Reframing Acquired Neurodivergence

Some neurodivergent traits may be present from birth, while others are acquired as a result of one’s life experiences. A common umbrella category for the experiential factors contributing to acquired neurodivergence is “trauma.” 

Not all people who experience trauma are neurodivergent (and almost all, if not literally all, people have experienced or will experience some form of trauma at some point in their lives), but most forms of neurodivergence that aren’t explicitly known to be caused by genetic or biophysical or biochemical factors are commonly assumed to be caused, or exacerbated, by trauma. A common debate in discourse of mental differences is whether mental differences in general are caused by biophysical factors OR traumatic experiences, with many insisting that conceptualizing neurodivergences as caused solely by “trauma” is the more liberatory perspective (I’ve written about this in several previous posts). 

A traumatic experience is one that threatens someone’s sense of safety or well-being, which can induce negative emotions like pain, fear, despair, anxiety, depression, or panic (among others). “Trauma” is an extremely broad category for a range of experiences that can affect one’s mind, but the defining element of trauma is that it is a negative experience.
There is no terminology for positive experiences that cause or intensify neurodivergent traits. The conceptual framework doesn’t exist. Think about that for a minute.
If someone’s lived experiences contributed to their neurodivergence or Madness, the entire conceptual framework for that causal relationship presupposes that the experiences can only have been negative ones.

What would it look like to acknowledge neutral or even positive experiences that contribute to neurodivergence? What would it look like to reframe the experience of acquiring neurodivergent traits as not inherently negative?