Behaviors
12 terms
Camouflaging
The conscious or unconscious suppression of neurodivergent traits to appear more neurotypical. Often used interchangeably with "masking," camouflaging involves hiding, compensating for, or overperforming to meet social expectations.
Demand Avoidance
When your nervous system treats everyday requests like threats, triggering fight-flight-freeze responses to even gentle suggestions. Not defiance or oppositional behavior—a neurological response where the brain's threat detection system perceives any loss of autonomy as danger, making you unable (not unwilling) to comply with demands, even ones you genuinely want to follow.
Hyperactivity
Excessive movement, restlessness, and high energy levels that are developmentally inappropriate and often interfere with daily functioning, commonly associated with ADHD.
Hyperfixation
Intense, consuming focus on specific interests, activities, topics, or even people, characterized by an overwhelming need to engage with the fixation to the exclusion of other activities.
Masking
Hiding or suppressing neurodivergent traits to appear more neurotypical. A survival strategy that involves mimicking social behaviors, suppressing stims, and performing neurotypicality at significant personal cost.
Neurodivergent Masking Fatigue
Exhaustion and stress that build up after prolonged masking of neurodivergent traits.
Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA)
An autism profile where everyday demands—even enjoyable ones—trigger intense anxiety and nervous system threat responses, driving a need for autonomy and control that looks like defiance but is actually survival mode.
Sensory Avoidance
Reducing or avoiding certain inputs (noise, light, textures, smells) to prevent overload and stay regulated.
Sensory Seeking
Preferring or seeking extra sensory input (movement, pressure, sound, texture) to feel regulated.
Stimming
Self-stimulatory behaviors—repetitive movements, sounds, or activities that regulate the nervous system. Natural, necessary, and beneficial actions that help process sensory input, manage emotions, and maintain focus.
Unmasking
The process of reducing or stopping masking behaviors and allowing more authentic expression of neurodivergent traits and needs.
Waiting Mode
The complete inability to start tasks when you have an appointment later, as if your entire brain is on hold until the thing happens. Even with hours available, you're stuck in mental limbo—not procrastinating, literally paralyzed.