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Read our latest articles on strategies for neurodivergent work & life, myth-busting, experiences and everything you didn’t know you wanted to know. 🙂
Latest Blogposts
What do the ADHD self-assessment questions really mean?
The ASRS uses neurotypical language for neurodivergent experiences. This guide translates all 18 questions into what they actually mean, with real-life examples and the coping strategies that can mask your answers.
Support You Can Immediately Access After An ADHD Referral
ADHD post-referral support — because there are already things you can do before you get assessed for a diagnosis.
How To Make Your Life Neurodivergent-friendly
You’ve tried all the ADHD tips online, but nothing seems to stick. That’s because neurodivergent brains don’t come with universal solutions—what helps one person might not work for you at all. Here’s how to discover your specific adaptations and create a life that actually works for YOUR brain. Explore your needs, what environments you work best in, what overwhelms you, and what helps you regulate.
Questions & Answers
“Why do I like pressure on my body?”
If you like pressure on your body — heavy blankets, tight hugs, snug clothes — your nervous system is using a regulation strategy it figured out on its own.
“Can verbal shutdown happen with ADHD?”
ADHD speech difficulties are usually about effort and disorganisation rather than a complete loss of access. You might notice more grammatical errors, mispronounced words, sentences that lose their thread halfway through, or long pauses while you search for a word you know perfectly well.
“What’s the difference between verbal shutdown, selective mutism, and being non-speaking?”
Verbal shutdown, selective mutism and being non-speaking are all experiences that involve not speaking, but they work differently, feel different from the inside, and have different causes.
Verbal shutdown: temporary loss of speech due to overwhelm
Being non-speaking: permanent loss of speech, but not loss of communication
Apraxia: loss of speech due to motor planning difficulties in the brain that provide the movements required to form words
Selective/situational mutism: an anxiety disorder that results in loss of speech consistently in specific contexts
“Why do I do better with a routine?”
Because routine is architecture you can rely on when everything else is wobbly or up in the air.
When you do the same things in the same order, your brain doesn’t have to build the day from scratch. The route is known, the sequence is mapped, all the decisions have already been made, and you are good to go. This frees up precious cognitive resources for the things that actually need your attention.
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Latest Glossary entries
autistic direct communication
Direct communication is a pared-down, efficient way of speaking, where the words mean what they mean — no subtext to decode, no softening layer to read past. For many autistic people, this is the default register. It often gets misread as bluntness or aggression, but the directness is usually doing precision work.
literal thinking
Literal thinking is a precision-oriented processing style common in autistic people, where words, questions, and instructions are interpreted according to their exact meaning rather than their implied or intended meaning. It is one of the most commonly misunderstood autistic traits — both by neurotypical people who assume it means autistic people cannot grasp metaphors or jokes, and by autistic people themselves who dismiss it because they understand figurative language perfectly well. Many autistic adults comprehend metaphors, sarcasm, and idioms with ease, but still respond very precisely to the literal content of questions, miss the unstated social layer attached to a comment, or get stuck on vague terms like “often” that don’t contain enough information for an accurate answer. Literal thinking shows up most clearly when communication leaves gaps that the listener is expected to fill in — and it becomes far less of a factor when the information provided is clear, specific, and explicit.
pattern recognition in autism
Pattern recognition is a thinking style common in autistic people, involving a tendency to notice underlying structures, connections, and regularities across many areas of life — sensory, social, systemic, and practical. Research supports enhanced visual and perceptual pattern detection in autism, and many autistic adults describe this extending into how they solve problems, read people, predict outcomes, and make sense of the world. Pattern recognition varies enormously between individuals in which domains it shows up, and works best when the data is consistent and rule-governed — making it a genuine strength in many contexts, while less effective in the noisy, context-dependent domain of real-time social interaction.
special interests
Special interests are deeply focused areas of engagement that autistic people experience with a level of emotional investment, sustained attention, and joy that goes well beyond typical hobbies. Clinically categorised under restricted repetitive behaviours, special interests are one of the defining characteristics of autism — and for most autistic adults, they are a primary source of motivation, regulation, identity, and connection. Between 75% and 95% of autistic people have at least one special interest, and 82% have more than one.
