Beyond Deficit: Language, Identity & Liberation in Neurodivergent Wellbeing
Tracks
Jacaranda - In-Person Only
Prince Room - In-Person Only
Monarch - In-Person & OnAIR
Royal Poinciana - In-Person Only
Virtual Only
| Tuesday, September 29, 2026 |
| 8:40 AM - 9:25 AM |
Overview
Mish Kumar Jonson, Principal Practitioner and Director; Niram EMDR and Trauma Counselling
Key Learnings
1. Understanding NDA language in practice: Neurodiversity-affirming language requires developing a conscious and ongoing relationship with the words we reach for, understanding that they carry embedded assumptions
about normality, who gets to decide, and whether a person's way of being in the world is held as a variation or framed as a deficit. For anyone working with or alongside neurodivergent people, this means noticing where your language comes from, whose frameworks it reflects, and whose experience it was built to describe.
a. Attendees will be able to critically examine the language they use in their practice, advocacy, or educational settings, identifying the embedded assumptions that shape whether a neurodiversity-affirming framework that centres whose language is being used and whose experience it was built to describe.
2. Navigating practice intersectionally: For folks navigating multiple made-marginalised identities, intersectional experiences of race, gender, sexuality, culture, and neurodivergence is qualitatively different from any single identity considered alone, and existing frameworks were largely built to criticise, punish, and control that complexity toward conformity rather than hold or support it. Affirming practice means sitting with the full weight of that intersection, recognising that what presents in the room is the cumulative result of systems that were never designed to hold the whole person, and responding to that complexity rather than flattening it.
a. Attendees will be able to recognise and respond to the qualitatively distinct experiences of neurodivergent people navigating multiple made-marginalised identities, moving beyond single-axis frameworks toward an intersectional approach that holds the full cumulative weight of race, gender, sexuality, culture, and neurodivergence together rather than in isolation.
3. How to approach co-occurrence in practice: What systems so often describe as co-occurring conditions is frequently the predictable, cumulative result of structures designed within colonial, ableist, and capitalist logics rather than around the full understanding of neurodivergent lives. Reframing co-occurrence as structural harm opens the door to practice, advocacy, and policy that begins with wholeness rather than deficit, and with structural analysis rather than individual pathology.
a. Attendees will be able to reframe co-occurring conditions as the predictable, cumulative result of structural and systemic harm rather than individual pathology, and apply that reframe to their practice, advocacy, or policy work in ways that begin with wholeness, structural analysis, and the full complexity of neurodivergent lives.
Speaker
Mx Mishma Kumar-Jonson
Principal Practitioner
Niram Emdr And Trauma Counselling
Beyond Deficit: Language, Identity & Liberation in Neurodivergent Wellbeing
Presentation Overview
Grounded in the lived and living experience of the presenter, a queer, non-binary, and neurodivergent clinician of colour, this keynote seeks to weave together three threads: the politics of language and diagnosis; the richness and complexity of intersecting identities; and the structural conditions that produce what systems so often reduce to a list of "co-occurring conditions."
1. Language: We know that language shapes everything about how neurodivergence is named, understood, and responded to. The words we reach for carry real political weight in determining whether neurodivergent people feel liberated or further constrained by the very systems that are supposed to support them. Crucially, language is also shaped by who is doing the naming, and where that naming comes from.
2. Intersectional Realities: For folks navigating multiple made-marginalised identities, the experience of intersecting race, gender, sexuality, culture, and neurodivergence is one that existing frameworks were built to criticise, punish, and control toward conformity rather than hold or support.
3. Structural Conditions: What systems so often describe as co-occurring conditions is frequently the predictable, cumulative result of structures designed within colonial, ableist, and capitalist logics rather than around the full understanding of neurodivergent lives.
Drawing on intersectionality, minority stress theory, the social and human rights models of disability, healing-centred engagement, and liberation frameworks, this presentation offers a way of understanding neurodivergent experience that begins with wholeness rather than deficit, and with structural analysis rather than individual pathology.
Building on rich scholarship and lived and living wisdom, this keynote grounds itself in the work of those who have long understood that healing, joy, and collective care are pathways to liberation. Folks will leave with an invitation to carry tools and considerations into their practice, their advocacy, and their own lives, those that centre neurodivergent joy, collective healing, and liberation-focused practice as the foundation for change.
1. Language: We know that language shapes everything about how neurodivergence is named, understood, and responded to. The words we reach for carry real political weight in determining whether neurodivergent people feel liberated or further constrained by the very systems that are supposed to support them. Crucially, language is also shaped by who is doing the naming, and where that naming comes from.
2. Intersectional Realities: For folks navigating multiple made-marginalised identities, the experience of intersecting race, gender, sexuality, culture, and neurodivergence is one that existing frameworks were built to criticise, punish, and control toward conformity rather than hold or support.
3. Structural Conditions: What systems so often describe as co-occurring conditions is frequently the predictable, cumulative result of structures designed within colonial, ableist, and capitalist logics rather than around the full understanding of neurodivergent lives.
Drawing on intersectionality, minority stress theory, the social and human rights models of disability, healing-centred engagement, and liberation frameworks, this presentation offers a way of understanding neurodivergent experience that begins with wholeness rather than deficit, and with structural analysis rather than individual pathology.
Building on rich scholarship and lived and living wisdom, this keynote grounds itself in the work of those who have long understood that healing, joy, and collective care are pathways to liberation. Folks will leave with an invitation to carry tools and considerations into their practice, their advocacy, and their own lives, those that centre neurodivergent joy, collective healing, and liberation-focused practice as the foundation for change.
Biography
Mish Kumar-Jonson is a South Indian, non-binary, queer, neurodivergent, and disabled Accredited Mental Health Social Worker based on unceded Kulin Nation lands. As a therapist, researcher, and supervisor, Mish integrates anti-oppressive and healing-centred approaches to trauma work, especially with people of the global majority to create spaces where folks can connect, heal, and embody their favourite selves. Mish explores culturally affirming frameworks within psychotherapy through both therapeutic and structural practices where they centre cultural humility, identity-affirming care, and joy as tools for liberation and identity reclamation.
