An alphabet of conditions?

Defo Chief Wiggum there 

That reminds me of something I read before: the biggest threat to the IT industry is that there are only 17,576 possible TLAs.

(For the uninitiated, TLAs = Three-Letter Acronyms).

You'd have no chance in telecoms. When I first started I had to spend days just learning TLAs (three letter acronyms) just to read the first paragraph of a document. There are hundreds you have to know in cellular. They ran out of unique ones, so some have multiple meanings based on context just to make it harder, and some need 4, 5 or more letters.

Some have been used for so long people even forget what they stand for, but you just know what they mean.

Or Amazing Superior Detectives?

Good ones Damo.

I know it would be very cumbersome to have to type everything out in full all the time, but it takes my brain a while to catch up with acronyms and abbreviations, I hope nobody thinks I was trying to be dismissive of thier conditions, because I wasn't, I just have AOL, or alphabet overload, lol.

Iain said:

call ourselves Autists Against Acronyms, or AAA for short

Couldn't help but remind me of Family Guy.

TheCatWoman said:

do they become meaningless after a while

Maybe they save a bit of typing. They also describe particular clusters of traits or experiences that are relatable to others, at least more generally. I don't feel they are meaningless, though. Imagine if this forum was hosted by the "National Society for People Who Feel Different", it wouldn't really have much focus. So, I'm not really against labels or their abbreviations.

Some labels get a bit tainted (like Asperger's Syndrome), or become very stigmatising (like Borderline Personality Disorder, not to be confused with the Boston Police Department), so their names get changed (to ASD and EUPD). I also guess that the people who write the diagnostic criteria like to change things just because they can point at them and say, "Look! That was my idea!" This is also the reason why large projects often end in disaster—too many cooks. Sometimes it's better to just leave things as they are.

Anyway, while on the "police" theme, how about these?

• ASD: Always Seeking Donuts
• ADHD: Always Determined to Hunt for Donuts

TheCatWoman said:

my brain makes some rather strange interpretations of what these could mean, like EUPD, European Union Police Dept, its never anything even vaguely medical.

As a rule of thumb, if the abbreviation is used here then it is best to assume it is related to neurodivergence.

TheCatWoman said:

Are we at risk of being overrun with alphabets describing us

As more and more nuance to neurodivergence is discovered then the acronyms will grow.

Of course we could form a splinter group to protest agains acronyms - call ourselves Autists Against Acronyms, or AAA for short 

Not sure if you were asking or - just saying.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD), also known as emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD).

Whatever people prefer to name it - it is a tough gig and one about which our community needs to learn more.

The good news is: several of our newer members have kindly shared with us that this is one of their co-occurrence aspects of their lived experience - so, over time, we will all have the opportunity to learn how to best support those within our Autistic community who know, firsthand: what effort it takes to adjust their lives when they are in receipt of an EUPD diagnosis too.