Welcome
Our Community Forum belongs to all of us.
This is an invite-only space for past participants of our Discovery Programme.
It is not moderated by the Thriving Autistic team day-to-day. There will be no team removing posts or policing conversations in real time. Instead, we are asking everyone who joins to help hold this space with care, in keeping with our Values and our commitment to Solidarity.
An unmoderated space only works if everyone takes responsibility for it.
This forum continues the connection built during your Discovery Programme.
You’re arriving here having already shared something — the live sessions, the follow-on support, the experience of the Discovery Programme itself — and we hope that continuity carries through into how this space feels.
Who this space is for
This forum is open by invitation to people who have completed the Discovery Programme, aged 18 and over. It’s a continuation of the peer-support and Autistic identity-related conversations that began in your cohort, now open across all past participants rather than limited to one group.
Access is tied to programme completion — invitations aren’t transferable, and we ask that you don’t share your login or invite link with anyone else, even a friend or family member you think would benefit.
If someone you know is interested in the Discovery Programme itself, please point them to hello@thrivingautistic.org so we can let them know about upcoming cohorts or direct them to our open resource hub.
If your own circumstances change and you no longer wish to be part of the forum, you’re welcome to step away at any time — see “Your right to step away” below.
When Thriving Autistic will step in:
While we don’t monitor every thread, this isn’t a completely hands-off space. We will support and intervene directly for serious harm — threats of violence, doxxing (sharing someone’s private information without consent), illegal content, targeted harassment, or immediate risk to someone’s safety. If you see any of this, please contact us straightaway at hello@thrivingautistic.org.
Our Values
By taking part in this forum, you’re agreeing to hold these values alongside us:
- Autistic and Neurodivergent Self-Identification. Everyone has the right to define themselves and their own neurodivergence, in their own words and on their own terms.
- Authenticity and relational being. This is a space to be your whole self — embodied, sensory, communicative — without needing to mask or apologise for being Autistic, we are all Autistic here.
- Human rights and disability justice. Neurodivergence is inseparable from disability, identity, and social justice. We advocate for access, inclusion, equity, and structural change, and we hold this in solidarity with other marginalised communities, recognising that many of us hold multiple, intersecting identities.
- Neurodivergent culture and connection. Monotropic attention, stimming, AAC, and other Autistic and Neurodivergent ways of communicating and sensing the world are sources of wisdom and connection here, not things to be minimised or judged.
- A low-demand, collaborative ethos. We favour invitation over pressure, and collaboration over control. Support here is relational.
- Belonging through connected difference, not sameness. You don’t need to match a norm to belong. We aim for a space that is attuned to diverse sensory, communicative, and attentional styles, where people feel seen and understood.
- Room to change. Our selves shift — how we relate, sense, and attend to the world evolves over time. This community makes room for growth and flux.
- No coercion, no neuronormativity. We do not promote or endorse approaches that aim to enforce conformity, suppress identity, or treat neurodivergence as a deficit — including Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) or Positive Behaviour Support (PBS). Discussing the impact of these approaches, including from lived experience, is welcome; advocating for them is not as it is harmful for our community.
We hold these values alongside a wider, global conversation about what inclusive, Autistic-led spaces need to be — decolonised, culturally and linguistically diverse, and anti-normative (Srinivasan et al., 2025). We’re one small community within that much bigger picture, and we’re committed to keeping learning together.
How We Care for Each Other Here
Because this forum is community-held, we’re relying on everyone to bring good faith and care into every conversation. Being part of a known, invite-only community doesn’t reduce the need for this care, and we all need to work together to protect it.
Communication and respect
- Use identity-first language as the community default (e.g. “Autistic person”), while respecting that language is personal — always use the words someone chooses for themselves when speaking about or to them.
- Assume good intent. We communicate across different neurotypes, languages, cultures, and styles. If something lands wrong, ask before assuming harm.
- No hate speech, slurs, or bigoted language of any kind. This includes (but isn’t limited to) ableism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny (including transmisogyny), anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and discrimination based on body size, class, immigration status, language, age, or religion.
- We expect mutual respect between religious, secular, and atheist members. Please don’t proselytise or use this space to convert others to or away from a belief system.
- This is a safe-for-work space — please don’t post nudity, pornographic content, or any sexual content.
Harassment and consent
- No harassment, bullying, stalking, or unwanted contact of any kind — this includes repeated messaging after someone has asked you to stop, and simulated physical contact (like offering a “hug”) without consent.
- No threats of violence, and no encouraging anyone to harm themselves or take their own life.
- No doxxing or “outing” any aspect of someone’s identity, location, or personal information without their consent.
- Respect pronouns and names. If you’re corrected, accept it graciously and adjust going forward.
- Get consent if you want to make contact outside of this forum.
- No screenshots or sharing information in this forum elsewhere. This matters even between people who know each other from a live cohort — what’s shared here stays here, including in other group chats you may share with fellow participants.
Content, medical topics, and disinformation
- No discussion promoting autism “cures,” ABA, or PBS as desirable practices. Critical discussion, including from personal experience, is always welcome with a trigger warning if needed.
- No medical advice. Sharing your own experience is welcome; recommending treatments, dosages, or diagnoses to others is not. Please don’t judge or pressure others about their medication or treatment choices — those decisions are the individual’s alone and need professional support.
- No disinformation.
- No spam, solicitation, or unsolicited advertising.
Trigger Warnings
- Add a trigger warning (TW) before posting about trauma, abuse, self-harm, eating problems, or other potentially upsetting topics.
- Please don’t share specific methods or detailed instructions relating to self-harm or suicide.
- If you’re worried about another member’s immediate safety, please contact us directly at hello@thrivingautistic.org rather than just replying in-thread, so we can follow up with them as well.
- If you are in crisis yourself right now, please see the crisis resources below before posting.
Accessibility and sensory care
- Avoid posting flashing or strobing images, which can trigger seizures or migraines for some members.
- Add brief alt text or a short description when posting images, if you can, to help accessibility for everyone.
Your right to step away
You’re never obliged to engage. You’re welcome to step back from the forum altogether without needing to explain why. Looking after your own capacity is part of looking after this community.
If something happens in the forum that troubles you, you’re welcome to reach out to us at hello@thrivingautistic.org. We won’t be actively monitoring every thread, but we do want to know if the space stops feeling safe.
This Is Not a Crisis Service
Thriving Autistic and this forum are not a crisis support service, and nothing here replaces professional advice when you need it.
If you or someone you love is in crisis, free, confidential, 24/7 text support is available:
- Ireland: text 50808
- UK: text 85258
- US and Canada: text 741741
You may also find the Stimpunks Field Guide to Coping a helpful resource.
Looking for More Support?
If you’re looking for 1:1 support or would like to find a practitioner who understands Autistic and Neurodivergent experience, the Neurodivergent Practitioner Directory is a good place to start.
For anything else — questions about the forum, support finding the right resource, or anything you’d like to raise with us directly — please contact us at hello@thrivingautistic.org.
These community guidelines are open for discussion and will evolve with our community over time. Please let us know how this feels for you and if you’d like any further accommodations to meet your needs.
Read more about who we are and what we stand for on our Values and our Solidarity Statement page.
Funded
These resources are freely available to everyone. Open access has been made possible through funding from Rethink Ireland and the Disability Participation and Awareness Fund (DPAF).
References
Botha, M., & Frost, D. M. (2018). Extending the minority stress model to understand mental health problems experienced by the autistic population. Society and Mental Health, 10(1), 20–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/2156869318804297
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
Srinivasan, H., Chan, T., Kim, S. Y., Obeid, R., Jones, D., Botha, M., Onaiwu, M., Tan, D., Waisman, T. C., Kapp, S., Kassous, I., Mathaga, J., & Gillespie-Lynch, K. (2025). Inclusion must be global, decolonized, culturally and linguistically diverse, and anti-normative. Journal of Social Issues. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.70045