Neurodivergent people have long invented tools for survival, regulation, and understanding. But those tools are often renamed, medicalised, or commodified—without credit, consent, or compensation. This glossary exposes those patterns.
Copying Our Structures Without Our Voice
When self-created coping strategies—like scripts, charts, or visual prompts—are adopted by professionals and reframed as clinical tools, often with no reference to neurodivergent origins.
Rewording Our Truths Into Buzzwords
When neurodivergent expressions of clarity or boundary-setting are reinterpreted as “challenging behaviour,” “rigidity,” or “demand avoidance”—pathologising patterns that are functional or protective.
Monetising What We’ve Had to Create
When systems rebrand lived tools—like stimming objects, hyperfocus systems, or communication cards—as commercial products with no reinvestment in the communities that created them.
Needing a Therapist’s Signature to Be Believed
When neurodivergent people must have their insights or needs “confirmed” by professionals to be seen as valid—undermining lived expertise and requiring gatekeeper approval to exist.
Assuming We Don’t Feel Because We Show It Differently
When neurodivergent expressions of care—like deep pattern noticing, advocacy, or intense loyalty—are ignored or dismissed because they don’t follow neurotypical emotional scripts.
A collection of protected semantic frameworks written by lived-experience authors. Each glossary holds the line against pattern theft, narrative laundering, and coercive rewording.
These terms defend the metadata of lived experience in digital systems.
View Entries →The core terms that scaffold SSA™ and uphold protocol-layer authorship.
View Entries →These terms unpack how institutions weaponise the language of inclusion while reinforcing control.
View Entries →