When Someone Renames Your Experience For You

Neurodiversity, rhetorical reframing, and the subtle violence of being "explained" to.

Photo by Nadine E on Unsplash

A person I’ll call Dirk made a comment beneath one of my essays to tell me that I had misnamed my own terrain.

“What you’ve just described is neurotypical,” he wrote. Then he linked his own essay explaining what “true neurodivergence” apparently is.

I hadn’t asked. I hadn’t invited him to diagnose the conceptual validity of my work. I hadn’t requested a lesson in my own language. I hadn’t enquired about a framework in which my community’s lived experience could be reclassified as ordinary, overdramatic, over-identified, or wrongly labelled.

And yet there it was: a stranger entering the room, moving the furniture, renaming the house, and then asking me to justify why I objected.

Yes, at first, I reacted as a human being might react to being publicly corrected, reframed, and linked to someone else’s manifesto. Later, however, I sat with the critique carefully, not because I owed Dirk an analysis of his essay – I didn’t – but because I take ideas seriously. Because I care about intellectual honesty. Because if someone challenges the foundations of my work, particularly publicly, I want to understand precisely what they’re saying and whether there’s truth in it.

Critiques like Dirk’s sometimes resonate because something strange is happening culturally. Clinical language has exploded into ordinary life. Therapy-speak saturates social media. Diagnostic identities can become social currencies online. Some people absolutely over-identify with pathology. Some communities reward fragility over growth. Some people use labels as explanatory endpoints rather than starting points for deeper understanding.

These concerns are legitimate. Debates are happening within psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, sociology, disability studies, and the neurodiversity movement itself. It’s about over-pathologising ordinary life, diagnostic inflation, social media self-diagnosis, identity formation around pathology, therapeutic consumer culture, and the medicalisation of ordinary human suffering.

These are real conversations, and yet, something else is also happening because what interested me most wasn’t only Dirk’s disagreement. Disagreement is welcome. Thoughtful challenge can sharpen a piece of writing. It can make a writer more precise, more careful, more honest. What interested me was the method because this wasn’t simply Dirk saying: “I see this differently.” It was much closer to: “I know what you’re really describing better than you do.”

That’s a very different thing.

The philosopher, Miranda Fricker, calls one form of this epistemic injustice: a wrong done to someone in their capacity as a knower.

Testimonial injustice occurs when someone’s credibility is unfairly deflated. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when people lack, or are denied, the interpretive resources needed to make sense of their own experience.

This matters deeply in neurodivergent spaces because so many neurodivergent adults have spent lifetimes being told: You’re too sensitive. You’re overthinking. You’re making excuses. Everyone feels that way. That’s not neurodivergence. That’s just being human.

And of course, sometimes it is just being human.

Neurodivergent people don’t own alienation, exhaustion, masking, meaning-crises, sensory overwhelm, social confusion, intensity, or shame. Many human beings experience these things. Trauma survivors experience them. Artists experience them. Introverts experience them. Gifted people experience them. People under capitalism experience them. People in grief experience them.

However, the fact that an experience is human doesn’t mean it’s experienced in the same way, with the same frequency, intensity, developmental origin, nervous-system cost, or social consequence. This is where many critiques of neurodivergent writing become too blunt. They seem to assume:

If a neurotypical person can recognise the experience, it can’t be neurodivergent.

This is poor reasoning.

Neurodivergence is rarely about having experiences no one else has. It’s often about configuration. Pattern. Threshold. Intensity. Persistence. The cumulative burden of moving through systems designed around different assumptions. And this is where I think some critiques become reductionistic in ways they themselves don’t recognise.

Human beings aren’t single-cause systems.

A neurodivergent adult may simultaneously be neurologically divergent, temperamentally intense, traumatised, gifted, existentially sensitive, socially excluded, deeply conscientious, highly perceptive, and chronically masked.

These dimensions interact.

Ironically, some frameworks that position themselves as “systems thinking” can become surprisingly flattening. Everything gets reduced to personality. Or trauma. Or culture. Or identity signalling. Or immaturity. Or social contagion.

However, human experience is rarely reducible to a single explanatory lens. This is one reason many neurodivergent adults feel so exhausted by certain kinds of critique. Their lives have often already been interpreted for them by schools, workplaces, clinicians, families, institutions, partners, peers, and cultures that insisted they were simply lazy, too emotional, too much, too sensitive, too disorganised, too intense, too rigid, too dramatic, or trying too hard to be special.

For many late-identified adults, neurodivergence isn’t experienced as superiority, as fashionable identity, nor as an excuse. It’s experienced as retrospective coherence. Context. A map. And maps, while they aren’t the territory, matter most to people who have spent decades being told they’re simply bad at walking.

The neurodiversity paradigm itself doesn’t claim there are only two kinds of people: normal and strange. Rather, it describes the diversity of human minds and nervous systems, with neurodivergence referring to patterns that diverge from dominant norms of cognition, attention, perception, sensory processing, learning, and social communication.

This doesn’t mean every unusual human experience is neurodivergence. Nor does it mean neurodivergence explains everything. However, it does mean that human difference can’t be collapsed into simplistic binaries between normal humans and people making excuses.

Dirk’s second comment made the dynamic clearer. When I reacted as a human being who was being publicly corrected, reframed, and linked to someone else’s manifesto, he interpreted my response as further evidence for his theory. He wrote that my reply was “exactly” what he expected, “very typical,” and an “incredibly common response.”

This is a clever rhetorical trap. If I agree, his framework is confirmed. If I disagree, my disagreement is also absorbed as evidence of the framework. That kind of reasoning becomes self-sealing. It doesn’t invite conversation; it recruits every response into its own proof-system.

Perhaps what unsettled me most was the familiarity of the dynamic itself. We know what it feels like to have our inner reality reinterpreted by someone else with greater certainty than we ourselves are allowed.

To say: “This hurts.”
And be told: “No, what’s really happening is…”

To say: “This framework helps me understand my life.”
And be told: “You’re attached to labels.”

To say: “I’m trying to make sense of myself.”
And be told: “You’re avoiding accountability.”

There’s something profoundly destabilising about having another person continually reposition themselves as the more reliable interpreter of your own experience. And often, this doesn’t arrive through overt cruelty.

It arrives dressed as rationality.

Online discourse researchers and commentators sometimes describe a related pattern as sealioning: persistent demands, usually online, for evidence or engagement, often under a surface performance of civility, where the target is placed in the exhausting position of having to justify themselves.

I’m not saying every request for specificity is sealioning. Specificity matters. Intellectual honesty matters. If we make claims, especially public claims, we should expect some scrutiny.

However, there’s a difference between good-faith inquiry and conversational entitlement.

A good-faith question sounds like:

“Can you say more about how you distinguish neurodivergent experience from broader human sensitivity?”

A power move sounds like:

“You are using the wrong name. Read my essay. Now prove specifically why I’m wrong.”

One opens a door. The other assigns homework, and this is where neurodivergent adults often get caught.

Many of us are conscientious. Many of us are pattern-seekers. Many of us feel compelled to respond thoroughly, fairly, carefully, with references, nuance, caveats, and moral good faith. We can be pulled into elaborate explanations for people who haven’t earned that labour. This is part of what makes these exchanges so draining.

The issue is asymmetrical burden.

One person can make a sweeping claim in a sentence: “What you described is neurotypical.” The other person must then unpack developmental psychology, autism research, ADHD, trauma, masking, social context, diagnostic history, the neurodiversity movement, lived experience, online identity, systems theory, and philosophical epistemology just to reply responsibly.

This resembles what is often called Brandolini’s Law: the energy required to refute a simplistic or misleading claim can be far greater than the energy required to make it.

There’s another layer too: tone.

When someone enters with a blunt, invalidating statement, and the recipient responds with irritation, hurt, or defensiveness, the recipient’s tone can then be used against them. This is known as tone policing: focusing on the emotional style of someone’s response rather than the substance of what they’re saying.

In neurodivergent spaces, this often appears as:

You’re being reactive. You’re proving my point. You’re attached to your label. You’re dismissing outsiders. You’re refusing accountability. And sometimes, yes, communities can become defensive. Sometimes labels can become fused with identity. Sometimes people do hide from growth inside diagnostic language. That critique isn’t worthless.

Not every critique of neurodivergent culture is malicious, but a critique can contain a partial truth and still be used harmfully.

It’s possible to be concerned about over-pathologising ordinary life while also respecting that many neurodivergent adults have been under-recognised, misread, punished, and forced into exhausting adaptation.

It’s possible to critique identity culture without dismissing neurodivergent reality.

It’s possible to value agency without denying accommodation.

It’s possible to say, “Some people may be over-identifying with labels,” without telling a whole community, “You’re neurotypical.”

Perhaps beneath all of this sits an even deeper cultural tension.

A battle between universalism and particularism.

One side fears fragmentation: identity tribalism, victimhood culture, the endless multiplication of labels, the collapse of shared humanity.

The other fears erasure: flattening, invisibility, misrecognition, forced normalisation, and having meaningful differences endlessly dissolved into: “Everyone feels that way.”

Both fears contain truth.

The double empathy problem, first articulated by Damian Milton, is useful here. It suggests that communication breakdowns between autistic and non-autistic people aren’t simply caused by autistic deficit, but by mutual differences in experience, perception, and meaning-making.

That insight applies more broadly.

The question isn’t always:

“Who is interpreting reality correctly?”

Sometimes the better question is:

“Whose reality is being treated as the default?”

When Dirk called my response “typical,” he was doing exactly what many neurodivergent adults recognise: taking a human reaction to being misread and using it as evidence that the person has been correctly categorised.

This is subtle. While it wears the clothes of rationality, it still has an effect. It tells the recipient, “Your interpretation of your experience is suspect, your community’s language is suspect, your reaction is suspect, your refusal to comply is suspect and my framework is the neutral one.”

However, no framework is neutral. Dirk’s framework has values too. It values agency, resilience, anti-pathologisation, discipline, maturation, self-authorship, and resistance to therapeutic overreach. These aren’t bad values. In fact, many neurodivergent adults desperately want these things.

The issue isn’t the values themselves. The issue is what happens when those values are applied without tenderness, context, developmental understanding, or nervous-system literacy.

Because many neurodivergent adults aren’t trying to escape agency. They’re trying to find the conditions under which agency becomes possible, and that’s a very different thing.

So no, I don’t owe every stranger an analysis of their essay. I don’t owe every critic my nervous system. I don’t owe a full academic defence to every person who enters my comments with a pre-loaded theory and a link to their own work. However, I can choose to turn the encounter into something useful, not because Dirk demanded it, but because my community deserves it.

The mature position is:

Human experience is layered. Some suffering is universal. Some is social. Some is traumatic. Some is temperamental. Some is neurological. Some is existential. Some is cultural. Often, it’s several of these at once. No one gets to arrive uninvited, point at another person’s map, and declare themselves the cartographer.

When Rationality Becomes a Power Move

After sitting with this exchange for a while longer, I realised there was another layer to it that may be useful to recognise – particularly for those of us who are intellectually curious, conscientious, self-reflective, and highly open to feedback.

Sometimes what destabilises us is intellectual confidence wrapped in the language of objectivity.

One of the more subtle dynamics in this interaction with Dirk was the way disagreement itself became evidence for the framework he was asserting. When I objected to having my work reframed as “neurotypical,” my reaction was interpreted not as meaningful disagreement, but as confirmation of the theory itself. My discomfort became “predictable.” My response became “typical.” My objections became evidence of identity attachment.

This is important because it creates what psychologists and philosophers sometimes call a self-sealing or closed interpretive system.

In healthy dialogue, disagreement remains informative. It remains possible for the other person to reveal something the framework itself failed to account for. However, in closed systems, disagreement gets absorbed into the theory.

If you agree, the theory is validated.

If you disagree, your disagreement is reinterpreted as proof that the theory is correct.

This matters deeply because we often grew up having our reactions continually reinterpreted for us. Over time, this can create an erosion of self-trust, particularly for thoughtful neurodivergent adults who are highly willing to self-examine.

Many of us have a tendency to assume:

“If someone sounds confident, psychologically informed, intellectually articulate, and rhetorically polished, perhaps they understand me better than I understand myself.”

This is especially true for gifted or highly verbal neurodivergent adults who value nuance, complexity, and intellectual honesty. We’re often unusually willing to interrogate our own assumptions. That openness is beautiful. It can also make us vulnerable to certain kinds of rhetorical dominance.

Because conceptual sophistication isn’t the same thing as interpretive accuracy.

Someone can sound brilliant, systematic, well-read, psychologically informed, and highly coherent while still oversimplifying human experience. Human beings are very easy to oversimplify, particularly online.

Some thinkers critique neurodivergent identity because they fear tribalism, victimhood culture, social contagion, fragility, or the over-medicalisation of ordinary life. Again, I think some of those concerns contain partial truths. However, often, without realising it, these frameworks create a hierarchy of human worth all their own. The ideal human becomes hyper-agentic, self-authoring, rational, independent, disciplined, resilient, anti-herd, and psychologically sovereign.

Meanwhile, people who still struggle with overwhelm, accommodation needs, executive dysfunction, emotional intensity, identity confusion, burnout, or nervous-system fragility can begin to feel morally lesser. As though they simply haven’t evolved enough yet.

This is where conversations about “agency” can become complicated. Agency matters enormously. Growth matters enormously. Self-responsibility matters enormously. However, agency doesn’t emerge in a vacuum.

Most of us aren’t lacking character. We’re lacking accurate self-understanding, nervous-system safety, environmental fit, developmental attunement, recovery from chronic masking, or support structures that allow our capacities to stabilise. That isn’t the same thing as refusing growth. This is perhaps where I part ways with some anti-neurodivergence critiques most strongly: they sometimes moralise resilience without adequately understanding nervous systems.

The result can become another version of: “Try harder.” “Be more disciplined.” “Stop identifying with your struggles.” “Transcend your limitations.”

We’ve already spent decades trying to do exactly that.

Another interesting layer here is the identity of the “polymath” or “systems thinker” itself. Historically, polymaths have played important roles in human culture. Interdisciplinary thinkers often see connections others miss. They resist simplistic silos. They synthesise ideas across domains. These are genuine strengths.

However, there can also be shadow tendencies in some highly intellectual or heterodox spaces, particularly online. Sometimes the identity subtly shifts from: “I enjoy thinking across disciplines” to: “I am one of the few people seeing through the illusion.” Once a person becomes attached to seeing themselves as unusually independent, unusually perceptive, or unusually immune to social conditioning, it can become very difficult for them to recognise their own blind spots.

Ironically, this can mirror the exact identity dynamics they critique in others. None of this means such thinkers are wrong. In fact, many of them are pointing towards important cultural realities, as I’ve already highlighted. These are worthwhile conversations. However, worthwhile conversations can still become reductive if they flatten the complexity of lived experience into a single explanatory framework.

What I think many of us are searching for is neither exemption from growth nor permission to remain stuck. We’re searching for accurate context. Language that illuminates rather than shames. Frameworks that increase self-understanding rather than erase it. And perhaps most of all, we’re searching for a way to remain intellectually open without continually abandoning ourselves in the process.

Another point I need to make is that relational humility matters. It’s the ability to hold onto one’s perspective while still allowing:

“I may not fully understand this person’s lived reality.”

That’s the missing ingredient in many intellectually forceful interactions such as Dirk’s and his cohort’s interpretive coalition. Yes, it wasn’t only Dirk who leapt into the fray. When social reinforcement enters the interaction it changes the emotional field. We’re deeply affected by social alignment dynamics. Research in social psychology consistently shows that even subtle forms of coalition-building can increase self-doubt, conformity pressure, shame activation, and perceived authority. Particularly for conscientious people. We’re especially sensitive to these dynamics because many of us grew up in environments where multiple people agreed we were “too much,” “too sensitive,”“misunderstanding,” “dramatic,” or “missing the point.” Many of us were bullied. Many were socially outcast.

So, a coordinated interpretive stance can reactivate old relational wounds:

“Perhaps they all see something I can’t.”

The deepest issue here is that Dirk’s accusation of “lack of introspection” itself bypasses evidence and becomes psychologically totalising.

Why?

Because introspection is internal which means: the accusation is almost impossible to definitively disprove. This creates another self-sealing dynamic.

If you defend yourself:

you appear defensive.

If you explain your introspection:

it can be reframed as performative.

If you object:

that becomes further evidence.

Again, disagreement risks becoming psychologically absorbed into the framework. That’s why these comments can feel strangely maddening because they subtly relocate the conversation from ideas, to your psychological legitimacy as a knower.

In some intellectual spaces, introspection is unconsciously redefined as:

arriving at their conclusion.

Meaning: if you remain unconvinced by their framework, your self-reflection is treated as insufficient.

This is subtle, but crucial.

The standard quietly shifts from:

“Have you reflected deeply?”
to:
“Have you reflected deeply enough to agree with us?”

That’s a very different thing.

Sometimes highly intellectual heterodox spaces can develop what sociologists might call epistemic in-grouping. Meaning, the group bonds partly around being unusually perceptive, seeing through mainstream illusions, resisting mass thinking, or possessing higher-order pattern recognition. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. Many heterodox thinkers genuinely do challenge simplistic narratives productively. However, the shadow side can become intellectual elitism, interpretive certainty, subtle contempt towards “ordinary” thinking, and identity investment in being more awake than others. Then, disagreement gets unconsciously coded not merely as a different interpretation, but as lack of insight, lack of awareness, tribal attachment, or inability to see clearly.

Intellectually sophisticated people can still become socially and psychologically captured by their own frameworks, especially when group reinforcement enters the picture. When this happens, a genuine, thoughtful, open dialogue is often a complete waste of time and energy.

Thank you for reading this long essay. I appreciate you for being here. If this essay resonates then please share it.