Affirming Language Changed How I Saw My PTSD and Acquired Neurodivergence

PTSD and other forms of acquired neurodivergence are often framed with deficit-based language. This post highlights the importance of affirming language for healing.

When a neurologist bluntly told me I had brain damage, something inside me recoiled.

I was 29, in graduate school, and living with nearly a decade of PTSD. Under stress, it showed up as flashbacks, night terrors, and night sweats.

Then came strange new symptoms: flashing lights, zigzag patterns, blurred vision – followed by hours of pain. Migraines with aura. That diagnosis didn’t surprise me. But the language the neurologist used did.

He told me the migraines were likely the result of brain damage caused by PTSD.

Brain damage – linked to my disorder, to trauma. I felt broken.

I was given a prescription and sent home with very little context or support.

Ten years later, I was still grappling with deficit-based language around PTSD and mental health conditions – until I encountered a perspective that changed my understanding. It sparked a deeper curiosity about my brain, how trauma had changed it, and how important affirming language is for all forms of neurodivergence.

The Neurodiversity Paradigm

Back at 29, I wish I had known about the neurodiversity paradigm.

I didn’t come across it until later – when I became a parent to an autistic child. Discovering it reframed not just how I support my kids, but how I view myself.

The neurodiversity paradigm is a framework based on neurodiversity, seeing differences in human minds as part of the broad variation in how our brains function: how we think, feel, sense, and relate to the world. It challenges the idea of a single “normal” brain and promotes affirming language, not deficit-based thinking.

Instead of asking what’s wrong, it asks what someone needs. It centers inclusion, respect, and support.

We often hear this perspective in conversations about autism, ADHD, or dyslexia – forms of innate neurodivergence, meaning someone was born with these differences. But neurodivergence can also be acquired.

What It Means to Have Acquired Neurodivergence

Our brains can change because of injury, trauma, illness, or chronic stress. And when they do, those changes can affect focus, memory, sensory processing, mood regulation, and more.

These changes are what we mean by acquired neurodivergence: differences in how the brain functions that emerge later in life. Forms include PTSD, OCD, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, bipolar disorder, complex trauma, depression, and other neurological or mental health conditions that alter cognition.

What matters is not how or when these conditions began, but how they affect daily life and how we respond.

Just like innate forms, acquired neurodivergence shapes how people experience the world and the support they need. Meeting these experiences with respect and understanding makes a meaningful difference.

How Words Can Hurt – or Help

 Brain damage. The phrase stayed with me – like a verdict.

I was prescribed a medication that left me groggy and unbalanced. As the dosage increased, so did the side effects. Yet still, the auras and pain remained. When a pharmacist hesitated to fill the prescription – concerned the dosage might be too high for my petite body – I finally listened to the voice inside me: This isn’t helping.

Looking back, I see that the feeling of being “broken” had more to do with the language used. The language I internalized.

Words like damage and disorder feel final. They suggest something is beyond repair. They can shut down curiosity. Shut down hope.

But affirming language does the opposite. It creates space – to learn, to adapt, to find meaning in difference. When we feel respected instead of pathologized, we become more curious about ourselves. More compassionate, too.

This kind of language is becoming more common in conversations about autism. For example, instead of terms like low-functioning or high-functioning, the focus shifts to support needs, recognizing they vary across environments and time.

Affirming language respects, validates, and reflects real experiences, and it’s essential for those of us with acquired neurodivergence, too.

That brings me to a metaphor that helps me visualize it all: the round table.

A Round Table with Affirming Language and Seats for Innate and Acquired Forms of Neurodivergence

If neurodivergence were a round table, conditions like autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and related learning differences – such as dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and dyspraxia – would occupy seats, sharing strong, influential voices. These voices have helped shift understanding, especially through the work of autistic self-advocates who champion the principle: nothing about us without us.

Acquired forms of neurodivergence also have seats. The round table reflects how neurodivergent experiences often overlap. Seats aren’t isolated but flow into one another, just like many people live with more than one form of neurodivergence. For example, someone might navigate sensory sensitivities tied to autism while also coping with trauma-related responses from a difficult life event. Support is more effective when it addresses this complexity.

Neurodivergence is a round table — with seats that flow into one another

Finally, I imagine the values of the neurodiversity paradigm – validation, self-advocacy, compassion, and respect – flowing into and nurturing all forms of neurodivergence. I see affirming language as the center of this table, holding the space where we choose words to support and validate. For me, language has shaped how I understand myself – and affirming language has helped me heal from harmful assumptions. You might imagine the center differently.

This round table, however, doesn’t reject medical terms or models. It simply offers a different space – one centered on identity, agency, and community, rather than on symptoms and treatment.

Why Medical Terms Aren’t Enough

Clinical language plays a crucial role in diagnosis, treatment, and care planning. Medical professionals offer vital support, and medications can be key. But while medical terms help us understand symptoms and guide care, they aren’t designed to help people build identity or affirm experiences. As a result, many may not feel seen or truly understood.

That’s where affirming language and the neurodiversity paradigm come in. They give people like me a way to understand ourselves not as broken, but as whole. Different, not deficient. And they can offer something clinical language often can’t: a path toward healing from stigma.

Terms like neurodivergent and neurodivergence aren’t clinical labels. They’re identity terms. Not everyone with a diagnosis or difference will connect with them, and that’s okay. Identity language is personal.

But as more people embrace and respect neurodivergent experiences and affirming language – in education, medicine, and public life – I believe we’ll see a broader shift. That shift matters because language shapes not only how we see ourselves, but also how others treat us.

The Words That Helped Me Heal

Language has power. The words we choose can validate and support – or plant a seed of doubt that takes root for years.

For me, that seed was brain damage. It shaped how I saw myself. But over time, I’ve learned to see through a different lens.

I am not broken. I’m a person whose brain has lived through a lot – and adapted because of it.

Around the table of neurodivergence, every voice adds to our understanding. And when we use language that affirms, we create more space for healing, compassion, and connection. When language honors our lived experience, it becomes part of how we heal.

If you’ve ever felt unseen because of the words used to describe your brain, you’re not alone. I hope you know there’s space for you at this table, too.

Jen with Cool Wiring

Author’s Note

I write this piece as both a parent of neurodivergent children and a person with lived experience. For years, I struggled with the language used to describe how my brain had changed. Deficit-based language left me feeling defective, even when I knew there was more to my story. (For a story on how deficit-based language affected my autistic kid, check out this post).

Discovering the neurodiversity paradigm helped me reframe not only how I advocate for my children, but also how I understand and respect myself. This piece isn’t meant to replace medical insights. It’s meant to invite deeper conversations about how identity and language shape our experience of being neurodivergent – with a focus on when those differences are acquired.

We all deserve language that reflects who we are, not just what we've been through.

If this resonates with you or someone you love, I hope this blog post offers encouragement, perspective, or simply a reminder that you’re not alone.