On Not Naming the Thing

A Reflection on Neuroconvergent, Attribution, and Positional Language

The penguin isn’t failing to fly—it’s thriving in an ecosystem that values different skills. Cognitive difference works the same way: divergence becomes visible only when we mistake one kind of environment for the whole world....

The Hesitation

I almost introduced a new term in my thesis. Not a term I coined, but one that had been echoing in my thoughts, showing up unannounced in my workshop reflections, and quietly shaping the way I framed cognition, system design, and relational knowledge. It appeared first in a comment—tucked into someone’s response on one of my Substack posts. A single word. Familiar, but not yet mine.

At first, I bookmarked it, mentally. I circled it in my mind during long walks and late-night editing. Then I looked it up. It had been used before, mostly in UK-based writing—often in activist, ecological, or loosely academic contexts. But it didn’t seem pinned down. No singular author. No canonical definition. Just a term in circulation, doing its work in different places.

I thought about introducing it in my thesis—not as a centerpiece, but as a thread, a supporting concept that might help articulate something I was already building through the Cognitive Ecology Model. I even drafted a paragraph. Then I deleted it.

The decision to hold back wasn’t about doubt. It was about focus. This thesis was about CEM, about Exclusion Feedback Synpraxis, about systems and fit and belonging. It was not about socioculturalpolitical terminology. I knew that if I introduced the term, I would have to explain it, cite it, position it—and that would risk pulling the reader sideways, away from the core offering.

So I chose not to name it.

But I’m naming it now.

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Discovery of the Term

The term neuroconvergent entered my field of awareness not through academic literature, but through a conversation. I was corresponding with Dr.

Hilra Gondim Vinha, PhD

about a Substack piece in which I explored masking, relational fit, and the cognitive pressures embedded in systems. In her message, she responded with care and resonance—and, almost offhandedly, used the word neuroconvergent.

At first, I didn’t even notice it. But when I read back, the term caught on something in me. It wasn’t framed or defined; it wasn’t emphasized. But it was there. And it stayed.

In a follow-up message, Hilra clarified that she had first seen the term used by someone else—a neurodivergent person—and that it resonated with her because of her background in creativity studies, where divergence and convergence in thinking styles are often discussed. She also acknowledged that she had forgotten she had used it, and that it had become part of her own vocabulary through layered engagement. Her description was refreshingly unpossessive. It echoed something I’ve come to believe deeply: that language often arrives through us, not from us.

From there, I did my own informal search. I found neuroconvergent used in blogs, in UK-based discourse, and in small academic corners—but it didn’t yet have a stable form. No glossary entry. No formal definition. But it had weight. It functioned as a kind of inverse to neurodivergent, not as a pathologizing opposite, but as a way of naming alignment—of being structurally and culturally well-fitted to normative cognitive expectations.

The term helped me name something I had been describing in other ways in my thesis—especially in relation to the Cognitive Ecology Model. But I also felt the responsibility that comes with naming: to define, cite, position, and explain. And that’s when I paused.

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My Use of the Term

Even though I didn’t include the term neuroconvergent in the thesis itself, it shaped how I thought through much of the work. In building the Cognitive Ecology Model, I needed a conceptual frame for how certain cognitive styles are continuously reinforced, expected, and rewarded within institutional and cultural systems—not because they are inherently “better,” but because they fit. They converge with dominant norms.

In earlier drafts, I referred to these patterns as “system-aligned cognition,” or “dominant neurotypicality.” But those phrases never quite held what I wanted to express: not just structural dominance, but ease—the fluid, often invisible privileges that come with not having to contort oneself to belong. Neuroconvergent did.

The term helped clarify what CEM already emphasized: that cognition is not an isolated trait, but an ecological interaction. Just as neurodivergence is shaped through environmental mismatch, stigma, and exclusion, neuroconvergence is shaped through frictionless fit, affirmation, and invisibility. It’s not about individual traits—it’s about the relational architecture between minds and systems.

Still, I chose not to formalize the term in the thesis. My reasoning was both strategic and structural: the thesis was a dense and layered offering. Introducing neuroconvergent would have required a significant detour—definition, citation, contextualization—and I worried it might draw focus away from the core models I was articulating: CEM and Exclusion Feedback Synpraxis. Those frameworks were already doing the work. The term was in the architecture, even if not on the page.

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On Attribution and Emergence

I want to be clear: I’m not claiming to have coined the term neuroconvergent. I didn’t. It reached me through dialogue—with Hilra Gondim Vinha, who herself encountered it from a neurodivergent thinker and community context. It wasn’t introduced in a formal publication or presented as an academic innovation. It was shared relationally, through conversation, and became part of our mutual vocabulary almost without announcement.

And that, in itself, is meaningful.

We often think of theoretical terms as inventions—things someone “owns,” defines, and disseminates. But many of the most useful ideas, especially in disability and neurodiversity discourse, arise through shared language practices: community dialogue, embodied storytelling, online comment threads, or relational teaching. These terms aren’t always born with citations—they emerge. They circulate. They shift meaning through use.

Neuroconvergent is one of those terms for me. I didn’t create it, but I did recognize it. I developed a relationship to it. I mapped it against my own theoretical models, and it helped name a specific position within the ecology I was already describing. That’s what I’m claiming here: not authorship, but positional authorship—my own way of working with the term, rooted in the context of the Cognitive Ecology Model.

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Why I Use Neuroconvergent—and Why Language Matters

“Neurotypical” implies a statistical norm or neutral baseline. But there is no such thing—just varying degrees of alignment with neuronormative systems.

Neuroconvergent better captures this: it names relational alignment, not biological fact.

It speaks to how someone’s cognitive style fits with dominant expectations around:

• communication

• productivity

• affect regulation

• time orientation

• learning and labor

• sensory engagement

This framing avoids clinical gatekeeping. It doesn’t depend on diagnosis, DSM categories, or medical recognition. It asks: Who is the system built for? And who benefits from its design?

It also makes visible the complexity in-between. Some people pass as neuroconvergent while privately struggling. Others are visibly divergent and punished for it. Between these, we find:

• convergent-presenting

• masked divergence

• adaptive convergence

This language doesn’t flatten difference—it names dynamic positionality.

In writing about this term I’ve come to understand that this was also a neuroqueering act. As Nick Walker originally articulated, to neuroqueer is not simply to identify as neurodivergent—it’s to actively subvert neuronormative expectations, dismantle imposed binaries, and reimagine what cognitive legitimacy looks like. I wasn’t just describing cognition. I was refusing normative frames and reauthoring language itself. Neuroqueering, in this sense, becomes a liberatory method: using language not merely for classification, but for transformation—for undoing the frameworks that erase us, and building ones that hold us differently.

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What the Term Means to Me Now

Today, when I use neuroconvergent, I use it to name a position—not a trait, not a superiority, and certainly not a default. It describes systemic ease, cognitive fit, and social affirmation. It reminds me that minds are not inherently disordered or orderly—they are situated in systems that recognize some, and resist others.

And in the Cognitive Ecology Model, that distinction becomes essential. Neurodivergence is not a deficit. Neuroconvergence is not a virtue. They are positions in a relational field—a cognitive ecology shaped by power, design, and social expectation.

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Closing Invitation

If you’ve encountered or used the term neuroconvergent—in your writing, teaching, organizing, or everyday reflection—I’d love to hear how it’s moved through your world. What does it name for you? What does it miss? This isn’t about canonizing language; it’s about staying in conversation with the concepts that help us live and think more relationally.

I offer this reflection not as a conclusion, but as a point of connection—one ecology reaching toward another.