A Language Guide for Directory Listings

Updated July 2026

Welcome

Why these words matter

A few convictions sit under this guide, and we want to share them openly, because the guidance here is designed to support rights-based, neuroaffirming practice. The words make more sense once you can see where they come from.

We start from the social model of disability. Much of what makes life hard for us as neurodivergent people comes from environments built without us in mind: the open-plan office nobody can think in, the interview that requires eye contact, the form with no way to say what you actually need. The barriers are in the world, and the world can change. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities sets out rights that matter here: to be included, to be spoken about with dignity, and above all the right to define ourselves in our own terms. Regional human-rights instruments carry the same commitments into their own contexts, among them the African Disability Protocol (2018). “Nothing about us without us,” a demand we owe to the disability rights activists whose work we stand on, means the people being described should shape the language, and it is how the language in this guide was gathered.

Human minds vary widely. Neurodivergence is a broad term for those that work differently from what a society treats as standard, whether from birth or acquired later in life, for example after a brain injury.

Alongside the social model, we also hold a biopsychosocial view, and we want to be precise about what this means. Neurodivergent people lose people they love, burn out, and go through hard seasons, as people of every neurotype do, and many also carry what living in an unaccommodating world has already cost them. Supporting someone through those is good practice, and it does not make their neurodivergence the problem.

Some experience also lives in the body and mind themselves: intrusive thoughts can be exhausting in the calmest room, hypersensitive hearing can make even your own heartbeat loud, and an acquired neurodivergence, after a brain injury or with dementia, can bring real grief for what has changed. There is no barrier to remove in those moments, and the experience is still real and still deserves support. A rights-based, affirmative approach says all of this plainly: the world creates much of disability, some difficulty is not made by the world, and people deserve support with both.

The words in this guide matter because they shape how a person is met. They are not there for performance. They should point to something real in the way a practitioner listens, describes difficulty, respects self-definition, and offers support. A listing should sound like the practice behind it.

What this guide covers

This guide is about your public listing. The principles behind it reach further than that, because a practitioner’s worldview travels into everything they write. So wherever possible, a rights-based practitioner writes clinical notes and reports from the same social and biopsychosocial frame, describing a person rather than listing deficits. There are times when a report for an insurer, a medical body, or a public health service requires deficit-based language to do its job. When that is necessary, we recommend explaining it to your client openly and with care, so the relationship stays protected and they are never left wondering whether that language is how you truly see them. If you would like support writing notes and reports this way, you will find resources at the foot of this page.

The short version

If you take one thing from this guide, let it be this: use the words each community uses about itself, and you will be right far more often than not.

For Autistic people, that means identity-first language: “Autistic person,” “Autistic clients,” “an Autistic practitioner.” We hold this as our standard because it is what Autistic communities have most consistently told researchers they want. In a UK study, 61% of Autistic adults endorsed “Autistic.” In a US study, 87% preferred identity-first language. A study of English speakers across many countries found the same leaning, alongside real variation from place to place and no single global consensus.

Preference is shaped by language and by culture, and it is not settled the same way everywhere. A study of Dutch Autistic adults, for instance, found that most preferred person-first wording. So we hold identity-first as the standard for this English-language directory, grounded in that evidence and in each person’s right to be named as they ask, while staying honest that it rests on where the research is strongest rather than on a claim that every Autistic person agrees.

This directory is for the whole neurodivergence umbrella. So far, much of the community-led research on language has come from the Autistic community, which is why Autistic examples appear most often in this guide. As lived-experience research and community guidance from other communities become available to us, we will fold their preferences in. For now, for OCD, PTSD and Tourette’s, person-first wording usually reads best: “people with OCD,” “people with PTSD,” “people with Tourette’s.”

The words, at a glance

On listings here, these are the words we reach for, and the ones we leave off.

Below, we explain the thinking behind the terms we’re most often asked about.

Part two

Writing a good listing

The guide above is about the words. This part is about the rest of your listing: what to include, and how much of yourself to share.

Sharing your own neurodivergence

You are welcome here whether your neurodivergence is self-identified or formally diagnosed. Your listing is public, so share at the level you would be comfortable with anyone reading. A single plain sentence is usually enough:

• “I am an Autistic therapist.”
• “I bring lived experience of ADHD to my coaching work.”
• “I am a neurodivergent practitioner.”
• “I work from lived experience as well as professional training.”

There is no need to offer up your diagnostic history, medical detail, or private context unless you genuinely want to. What you hold back is yours to hold back, and if you would rather not name your own neurodivergence(s) publicly at all, that is completely fine too.

Describing your actual practice

Most clients arrive at a listing scanning quickly for whether you are the right fit, so the concrete beats the general almost every time. Rather than broad claims, name the actual work:

• “support with burnout”
• “therapy for late-identified Autistic adults”
• “ADHD coaching for planning, task initiation, and overwhelm”
• “study support for dyslexic and dyspraxic students”
• “counselling for people with OCD or Tourette’s”
• “support for adults adjusting to life after a brain injury”
• “support for sensory needs, transitions, and workplace stress”
• “counselling for trauma, masking, grief, and identity”

Plain language is enough, and it tends to be easier to trust. This is also where the words meet the practice. The terms on your listing signal how you work; our Shared Commitments are the practice itself. We want to promote practitioners whose listings are true to how they actually work, not anyone who can pass a vocabulary test.

Who you are here for

Neurodivergent people are never only neurodivergent. Race, gender, sexuality, faith, migration and class all shape a person’s life and how they are met, or missed, by services. If your practice is a place where multiply-marginalised people are genuinely understood, your listing can say so. Naming who you are for helps the right person feel they can reach out to you.