Words explained
The words that show up in the questionnaires, in the results and in the notes inside the client area, explained in a few sentences. Wherever you meet them on the site they carry a discreet underline: press the word and the explanation slides up.
Interoception is how you sense your body from the inside: hunger, thirst, your heartbeat, tension in your shoulders. For some people these signals come through loudly, for others barely at all. That is why tiredness or hunger can go unnoticed until they are hard to carry.
Proprioception is the sense that tells you where your body is in space without looking. It is the difference between walking into a door frame and walking past it. When it comes through less clearly, you need more pressure or movement to feel where you are.
Over-responsive means a sound, a light or a texture reaches you far more strongly than it reaches other people. Under-responsive means the opposite: the signal arrives faintly, so you need more of it to register. The same person can be over-responsive to sound and under-responsive to pain at the same time.
Overload happens when more information arrives than the nervous system can process at that moment: noise, light, movement, people, all at once. It is not an overreaction, it is a capacity limit being reached. The usual signs are irritability, a sudden need for quiet, and difficulty finding words.
Misophonia is a strong, almost immediate reaction to certain repetitive sounds: chewing, ticking, breathing, clicking. The reaction is not chosen annoyance, it starts before you have time to think. The sounds that trigger it are usually few and very specific.
Sensory processing is how the brain takes in and sorts what arrives through the senses: sound, light, touch, smell, movement. Your sensory profile is the personal map of where you need less and where you need more. It shifts with tiredness and stress, so it is not fixed.
The autonomic nervous system runs what the body does without you thinking about it: heartbeat, breathing, digestion, the alarm for danger. You cannot control it directly by will, but you can influence it through breath, movement and people you feel safe with. Many reactions called an overreaction start here.
Polyvagal theory describes three states the body can move through: safety and connection, fight-or-flight mobilisation, and withdrawal or shutdown. The part that is useful in practice is that safety is felt in the body before it is thought. It is a working model rather than a complete map of the brain.
The window of tolerance is the range in which you can feel, think and speak at the same time. Above it you are in alarm, below it you are numb, and reasoning is hard in both. Therapy works on widening the window rather than forcing it.
This is a deep, lasting exhaustion that follows long periods of adapting to an environment that asks more than your system can give. It differs from ordinary tiredness in that sleep and time off do not fix it. It usually comes with losing skills that used to be automatic and with much lower sensory tolerance.
Masking means hiding or covering your natural way of being so you come across closer to what is expected around you: rehearsed eye contact, practised expressions, lines prepared in advance. In the short term it helps you get through social situations. Over time it costs a great deal of energy and moves a person further from their own signals.
Stimming means repeated movements or sounds that help with regulation: rocking, tapping, spinning an object, repeating a tune. It is not a habit to be corrected, it is a way of holding balance when there is too much or too little going on. Forcing it to stop usually raises tension rather than lowering it.
A shutdown is the withdrawal reaction when the nervous system is overwhelmed: speaking becomes hard or impossible, movement slows, the person seems absent. It is not sulking and it is not a refusal to communicate. It is a form of protection, and what usually helps is quiet and no demands, not pressing harder.
A meltdown is the opposite reaction to a shutdown: built-up tension comes out, through crying, shouting or agitation. It too happens when the system is overwhelmed, not as a punishment aimed at anyone. Afterwards there is usually deep tiredness and a need for quiet.
Inertia is the difficulty of starting an activity, or of stopping one already underway, even when you want to. It is not laziness and not a lack of motivation: the starting mechanism simply takes far more effort. Small tasks, clear steps and transitions announced in advance make it easier to manage.
Unmasking is the slow process of setting masking aside and moving closer to how you actually are. It can feel uncomfortable at first, because the mask was a form of safety for a long time. It happens selectively, in the places and with the people where it is safe, not everywhere at once.
Accommodations are changes to the environment or the way work is done that remove needless effort: headphones, breaks, written instructions, online sessions. They are not an unfair advantage but the way an uneven playing field gets levelled. The most useful accommodation is usually the dullest one.
Spoon theory is a simple picture for limited energy: you start the day with a number of spoons and each activity costs a few. When they run out they are gone, however much you want to carry on. It helps explain why a good day can be followed by one where nothing works.
Special interests are the subjects you sink into completely and that give energy back instead of draining it. The older phrase restricted interests describes them badly, because they work as a source of regulation and joy. Useful therapy builds on them rather than limiting them.
Hyperfocus is the state where attention locks onto something so strongly that time, hunger and the rest of the world disappear. It is not the opposite of attention difficulties but the same attention that is hard to steer. The cost arrives when you stop, which is why alarms set in advance help.
Rumination is the mind returning to the same problem again and again without reaching a conclusion. It is not the same as thinking something through: thinking moves somewhere, rumination goes in circles. It often shows up when something has been left unresolved or unsaid.
This is the part of rumination that sounds like blame aimed at yourself: why is this happening to me, what is wrong with me. It differs from reflection, which looks for an explanation without blaming you. Questionnaires measure the two separately, because they have different effects.
Reflection is the other half of rumination: you return to what happened in order to understand it, not to accuse yourself. It sounds like curiosity about yourself, not a verdict. A high score here alongside low self-criticism is more of a good sign than a problem.
Executive function is the group of skills you use to start, organise and finish an activity: planning, prioritising, switching between tasks, holding back an impulse. It has nothing to do with intelligence. When it works less smoothly the intention is there, but the route from intention to action is much longer.
Working memory is the space where you hold information for a few seconds, just long enough to use it: a number until you write it down, an instruction until you carry it out. It is small in everyone, but for some people it empties faster. That is where walking into a room and forgetting why comes from.
Impulsivity is the tendency to act before the part of you that weighs consequences has had time to join in. It does not mean a lack of values or of care. It rises sharply when emotion is strong, which is why questionnaires measure it separately for good moods and for hard ones.
Hypervigilance is the state where the alarm system stays switched on after the danger has passed: you notice everything, you startle easily, you cannot fully relax. It is not a choice and it does not stop through willpower. It is a mark left by a period when that level of alertness was genuinely needed.
Alexithymia means finding it hard to put what you feel into words. You notice something in your body, a tension or a restlessness, but you cannot find its name. It does not mean you have no emotions, it means translating them into words takes more effort.
Self-regulation is how you come back to a bearable level after something has thrown you off: after news, a noise, a difficult conversation. Everyone has their own routes, from movement and quiet to routines that settle things. It does not mean feeling nothing, it means not staying stuck there.
Dissociation is a sense of disconnection from yourself or from your surroundings: as if you were watching yourself from outside, with the world muffled, as though seen through glass. It often appears when the nervous system is overwhelmed and turns its own volume down. It can last seconds or longer.
A flashback is not an ordinary memory but the sense that something from the past is happening now: images, sounds, reactions in the body. It can start from a small trigger, a smell or a tone of voice. The hard part is that the mind knows it is over while the body reacts as if it were not.
Anhedonia means that things which used to give you pleasure no longer register. It is not necessarily sadness, more a muting of enjoyment. It is one of the signs watched closely, because it changes visibly as things start to lift.
Self-compassion is how you treat yourself when you get something wrong or when things are hard: with the same decency you would offer someone you care about. It is not an excuse and not self-indulgence; people who score high usually carry responsibility better, not worse. Unlike much else, it can be learned.
Distress tolerance is how long you can stay in an unpleasant state without doing something that helps for a moment and costs later. It is not about enduring more, it is about having more options at hand. It drops sharply when you are tired, hungry or sensorily overloaded.
This is a very strong, very fast pain in response to signs of rejection, criticism or disapproval, even small or only assumed ones. The intensity does not match the event, which makes it hard to explain to others. It is often described by people with ADHD, but it is not a diagnosis in itself.
Co-regulation is how one person’s nervous system settles in the presence of another calm one: tone of voice, pace, unhurried presence. For everyone it comes before self-regulation, in childhood and later. That is why part of therapeutic work happens simply by being in the room together.
Complex trauma comes from situations repeated over a long time rather than a single event: constant insecurity, rejection, pressure to be someone else. Its effects touch self-image and relationships, not only memory. For many neurodivergent people the source was exactly those years of masking.
Relational safety is the sense that you can be yourself near someone without paying for it afterwards. It is not built by explanation but by repeated experiences in which nothing bad happens. It is the condition that makes every other piece of therapeutic work possible.
Neurotypical describes a person whose brain works in the way the majority expects. It does not mean healthy or correct, only statistically common. The word exists as a counterpart to neurodivergent, not as a standard anyone is measured against.
Neurodivergent means your mind works differently from the majority: a different rhythm of attention, a different sensory experience, a different way of reading relationships. The word covers autism, ADHD, dyslexia, OCD and more, without ranking them. It describes difference rather than delivering a verdict.
Neurodiversity is the idea that different ways of thinking and feeling are a natural variation within our species, much like biological diversity. From it comes the neurodiversity paradigm: support answers real needs rather than making someone look like everyone else. It does not deny difficulty, it moves the question from what is broken to what is missing around the person.
Spectrum does not mean a line running from a little to a lot, but a profile with many axes: sensory, social, communication, regulation. Two autistic people can have completely different needs and both are on the spectrum. That is why the labels mild and severe say very little that is useful.
Monotropism describes attention that gathers strongly into one channel instead of spreading across several. It explains both deep absorption in a subject and how costly it is to be interrupted or to switch tasks suddenly. Much of what gets called inflexibility makes sense through it.
PDA describes a profile in which demands, even small or pleasant ones, set off a strong alarm in the nervous system. The refusal is not opposition but an attempt to protect autonomy when it feels under threat. What helps is support that offers choice and lowers pressure rather than pressing harder.
Until 2013 Asperger syndrome was a separate diagnosis for autistic people without a language delay. It no longer exists as a distinct diagnosis and now sits within the autism spectrum. Some people still use the term for themselves, others avoid it because of its history.
A late diagnosis means learning in adulthood about something that was there from childhood. It often brings relief and grief at once: years of effort finally make sense, and the question of what might have been different arrives with them. It is the start of a recalibration rather than an endpoint.
Neuro-affirming therapy starts from the idea that your mind does not need fixing, it needs understanding and support. The goal is not to look more neurotypical but to live with less exhaustion and more fit with yourself. In practice the environment and the strategies change, not the identity.
ABA stands for applied behaviour analysis, a method built on reward and repetition to change visible behaviour. Many autistic adults describe the experience as compliance rather than support, and the research on long-term effects is contested. This is why our practice does not use it.
Theory of mind is the ability to imagine what someone else is thinking or feeling. For decades it was used as the explanation for autism, but more recent research shows the misunderstanding runs both ways rather than one. See also double empathy.
These are the two halves of an older theory claiming autistic people analyse systems well and feel little for other people. The measures it rested on have been seriously criticised, and lived experience often contradicts it. The terms appear in the articles precisely because that legacy is still around.
To pathologise is to treat an ordinary difference as an illness in need of correction, such as calling someone a symptom when they calm themselves through movement. The opposite is not denying difficulty. It is describing it accurately and pairing it with the right support.
Stigma is the negative social judgement that attaches to a label rather than to the person behind it. Its most costly form is the internalised one, where you start believing what others say about you. A great deal of masking begins right there.
Prevalence shows how often a condition appears in a population, usually as a percentage. It is a number about groups, not about you: a low prevalence does not make your experience less real. Figures also shift because identification criteria shift, not only because reality does.
These are learning differences that touch reading, movement coordination and working with numbers. They say nothing about intelligence and often appear alongside autism or ADHD. Support means a different route to the same result, not more effort on the same route.
Self-advocacy means asking for what you need in your own words instead of waiting for someone to guess. It takes energy and an environment that receives the request, not only courage. It is learned in small steps, starting where the risk is low.
The double empathy idea says that misunderstanding between an autistic and a non-autistic person runs in both directions. It is not a lack of empathy on one side, but two communication styles that do not read each other easily. Among themselves, autistic people usually understand one another very well.
Attachment style is the pattern in how you get close to people and how you react when distance or conflict appears. It formed early, in your first relationships, but it is not a sentence; it shifts in relationships that prove to be safe. It is not a personality type and it does not explain everything.
An obsession is a thought or image that comes back unwanted and causes discomfort. A compulsion is what you do to reduce that discomfort: checking, washing, repeating, seeking reassurance. The relief is real but brief, and that is what keeps the cycle going.
A co-occurring condition simply means that two or more conditions are present in the same person at the same time. It does not mean one causes the other. Among neurodivergent people it is closer to the rule than the exception, which is why assessment looks broadly rather than at a single label.