If you want to know how autistic people actually talk about autism, don’t start with a clinical checklist. Start with Reddit.

That’s exactly what a team of researchers did in a new study published in Autism Research, and the results are fascinating—sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, but always deeply human.

Traditional medical frameworks love their bullet points: difficulty with social interaction, repetitive behaviors, sensory sensitivities. Useful in a doctor’s office, sure. But they don’t capture what it feels like to live autistic in a world that often demands camouflage.

On Reddit, no one is following a researcher’s script. People vent. They joke. They tell the truth they’ve never said out loud. That’s why analyzing over 700,000 posts from r/autism and 15 related subreddits gives us something richer: autism not as a disorder, but also as a lived culture.

Imagine this: you’ve spent years convinced you’re lazy, weak, or simply “bad at life.”

Then one afternoon in a beige office, a clinician leans back in their swivel chair and says: “You have ADHD.”

Suddenly, it all clicks. The shame softens. Your story rearranges itself. You’re not defective—you’re diagnosed.

That emotional pivot has a name of its own: the Rumpelstiltskin effect.

Psychiatrist Awais Aftab and philosopher Alan Levinovitz coined the term in 2025, comparing the relief of diagnosis to the fairy tale where learning Rumpelstiltskin’s name breaks the spell.

Across cultures, the power of naming—of turning the mysterious into the knowable—has always been the first step toward control, healing, or escape.

But like most good fairy tales, there’s a darker counter-narrative. In American mental health culture, many argue that psychiatric labels don’t free us—they trap us. For some, diagnosis feels less like a flashlight in the dark and more like a branding iron.

So who’s right? Let’s dig in.

When people hear the word hoarding, they often imagine a reality-TV spectacle: stacks of newspapers, narrow walkways, and a kitchen buried under clutter.

But in everyday life, hoarding is more complex—especially when we consider how it connects to neurodiversity.

Hoarding isn’t just about keeping “too much stuff.”

For many neurodivergent souls, it’s tied to the way their brains handle memory, attachment, and uncertainty. What looks like disorganization from the outside can be a coping strategy on the inside.

"Thinking in Speech" (TiS) isn’t just another autism therapy—it’s an intentional way of learning to talk to oneself with purpose, clarity, and calm.

Developed by Janice Nathan, an autistic speech-language pathologist, TiS teaches children to build an inner voice that supports planning, emotional steadiness, and self-soothing—not through worksheets or routines, but by activating inner strength.

In 2025, researchers published a pilot randomized-controlled trial in Autism Research. Twenty-two autistic children received the TiS therapy—sixteen 30-minute sessions delivered remotely by nine trained speech-language pathologists.

Compared to a waitlist group, children in the TiS group showed statistically significant improvement in emotional distress (measured by the Emotion Dysregulation Inventory (EDI)) and a marginal trend toward improved reactivity.

People with ADHD are more prone to boredom because of attention and working memory challenges. Here’s what new research reveals—and what helps.

A new study in the Journal of Attention Disorders confirms what most people with ADHD could tell you without a grant: boredom hits harder and more often.

Young adults with ADHD traits scored nearly two standard deviations higher in boredom proneness than their peers (Orban, Blessing, Sandone, Conness, & Santer, 2024).

The underlying issue is executive function—the set of mental tools that help us pay attention, hold information in mind, and finish what we start. When those systems misfire, even mildly dull tasks feel unbearable.

Anxiety doesn’t always start with thoughts.

Sometimes it starts with the world itself: the buzzing fluorescent light that feels hostile, the neighbor’s leaf blower that might as well be aimed directly at your skull, or the checkout machine yelling “unexpected item in bagging area.”

That’s sensory overload anxiety—when your nervous system throws a party you didn’t RSVP to, and every sense shows up loud, bright, and impossible to ignore.

What Is Sensory Overload Anxiety? (And Why It’s Not Just Stress)

Most couples argue about familiar things: money, chores, in-laws, and the occasional dishwasher mutiny.

With ADHD in the relationship, those ordinary fights can take on an extraordinary intensity.

Arguments zigzag, escalate too quickly, and often balloon into something no one remembers starting.

That’s because ADHD adds neurological complications.

Executive dysfunction makes follow-through difficult.

Time blindness makes lateness feel inevitable.

Sensory overload turns small disagreements into sirens in the brain.

And rejection sensitivity makes criticism land like betrayal.

If you argue as though these differences don’t exist, you might find yourself fighting a ghost.

For years, adults stumbling through life with distraction, restlessness, and unfinished projects have been told they were “just anxious” or “probably depressed.”

Doctors handed over antidepressants like they were aspirin, hoping to quiet the storm.

The pills dulled the edges but never fixed the engine.

Because the problem wasn’t depression. It was ADHD—misunderstood, underdiagnosed, and misfiled into the wrong drawer.

A new Finnish study shows what happens when the right label finally lands.

Once adults are treated for ADHD, their antidepressant use drops. In other words: call the thing by its real name, and the shelves of orange pill bottles begin to thin out.

ADHD Is bigger than we thought.

ADHD—attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder—is usually described in terms of core ADHD symptoms like inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

But new ADHD research in 2025 shows the condition is far more expansive. ADHD affects memory, sexual satisfaction, brain development, creativity, life expectancy, and even gut health.

The old idea that ADHD in children simply “fades away” in adulthood has been replaced by evidence that ADHD in adults is a lifelong condition.

ADHD treatment now requires more than stimulant medication—it demands a broader understanding of how ADHD influences every part of life, from relationships to career success.

Here’s the scene: You’re in the middle of a conversation with your spouse.

Maybe the topic is small (“Did you pay the water bill?”) or monumental (“Are we happy?”). And then—without warning—your autistic partner’s voice disappears.

No yelling, no slammed doors. Just… gone. You’re left holding the conversational steering wheel while they’ve quietly climbed into the trunk.

If you’ve never lived with autism, this can look like stonewalling or contempt. It isn’t. It’s neurology pulling the emergency brake.

We’ve all heard the story by now:
Autism equals creativity.

Autistic people are the misunderstood artists, the eccentric coders, the savant musicians who just need the right workplace lighting to flourish.

It’s a narrative that’s become so popular in neurodiversity circles, educational reform, and diversity hiring campaigns that questioning it almost feels rude.

But a new study published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science just handed that myth a glass of lukewarm water and asked it to sit down.

After controlling for IQ and co-occurring ADHD, researchers found that autistic adults didn’t outperform neurotypical adults on a widely used measure of creativity.

What did they find?

Imagine this: You text a friend. No reply for hours. Most people shrug it off—“They’re probably busy.” But if you’re living with ADHD, your brain might take a detour into catastrophic territory: “Did I say something wrong? Are they mad? Did I just blow up the whole friendship?”

Welcome to Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD)—a storm of shame, panic, and self-blame that can hijack your nervous system in the time it takes to get ghosted for an afternoon.

It’s hasn’t broken through into popular culture just yet…

But RSD is finally getting the spotlight in ADHD research, therapy rooms, and Reddit confessionals. And for many adults—especially those late-diagnosed—it feels like naming the emotional bruise they’ve been carrying for decades.

So let’s talk about it. What is Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria? Why does it hit ADHDers so hard? And how can we work with it instead of being wrecked by it?