, meaning we are either very affected by the emotions of others, or are not affected much at all. This is not the same as compassion, autistic people with low empathy can still be very compassionate and care very much about others.

So even though this is a pretty good list, I’m sure I still forgot stuff! If other people want to add stuff I forgot, please do so! I also realize that these definitions are VERY short. If you have more questions, search my blog for the tags, as all of these I got from posts I made with much more detailed explanations. Or of course, search the tumblr tags, or google.

#actuallyautistic #actually autistic #glossary #autistic vocabulary #ask

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scriptautistic · 7 years

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Breakdowns of some of my Autistic Characters so that I don't screw this up! :O

(So I sorta tried to cover things that I noticed were mostly what made autistic people, well, autistic, but I really hope these aren’t coming across as offensive! :O ) And sorry it’s so bloody long!

Meghan Cerne, 29, French. Stimming: Playing with hair/rubbing scalp, entertaining self by reciting her favourite films (usually Greek myth movies), healing magic strands (they’re pretty, golden, make a nice sound, and have a visually stunning flow to them). Sensitivities: Textures on skin (she hates the feeling of make-up particularly), extremely sensitive to pain, noise, and bright lights. Special Interest: Languages, Ancient Greece/Greek Myths Social Skills: Though seemingly very social, she gets distracted when catching someone’s eyes and tends to talk too much. Likewise, she also jumps between one of several languages she knows mid-conversation without knowing it and will often quote things out of context when they mean something particular to her. Other notes: Has a strong idea of how she wants things to go and reacts negatively when things don’t go that way, mostly by becoming confrontational and grumpy.

Eliza Drakes, 21, Canadian Stimming: Brushing her bangs out of her face, pinching her ear when overwhelmed, pointing at things randomly (mostly to get that beautiful flicking sensation in her finger, less so for actually pointing at something), ASMR (aural stimming). Sensitivities: Very insensitive to busy sights, pain, hunger, and exhaustion, which leads to her being malnourished and depressed alot of the time. She’s also very sensitive to pressure and enjoys weighted clothes and being held very tightly. Special Interest: Species of crow/raven, family history Social Skills: Difficulty empathising with others, anti-social, disjunct speech patterns (she thinks in fragments and her fragmented speech is her way of putting those thoughts in an understandable order as best as she can), desperate need for routine. Other notes: Is easily overwhelmed, doesn’t have many meltdowns (but gets unfortunately self-destructive when it does happen), perhaps a sense of justice that is far too strong/black and white perspective, has regular shutdowns. Has her coat and sword as comfort items, and loves milk but only 2%.

Steph Nashi, 19, Japanese Stimming: Pressure stimming with tight, constricting clothing (like corsets), hitting things (drumming), touching herself/doing the honhon, scratching at her shoulders/elbows/knees. Sensitivities: Extremely sensitive to heat, gets uncomfortable and loudly complains in way-too-hot areas. Also hyposensitive to sound, doesn’t hear things usually the first couple of times until attention is brought over. Special Interests: Fashion/make-up, hair styling, very specifically jungle beat drumming. Social Skills: She’s overly extroverted, never usually understanding the concept of personal space. She often talks over people, makes far too many sarcastic remarks without realising she’s actually being rude, but eventually she usually does find the flow of the conversation. Other notes: Also has strong ideas of how she wants things to go, though when they don’t go that way she becomes aggressive and feels the need to hit things. At first those things were walls but she was taught to play drums and now uses them to vent her anger when things aren’t right.

Lauren Nashi, 19, Japanese Stimming: Looking at shiny things and things with cool patterns for hours, ‘ticking’ (a sound she makes with her tongue), working on her motorcycle (especially when she gets to disassemble something), pulling her beanie over her face and muffling herself. Sensitivities: Strong aversion to the smell of oil despite loving her workshop (hence all her air fresheners), hating any taste that is fruity, sweet, or sour, no vestibular sensitivities whatsoever and loves intense speeds and bumps. Special Interests: Mechanics, motorcycles and cars, the Mad Max movies. Social Skills: Lauren is far less social than her twin. She only associates with people when she wants to, otherwise mostly keeping to her work. She is often mistaken for mocking people or deliberately copying them but she is actually a person who needs to repeat statements to herself several times before comprehending them. If she is pressed for time, she won’t make much sense and will simply repeat the word followed by the first word that comes to mind for her.

Again, I hope these are actually okay for characters, if not please tell me cause I wanna do these badass ladies well! And thanks again! ^_^

Looks like you’ve put a lot of work into these characters! I think most of what you’ve written looks pretty good to me, but I can make a few comments to try to help you improve. :)

Meghan: Overall, she sounds quite realistic, especially the part about quoting things out of context (I do that all the time!). I do see one issue, though: multilingual people do not jump between languages without realizing it, especially if one of those languages is a native language. This is unrelated to autism, it’s just how human brains deal with languages. Someone who knows more than one language at a non-native level will never accidentally use their native language. However, what can happen is that when using a non-native language, they may accidentally use one or two words of a different non-native language when they are not speaking carefully. These are usually the “little” words that we don’t think about using, and they may slip out in the non-native language most recently or most commonly used. For example, I am fluent in both German and Czech. I speak Czech frequently, but I rarely use German these days. When speaking German to someone, a sentence might come out like:

“Ich habe eine Katze, ale keinen Hund.”

Most of this sentence is in German. However, the “little” connecting word (ale = but) is in Czech: “I have a cat (but) not a dog.” The correct word in German is “aber” - and that makes it all the more likely to use the wrong word, because they are very similar. If I make a mistake like this, I realize immediately that I’ve used the wrong word and correct myself. Similarly, German words might come to mind more slowly if I’ve been using mostly Czech for a while, and the Czech words might enter my mind instead, but I recognize them as Czech and don’t use them.

It is also possible for someone to make a mistake and use the wrong word in a language if they simply haven’t learned that word correctly, or think it’s the same between two languages but isn’t. And in writing, it’s possible for words which are similar between languages to be accidentally misspelled, using the wrong language’s spelling. Still, this is usually not overly common.

What doesn’t ever happen in real life is someone speaking one language then suddenly switching to another language for a while without realizing it. It just doesn’t happen. Characters on television shows or in films are sometimes shown to randomly pepper their (usually English) speech with words or phrases or sentences from another language (usually their native language), especially when emotional. This is not realistic and really doesn’t happen, at least not by accident. If I switch to English during a conversation in German or Czech, it’s intentional - either I’m speaking to people who are fluent in English and want to express something better expressed in English than the other language, or they don’t speak English and I want to say something without them understanding. This would feel very uncomfortable for me though - it’s quite rude to suddenly use a language you know someone doesn’t understand, and most people wouldn’t do it.

Eliza: I like her! The only thing I’m unsure about is the speech patterns, but I’d need to see an example to know precisely what you mean. Certainly the rest of it looks good to me, and I like the specific detail about the 2% milk. :)

Steph: Again, looks pretty good overall. The only thing I’m unsure about is how you say she eventually finds the flow of the conversation. This is not necessarily impossible, but feels odd to me - how would she “find the flow”? Autistic people generally aren’t able to just “go with the flow” or pick up on all that nonverbal communication allistics are so keen on. We typically develop “social skills” by finding and mimicking patterns and developing scripts which work in most situations. I’m having trouble imagining how she would “find the flow”. I’m not necessarily saying it’s impossible, just that without very specific feedback from the people she’s talking to, it’s hard to see her starting a conversation awkwardly then sort of “magically” adjusting to it.

Also, on the word extroverted: this is a commonly misunderstood and misused word. An extrovert is someone who derives energy from spending time with and interacting with other people. An introvert is someone who needs to be alone to recharge their energy. An extrovert can be very shy, and an introvert can be very outgoing - it’s to do with how they recharge, rather than how they behave around others. So Steph may be an extrovert and need to spend time with other people to get energy, or she may be a social introvert who is very outgoing but needs time alone to recharge.

Lauren: Most of this also looks good. A note on the wording though: being sensitive to something isn’t necessarily the same as being bothered by it. (For example, think of the most sensitive parts of your body - not necessarily unpleasant parts to be touched!) Sensitivity can be positive or negative. When you say she has no vestibular sensitivity but enjoys moving fast and being bounced around, I’d say she probably is sensitive to movement (otherwise she wouldn’t get any joy from it), just that it doesn’t bother her. She may be vestibularly understimulated and crave movement all the time. However, it’s fine that she’s not bothered by all this type of movement. She may be hyposensitive.

I hope this is helpful feedback for you. Best of luck with your badass ladies - I’d love to read this story! :D

-Mod Aira

A note about Eliza : generally speaking, when you really enjoy a sensory stimuli and crave it, it is because you are undersensitive to it and need more input, not because you are hypersensitive. Adding a stimulation you’re hypersensitive to is generally painful (because you have some kind of “maximum threshold” that is met very quickly when you’re hypersensitive), though it is better when you can control it yourself and decide exactly how you are exposed to it.

-Mod Cat

#ask #mod aira #characters #submission #mod cat

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