Mapping Monotropism in Education

Introduction: Seeing Through a Monotropic Lens

By Helen Edgar (Autistic Realms). Based on the Yellow Ladybugs panel "Mapping the Monotropic Mind: An Introduction to This Autistic Thinking and Processing Style", presented with Dr Wenn Lawson in June 2025.

Monotropism (Murray et al., 2005) is a theory of Autism developed by Autistic people, and it offers an affirming way of understanding Autistic experience from the inside out. At its heart is attention: how we think, feel, sense, process and connect. If you are monotropic, your attention tends to gather around a small number of interests at any one time. You immerse yourself and go deep, and you may lose track of everything outside your tunnel. That is a different rhythm of being, and it deserves to be understood on its own terms.

This way of attending shapes how we learn, regulate, communicate, cope and connect with the world. For many of us, discovering monotropism has been transformative, because it helps us reframe long-standing struggles as differences rather than deficits. The aim was never to fix Autistic people. The aim is to change how we design education, relationships and support so that they honour our ways of processing.

That is why I created the Map of Monotropic Experiences with Stimpunks, and why I was honoured to speak alongside Dr Wenn Lawson on the Yellow Ladybugs panel. Together we explored how understanding monotropism can help families, educators and support teams recognise, support and validate Autistic learners, and, most importantly, how it can help Autistic young people understand themselves. This page gathers what I shared there, with a particular focus on school.

The free training that accompanies the map, and the My Monotropic Map workbook, are good companions to this page if you would like to take the ideas into your own setting.

Why Monotropism Matters in Education

Monotropism gives us a very different starting point for understanding Autism. Diagnostic manuals describe Autistic and ADHD people through "deficits" and "disorders", measured against an imagined norm. Monotropism recognises a natural variation in how human bodyminds work, and it explains many of the things schools find puzzling as expressions of one underlying attention style.

As I said during the panel, monotropism is one of the key ideas we need for making sense of Autism, alongside the double empathy problem (Milton, 2012) and the neurodiversity paradigm. The Monotropism Questionnaire (Garau et al., 2023) has since given researchers a validated way of measuring it, which is helping these ideas travel further into professional practice.

For education, this matters in three ways. It gives us a compassionate lens for reframing what is often called "challenging behaviour". It helps us design teaching and support around real Autistic needs. And it helps Autistic young people recognise their own processing style as valid and meaningful, so that a positive Autistic identity can grow through their differences rather than despite them.

Landmarks of the Map in School

The Map of Monotropic Experiences began as a visual expression of what it feels like to be a monotropic thinker living in a polytropic world, and it started forming in my body before it ever reached paper. As a late-identified Autistic person, I began tracing the internal landscapes of my own life: where I flow, where I get stuck, the terrain of overwhelm, and the places of joy and connection I return to again and again. Through conversations with others, including the people at Stimpunks, it grew into a shared, open-source resource.

The map is based on my own experiences and does not claim to define every Autistic or ADHD person. It offers an embodied framework for exploring the relational, sensory, emotional and cognitive sides of being monotropic, and it belongs to a wider shift towards models led by lived experience. It keeps growing as people share their stories, and newer ideas such as the Islands of Internalised Ableism are joining it. Your own map, or the map of a young person you support, may look very different, and exploring that together is part of the fun. Here are some of the landmarks that matter most in school.

Shark Infested Waters

The Shark Infested Waters of Neuronormativity, Behaviourism and Double Empathy Problems show what it is like to navigate systems that were never designed for Autistic people. Schools built around polytropic expectations ask for multitasking, quick transitions, busy sensory environments and neuronormative social rules. Families are often left fighting for the very adjustments their children need simply to get through the day, let alone to thrive. That exhausting fight is avoidable when we start from a framework that reflects Autistic experience. Beardon's (2021) equation, Autism + Environment = Outcome, puts it simply: when a child is struggling, we look first at the environment around them.

Tides of the Sensory Sea

On the map, the Tides of the Sensory Sea ebb and flow. Attention and sensory processing are intertwined, so a child deep in flow may not notice hunger, thirst or pain until it becomes urgent, while a child pulled suddenly out of flow may feel every light and sound at once. Sensory input can support regulation or tip someone into dysregulation, especially when it is unexpected. Understanding the role of monotropic focus helps us see these changes as shifts in attention rather than as behaviour to correct.

Rivers of Flow, Tunnels and Rabbit Holes

Monotropic people dive into things. In the River of Monotropic Flow States our whole attention becomes absorbed in a task or topic, and time itself can seem to dissolve, which I call Monotropic Time. Heasman et al. (2024) describe Autistic flow as a valuable, non-pathological state that supports wellbeing, and my own experience echoes that. The map also shows Attention Tunnels, where everything outside our focus falls away, Rabbit Holes of Research, where one thought leads fascinatingly to the next, and Infodump Canyon, where we share knowledge with joy as a way of connecting. These are lifelines through which we make meaning. Flow is also fragile, and when it is broken abruptly by transitions, demands or sensory overload, it can lead to overwhelm and, over time, to burnout.

From the Forest of Joy to the Mountains of Rumination

The map celebrates Autistic joy as well as naming the hard places. In the Forest of Joy, Awe and Wonder we find comfort, play, curiosity and peace, and when monotropic bodyminds are allowed to flourish there, we see intrinsic motivation, meaningful relationships and a growing sense of pride. When flow is disrupted again and again, young people can end up in darker terrain, such as the Mountains of Ruminating Thoughts or the Burnout Whirlpools. Each part of the landscape tells a story about an Autistic way of being, and all of it matters.

Executive Function, Processing and Different Rhythms

Executive function differences in Autistic learners are often mistaken for laziness, opposition or a lack of motivation. Seen through a monotropic lens, they reveal a deep mismatch between how monotropic minds process information and how most schools operate. Monotropic learners, especially Autistic and AuDHD young people, find constant task-switching, multitasking and divided attention across changing subjects, rooms and teachers extremely hard. When a timetable demands it all day, it can feel impossible, and even painful.

The difficulties that are usually labelled "executive dysfunction" include trouble starting or switching tasks, becoming stuck or frozen, difficulty remembering or organising steps, and feeling overwhelmed by several instructions at once. These are the natural consequences of an attention system built to follow one stream deeply. When that attention is forced to split, or is pulled away abruptly, the result can be inertia, invisible fight-or-flight states, shutdowns and meltdowns, and eventually burnout from chronic overload. Buckle et al. (2021) gathered first-hand accounts of Autistic inertia in which people described feeling trapped, with "no way out except from external intervention", particularly in environments that do not let them attend in their own way.

Monotropic Split

Tanya Adkin (2022) describes monotropic split as what happens when a monotropic mind is forced to divide its attention beyond the resources it has available. The sensory system and mind move into survival mode, tasks that look simple to others become overwhelming, and a young person may appear avoidant or resistant when they are in fact responding to overload. This is especially common in settings that prioritise speed, multitasking and compliance, all of which pull against monotropic flow.

Interest, Effort and Looping Back

For monotropic people, attention is led by interest, so a task with no spark of relevance takes an immense amount of energy to begin. Fergus Murray's (2019) account of monotropic cognition helps explain why. Coping with several channels at once (sensory, verbal, social and emotional) is hard. Filtering is tricky and error-prone. Changing tracks is destabilising. Experiences are felt intensely. Attention keeps looping back to our interests, and anything outside the tunnel can drop out of awareness altogether.

Many Autistic learners also process in loops rather than lines. A young person may need time to rehearse a reply internally, may answer a question minutes after it was asked because they were still thinking, may lose the thread of fast-paced instructions, or may ask the same question several times as part of making sense of something. Processing time is part of how we think, and when adults respect these rhythms, both communication and learning improve.

What Helps

Support starts with compassion and works with the young person's attention style. In practice, that can mean:

• Planning together with the young person and their family, asking what sparks interest and what sensory conditions feel good.
• Building flexible routines rather than rigid schedules, with time before and after transitions to regroup.
• Offering interest-based hooks, so that even non-preferred tasks connect to a passion.
• Giving extra processing time without pressure, and avoiding repeated prompting.
• Chunking tasks into small steps, with visual lists, timers and checklists made with the child.
• Using body doubling, a low-demand presence that helps someone start or keep going.
• Choosing low-demand language, such as "Would you like help getting started?"

Tools like these work as access tools, a kind of ramp for the nervous system, and time is the most powerful of them: time to transition, time to think, and time to loop back to what matters. What works one day may not work the next, because monotropic minds are sensitive to environment, emotion, energy and connection. The goal is sustainable wellbeing rather than perfect performance, and as I often say, always juggling so much is exhausting and contributes to meltdowns, shutdowns and long-term burnout.

Sensory Processing and the Body

Monotropism is about bodies as well as thoughts, because attention is always embodied. Before a child can focus, engage or communicate, they need to feel safe, grounded and regulated. When a sensory need goes unmet, or an experience becomes overwhelming, attention is pulled towards survival. The body is prioritising what it needs, and calling that distraction misses what is happening.

In a polytropic classroom, students are expected to filter out background noise, shift focus between instructions, peers and visuals, and regulate their bodies quietly and invisibly. For monotropic learners this can be overwhelming. A child in deep focus may not hear their name or feel a tight waistband, and the same child, pulled suddenly out of their tunnel, may feel every light, sound, texture and smell arrive at once. This fluctuation reflects how attention shapes sensory experience, so a young person who coped with the hall yesterday may find it unbearable today. When adults understand this, they stop assuming a child is "faking it" when their needs change, and they avoid interrupting a regulated child with a scheduled sensory break at the very moment flow was working.

Stimming

Stimming is often suppressed in schools, yet for many Autistic students it is a regulation tool that helps them keep or regain flow, a way of communicating excitement, distress or sensory need, and a source of joy and predictability in a chaotic world. For monotropic minds, movement often is focus. Stimming anchors attention and calms the nervous system, and it is a natural, healthy part of Autistic embodiment that deserves to be honoured.

Interoception

Interoception is our sense of what is happening inside the body, such as hunger, thirst, the need for the toilet, pain and tiredness. Many Autistic people notice these signals late, or find them hard to name, and emotions can seem to arrive from nowhere. When interoception is affected, so is attention: a child may refuse lunch while hungry, or reach a meltdown or shutdown because body signals were missed. Kelly Mahler's work on interoception shows how awareness can be built gently and without judgement. Support means helping children check in with their bodies, respecting their timing, avoiding pressure to label feelings too quickly, and offering consistent rhythms of care.

Meerkat Mode

Adkin (2023) describes Meerkat Mode as a state of heightened vigilance in which an overwhelmed monotropic person scans constantly for danger while searching for a hook into flow. A child in meerkat mode may seem on edge, panicked or "challenging" when they are overwhelmed and trying desperately to find something safe to focus on. What helps is safety, trust and co-regulation.

What Helps

Sensory support works best when it is proactive and personal, because a single strategy for everyone can miss the mark or even cause harm. Helpful steps include:

• Offering movement options and sensory tools to the whole class, so Autistic learners are not singled out.
• Allowing self-directed regulation, so students can stim, pause, move or rest when they need to.
• Adapting the environment with lower lights, less clutter, quiet corners and soft furnishings.
• Exploring individual supports together, such as noise-cancelling headphones, hats or sunglasses, smell-neutral spaces, and warmth, softness or pressure.
• Treating movement as part of learning rather than a reward to be earned.
• Protecting flow, and not treating a child's reluctance to leave a regulated state as defiance.

Our sensory needs are the ground everything else is built on. When we adapt environments rather than trying to control Autistic bodies, we make room for regulation, connection and authentic learning.

Communication, Double Empathy and Connection

Autistic young people are often described as not engaging properly, not understanding social cues, or not making friends. These assumptions overlook how deeply, richly and beautifully Autistic people do communicate, often in ways that differ from neuronormative expectations.

Milton's (2012) double empathy problem changed how we understand these moments of disconnection. Misunderstandings between Autistic and non-Autistic people are mutual, and they arise from differences in lived experience, attention and communication norms rather than from an Autistic deficit. Autistic people care deeply; what is missing is often mutual understanding. Because schools are usually built around non-Autistic social expectations, Autistic students may mask, withdraw or become overwhelmed. They are responding to a social world that feels unpredictable, intense and unsafe.

How Monotropism Shapes Communication

Monotropic attention focuses intensely and selectively, so splitting it across several social channels is hard work. In a noisy group, a young person may be trying to track who is talking, read tone and body language, judge when to speak, hold on to what they wanted to say, and notice their own emotions, all at the same time. It can feel like doing five jigsaw puzzles at once. Alexithymia and interoception differences, which many Autistic people experience, can make it harder still to recognise or explain what is going on inside.

This shapes communication in recognisable ways. We may miss social cues while following an inner train of thought. We may interrupt or talk at length because the idea feels as though it will vanish if it is not spoken. We may find it hard to change topic while still inside a tunnel of thought, and many of us communicate more easily through writing, art, music, movement or AAC than through speech. Each of these is a different route into connection.

Penguin Pebbling, Body Doubling and Cavendish Spaces

Autistic care can be quiet and easy to miss. Penguin Pebbling describes offering something small and thoughtful, such as a link, a shiny button, a stim toy or a shared interest, as a signal that says "I see you, and I care." Sometimes it simply sounds like "I don't need to talk, but I'll sit beside you." These connections often flourish one to one or in small groups, where people can find shared flow around an interest.

Body doubling offers low-demand social presence: sitting near a student while they work, or two people doing different tasks side by side. For monotropic learners this can provide relational scaffolding that supports focus, safety and calm without forcing interaction. In our work with Stimpunks on neuroqueer learning spaces, we also describe Cavendish Spaces: places of psychological and sensory safety, flexible flow and intermittent collaboration, with interest-based, non-hierarchical learning. Autistic communication thrives there because the environment makes room for it.

When Communication Is Misread

When adults and peers misunderstand monotropic communication, they may read Autistic students as rude or cold, demand eye contact or spoken replies as proof of respect, or punish "non-compliance" instead of supporting connection. The double empathy gap grows wider, and students learn that it is unsafe to be themselves, often hiding their needs until they reach crisis.

What Helps

Bridging the double empathy gap is shared work, so adults adapt as well as young people. That can mean:

• Slowing interactions down, and allowing pauses and silences without rushing to fill them.
• Accepting typing, gesture, drawing, scripting, AAC and silence as full communication, especially under stress.
• Listening for meaning rather than judging tone or phrasing.
• Treating echolalia, scripting, stim-sharing and infodumping as valid ways to connect.
• Creating peer-led, interest-based groups where Autistic students can meet through shared passions.
• Modelling curiosity and flexibility in our own communication.

When we tune in to how a child is communicating, as well as what they are saying, we begin to meet them where they are. Students express themselves more fully, trust grows, and the classroom becomes a place of belonging as well as learning.

Interests and Intrinsic Motivation

Monotropic people are driven by interest, and that has enormous implications for school, where learning is often framed as something children must be externally motivated to do. Autistic learners tend to flourish when they are allowed to follow their passions, tunnel deeply into a subject and stay in flow. Embracing this attention style supports engagement, and it also supports identity, regulation and joy. Wood (2021) found that Autistic pupils' intense interests can be a powerful resource for learning and wellbeing when schools work with them.

In a monotropic mind, attention flows towards what matters, which may not be what is on the timetable. Motivation comes from within rather than from rewards, grades or competition, and learning happens when we feel safe, connected and engaged. When a student is immersed in something they care about, you are likely to see more focus and energy, steadier emotions, more fluent communication and greater resilience when things get hard.

Behaviourism and Withholding Interests

Many systems still fall back on behaviourist practices that treat Autistic interests either as distractions to discourage or as rewards to be earned through compliance. In practice this can look like withholding a favourite topic until other work is finished, using special interests as bribes, or cutting a child off in the middle of an infodump. These approaches are deeply harmful. They teach children that their most natural ways of thinking are "too much", or that their passions only have value as a currency. Behaviourism fails to support Autistic learners, and it also undermines their sense of self.

Joining Them in Flow

Something shifts when an adult steps into a young person's attention tunnel with curiosity and respect instead of dragging them back to an agenda. That might mean linking the curriculum to a student's interest, such as using a Pokémon chart to teach maths. It might mean letting students share what they know through infodumps, presentations or artwork, starting the day with an interest-based connection such as a story, an object or a glimmer, or offering projects where the topic is self-chosen.

Monotropic learners often engage with information in depth rather than breadth, in loops rather than lines, and through tangents rather than checklists. What looks like going off track is often a child following a thread of meaning down a rabbit hole, and when they are allowed to, they can show remarkable insight, creativity and synthesis. When a child infodumps, we can listen with care even if we do not share the interest, agree any boundaries together rather than shutting them down, and reflect back how much we value what they bring.

Our passions are doorways into connection, learning and wellbeing. When we trust that intrinsic motivation is already there, we support identity as well as learning, and we show young people that their interests are guides rather than obstacles.

When Flow Breaks: Behaviour, Transitions and Inertia

In education, behaviour is too often treated as a surface problem to manage rather than as communication about deeper needs. For monotropic children, what gets called "challenging behaviour" is often the outward sign of disrupted flow, sensory overload, emotional dysregulation, executive shutdown, or social misattunement and trauma. Underneath the behaviour there has usually been a breakdown in connection, regulation and understanding.

Why Transitions Are So Hard

When a child is absorbed in a story, building something, exploring a topic they love or regulating through movement, they are often inside what feels like a self-contained world. This is a primary way of regulating and making meaning. So when we say "time to stop now", we are asking them to leave a state of safety, step into an unknown next moment, and resist the strong pull of the tunnel they are in. Moving between tunnels can feel like leaping between two moving trains while blindfolded. You might see emotional outbursts, freezing or withdrawal, repeated questions, a need for control, panic or shutdown. These are signs of an overloaded system rather than defiance.

Inertia makes this harder. It can show up as "I want to start but I can't get going", "I can't stop without falling apart", emotional flooding when pressured to switch without warning, or task paralysis even with enjoyable activities (Buckle et al., 2021). It sits in the gap between wanting to act and being able to begin or shift, so it is a nervous system state rather than laziness or attention-seeking. For children with ADHD as well, a transition may bring hyperarousal instead of shutdown, with ideas jumping from one to the next before the loop can close.

Asking Different Questions

Monotropism gives us kinder and more accurate questions to ask. What flow state was this child in before things changed? What sensory or emotional shift might have happened? Are they stuck between tunnels and unable to transition? Are they trying to regain control or safety in a way that makes sense to them? Instead of asking how to make a child comply, we can ask what they need in order to feel safe and regulated again.

When children are interrupted, misunderstood and punished again and again for how they naturally focus, they may mask their distress until it explodes, stop trusting adults, internalise shame, and lose touch with their intrinsic motivation. Behaviour charts, token systems and forced compliance may seem to work in the short term, but they often hide deep disconnection. When we punish children for being dysregulated, we push them further from the regulation they are seeking.

What Helps

Transitions work better as bridges that need pacing, scaffolding and compassion. Supportive approaches include:

• Reading the sensory system rather than the behaviour, and noticing overload before it escalates.
• Giving warning and choice, such as "Ten minutes until we switch. Would you like help saving your work?"
• Using visual schedules that include interest-based time as well as demands.
• Offering bridging objects, such as a comfort item or interest carried between activities.
• Letting one tunnel flow into the next, for example writing about a special interest in literacy time.
• Transitioning together through co-regulation, rather than leaving a child to manage alone.
• Using restorative approaches that focus on repair and reconnection rather than reward charts.

A transition does not end when the child arrives. They may still be disoriented, grieving lost flow, dysregulated or carrying frustration from being rushed. Parallel activity, low-demand presence, gentle humour, sensory grounding and a reassurance that their interest can be returned to later all help them find a new rhythm. This is about understanding how monotropic minds move through the world, and supporting those rhythms with care, rather than about being permissive.

Burnout and the Cost of Masking

Autistic burnout can begin in childhood, especially when children are misattuned to, unsupported, or required to mask their needs every day simply to survive school. It builds slowly, as a depletion caused by a long mismatch between what is being asked and what is sustainable. Raymaker et al. (2020) describe Autistic burnout as a state of exhaustion, loss of skills and reduced tolerance to stimulus that comes from chronic stress and a lack of support. On the map, these are the Burnout Whirlpools, often fed by the Cyclones of Unmet Needs.

In children, burnout may show up as losing skills they had developed, such as speech, toileting or motor skills, more frequent shutdowns and meltdowns, being unable to attend school or join in with activities they used to enjoy, seeming flat or switched off, and rising anxiety and demand avoidance. These are signs of deep nervous system distress and of attentional resources being re-routed towards survival, and they call for support rather than behaviour plans.

Why Monotropic Children Burn Out So Quickly

Because monotropic attention narrows so deeply, it takes more energy to process several demands at once, more time to recover from interruption or overwhelm, and more scaffolding to move between inner and outer worlds. When these needs go unrecognised, a child may seem fine until suddenly they are not. The drop often surprises adults, because masking has hidden the warning signs.

The Cost of Masking

When children sense that their true needs and rhythms are not accepted, many begin to mask. They hide their stims, smile through distress, copy peers to avoid judgement, and push through sensory overload to win approval. Masking is a survival strategy. It may help in the short term, but over time it brings disconnection from self, a loss of authenticity, and heightened anxiety and trauma responses. It should never be encouraged as a skill. If a child cannot be themselves in the space we have made, the space needs to change.

Preventing Burnout Through Attunement

The antidote to burnout is more understanding, more slowness and more relational safety, rather than more strategies layered on top. We can protect deep interest time and honour monotropic flow, reduce unnecessary transitions during stressful periods, support sensory balance every day rather than only after meltdowns, and notice early signs of depletion, such as silence, irritability, withdrawal or loss of interest. Most of all, we can work in partnership with the child rather than around them, and advocate for schools that reduce pressure and treat neurodiversity as a strength.

Autistic burnout can be prevented when we stop expecting Autistic children to adapt endlessly to environments that were not built for them. Monotropism helps us read burnout as a signal that the system needs to change, and as a call to listen and tune in more closely.

What Helps: From Understanding to Action

Understanding monotropism gives us a powerful framework for change, and the next step is to act in ways that affirm, protect and adapt to Autistic attention, regulation and flow. Everything begins with relationship. Before we ask children to learn, behave or respond, we need to build trust through consistency and presence, tune in to what they love as well as what they find hard, and let them know they are seen and accepted as they are. Curiosity is the bridge between safety and growth.

These principles bring together the practical ideas from across this page:

1. Validate the child's experience, even when you do not fully understand it.
2. Prioritise relationship over compliance.
3. Adapt the environment to the child, rather than asking the child to adapt to the environment.
4. Put sensory and emotional regulation first, because they are the foundations of learning.
5. Protect flow, giving time and space to go deep and avoiding forced task-switching.
6. Trust the child's interests as guiding lights and bridges into new learning.
7. Respect timing, rhythm and processing time as part of how monotropic minds engage.
8. Honour every form of communication, including silence, scripting, typing and echolalia.
9. Design routines that are predictable yet flexible, offering both security and agency.
10. Watch for the early signs of burnout, and value rest and joy as much as productivity.

Final Thoughts

Monotropism does more than explain Autistic experience. It offers a lens of compassion, clarity and creativity. When we understand the monotropic mind, we begin to see Autistic learners as richly attuned young people with powerful, focused ways of making sense of the world.

Let's stop asking children to split themselves apart to fit systems that were never built for them. Let's change those systems, honour the depth of flow, and embrace monotropism to support Autistic and ADHD young people to thrive.

To take these ideas further, explore the twenty areas of the map, use the free training with your school or team, or mark your own map with a young person you support.

References

Adkin, T. (2022, July 14). Guest post: What is monotropic split? NeuroHub Community. https://neurohubcommunity.org/2022/07/14/guest-post-what-is-monotropic-split/

Adkin, T. (2023, June 6). What is meerkat mode and how does it relate to AuDHD? NeuroHub Community. https://neurohubcommunity.org/2023/06/06/what-is-meerkat-mode-and-how-does-it-relate-to-audhd/

Beardon, L. (2021). Avoiding anxiety in autistic children: A guide for autistic wellbeing. Sheldon Press.

Buckle, K. L., Leadbitter, K., Poliakoff, E., & Gowen, E. (2021). "No way out except from external intervention": First-hand accounts of autistic inertia. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 631596. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.631596

Garau, V., Murray, A. L., Woods, R., Chown, N., Hallett, S., Murray, F., Wood, R., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2023). Development and validation of a novel self-report measure of monotropism in autistic and non-autistic people: The Monotropism Questionnaire [Preprint]. OSF. https://osf.io/ft73y/

Heasman, B., Williams, G., Charura, D., Hamilton, L. G., Milton, D., & Murray, F. (2024). Towards autistic flow theory: A non-pathologising conceptual approach. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 54(4), 469–497. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12427

Mahler, K. (n.d.). Kelly Mahler's interoception training. https://www.kelly-mahler.com/

Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The "double empathy problem". Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008

Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398

Murray, F. (2019, January 19). Starting points for understanding autism. Medium. https://oolong.medium.com/starting-points-for-understanding-autism-3573817402f2

Raymaker, D. M., Teo, A. R., Steckler, N. A., Lentz, B., Scharer, M., Delos Santos, A., Kapp, S. K., Hunter, M., Joyce, A., & Nicolaidis, C. (2020). "Having all of your internal resources exhausted beyond measure and being left with no clean-up crew": Defining autistic burnout. Autism in Adulthood, 2(2), 132–143. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2019.0079

Wood, R. (2021). Autism, intense interests and support in school: From wasted efforts to shared understandings. Educational Review, 73(1), 34–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2019.1566213