Trauma-Informed, Neuroaffirming… or Just Listening to People?

Oct 8

9 min read

Updated: 6 days ago

There is something I hear constantly from clients and parents, and something I experience firsthand as a parent, that I find increasingly frustrating.

"My workplace says it's neuroaffirming, but when I ask for accommodations, I'm made to feel like I'm being difficult."

"My child's school talks about inclusion, but when we explain what actually helps them, we're told they can't make exceptions."

These are the kinds of experiences I hear about over and over again. And I keep coming back to the same question: Why are people having to fight so hard to have their needs recognized, only to have the very strategies that help them be dismissed, questioned, or taken away?

People figure out what works for them. They discover ways to manage overwhelming environments, regulate their nervous systems, cope with demands, or simply make it through their day. And yet, rather than recognizing and supporting these strategies, we question them, discourage them, or refuse to allow them because they don't fit someone else's idea of what coping or regulation should look like.

I see families exhausting themselves advocating for accommodations that shouldn't require a battle in the first place. And what I find particularly troubling is how often this happens within the very schools, organizations, and systems that claim to be supporting them.

Why do we think we know better than the person actually having the experience?

A teenager recognizes that a full day at school is too much and asks for a reduced schedule, but the focus becomes getting them back to full-time attendance. An adult knows that stepping away from a situation helps them regulate, but it's viewed as avoidance.

I see this growing divide between people who get it and those who don't. Those who recognize that different brains and nervous systems have different needs, and those who continue trying to fit everyone into the same mould. And caught in the middle are the children, adults, and families who are constantly having to explain, justify, advocate, and fight for things that they already know are helpful.

I keep coming back to the same question. Why do we think we know better than the person actually having the experience?

Who Is the Expert?

During my master's program in counselling psychology, we learned about person-centred counselling, developed by Carl Rogers. One of the foundational principles is that the client is the expert in their own life.

I don't know what it's like to live inside someone else's body, experience their sensory world, or navigate their particular nervous system. And I certainly don't get to decide that something shouldn't be difficult simply because I don't experience it as difficult.

So why does this seem to be missing from so many of the systems we rely on? Why, when a child tells us that something is too loud, too overwhelming, or too difficult, do we so often respond by trying to increase their tolerance rather than changing the environment? Why, when someone has found a strategy that helps them, do we decide it isn't appropriate because it doesn't fit our idea of what regulation should look like?

I think we have become far too comfortable deciding what other people need without really listening to them.

I Recently Watched Traumality

I recently watched a documentary called Traumality, and I found myself nodding along through so much of it. The documentary explores the relationship between trauma, childhood adversity, and mental health. It brings together trauma researchers, clinicians, and people with lived experience to explore what might change if we shifted from asking what's wrong with someone to becoming curious about what has happened to them.

So much of my work is grounded in understanding how people's experiences shape their mental health. Not just significant traumatic events, but the ongoing experiences of feeling misunderstood, unsafe, unsupported, or having their needs repeatedly dismissed. I want to be clear that I don't believe all mental health challenges are caused by trauma, and being neurodivergent itself is not a trauma response.

But I do think we underestimate the impact of growing up in environments where your needs are continually misunderstood, your natural responses are corrected, and the ways you find to cope are treated as problems.

While watching the documentary, I started thinking about how closely trauma-informed care aligns with neuroaffirming practice. And then I started wondering whether we actually understand what trauma-informed care means.

How Many People Have Experienced Trauma?

Canadian research paints a concerning picture. A 2026 study from the Public Health Agency of Canada, using data from the 2023 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth, found that among youth aged 15 to 17, 44.9% reported experiencing emotional abuse, 39.4% reported exposure to emotional intimate partner violence between caregivers, and 22.3% reported physical abuse.

These are substantial numbers. And while experiencing adversity doesn't automatically mean someone will develop trauma-related difficulties, these experiences can have a significant impact on development, emotional well-being, and physical and mental health. These statistics also don't capture every experience that can leave a child feeling chronically unsafe, overwhelmed, or unsupported.

For neurodivergent children, we also need to consider what it means to spend years navigating environments that don't accommodate their sensory, communication, learning, or regulation needs. What happens when a child spends six hours a day trying to tolerate an environment that overwhelms their nervous system? What happens when they're repeatedly told to stop moving, stop reacting, try harder, be more flexible, or do things the way everyone else does? What happens when they learn that their own experience isn't believed?

Repeated experiences of distress, invalidation, and powerlessness can certainly contribute to chronic stress and, for some people, trauma.

If We Know This About Trauma, Why Aren't We Doing Things Differently?

I think about schools a lot, both as a parent and as a counsellor. Parents are fighting for reduced schedules, sensory accommodations, movement breaks, alternative learning environments, or simply the ability for their child to step away when they're overwhelmed.

Too often, the response is that children need to build resilience, develop coping skills, increase their tolerance, or learn to manage expectations. Is a child becoming more resilient because they can sit through a classroom environment that overwhelms them? Or are they learning to ignore their body's signals because they have no other choice? Is a child successfully regulating because they appear calm and compliant? Or have they learned that showing distress isn't acceptable? And when a child finally gets home and falls apart, are we considering what it took for them to hold everything together all day?

I think there is an enormous difference between helping someone develop skills and requiring them to repeatedly endure something that isn't working.

This is where I find the conversation about trauma-informed society and schools particularly interesting. We know that many children arrive at school carrying experiences of adversity. We know that chronic stress can affect attention, memory, emotional regulation, relationships, and learning. We also know that children need to feel safe and connected in order to learn. Yet so many school practices continue to prioritize attendance, compliance, behavioural expectations, and standardized measures of success.

I wonder what would happen if we genuinely approached people through a trauma-informed lens. Instead of asking why a child won't attend school, we might ask what is making school feel impossible. Instead of focusing on stopping a behaviour, we could become curious about what purpose that behaviour might be serving. And rather than viewing accommodations as exceptions that need to be justified, we could recognize that different children need different things to access education.

Perhaps most importantly, we could start believing children when they tell us what is difficult.

What Does Trauma-Informed Actually Mean?

We hear the term trauma-informed everywhere now. Schools, healthcare organizations, mental health services, and community programs increasingly describe themselves this way. But I sometimes wonder whether we've adopted the language without fully considering what it requires of us.

Being trauma-informed isn't simply recognizing that someone may have experienced trauma. It means thinking about how our own expectations, environments, responses, and systems might contribute to someone's distress. It means prioritizing safety, trust, choice, collaboration, and empowerment. And importantly, it means recognizing that safety is subjective.

An environment can appear perfectly safe to us and still feel incredibly unsafe to someone else. A child who is overwhelmed by noise doesn't become less overwhelmed because we tell them the classroom isn't that loud. A teenager experiencing significant distress around school doesn't suddenly feel safe because we reassure them that nothing bad will happen. And a person who needs to move, stim, withdraw, or reduce demands isn't necessarily avoiding learning or growth. They may be doing exactly what their nervous system needs.

Trauma-informed care requires us to be curious about these experiences rather than immediately trying to change them. It also requires us to share power, and I think this is one of the hardest parts for systems. Because genuinely sharing power means accepting that the person we're supporting may know something we don't. It means being willing to change our approach, even when the approach we've always used seems reasonable to us.

Isn't This Also What Neuroaffirming Support Looks Like?

This is what kept coming up for me while watching Traumality. The principles of trauma-informed care and neuroaffirming practice are remarkably similar. Both ask us to understand people within the context of their experiences and environments. Both recognize the importance of safety, autonomy, connection, and collaboration. Both challenge us to look beyond outward behaviour. And both require us to question whether the strategies we're using are genuinely helping the person, or simply making their behaviour more acceptable to the people around them.

There are important differences, of course. Neuroaffirming practice recognizes being neurodivergent as part of natural human variation. It isn't about treating it. It's about understanding different nervous systems and creating environments where people can thrive. Trauma-informed practice recognizes the impact of trauma and adversity and aims to avoid further harm while supporting safety and recovery.

But when we look at how these approaches translate into everyday support, there is so much overlap. And I wonder whether this overlap might help us move some of these conversations forward.

Maybe We Need to Be Talking About a Trauma-Informed Society

Toward the end of Traumality, there was a discussion about creating a trauma-informed society. That idea really stayed with me.

I've spent a great deal of time advocating for neuroaffirming support. I also know how challenging it can be to help people understand what that actually means, particularly within systems that have operated in the same way for decades. And I started wondering whether trauma-informed care might be another way into these conversations.

Is the language of trauma-informed practice more familiar? More accepted? Easier for schools and organizations to understand? If we're already acknowledging the importance of safety, autonomy, relationships, and reducing harm, shouldn't those principles apply to neurodivergent people too?

If a school identifies as trauma-informed, shouldn't that include respecting a child's sensory needs? Shouldn't it include recognizing that forcing participation, removing regulation strategies, or repeatedly pushing a child beyond their capacity may increase distress rather than build resilience? Shouldn't it mean listening to children and families when they tell us that something isn't working?

I don't think we should replace neuroaffirming language with trauma-informed language. They're not interchangeable, and it's important that being neurodivergent isn't framed as something that needs to be treated or fixed. But I do think there is an opportunity to connect these conversations.

Because if we genuinely believe in trauma-informed care, then we need to look carefully at the ways our systems respond to difference, distress, and individual needs. And we need to be willing to acknowledge when those responses are contributing to the very difficulties we're trying to address.

What If We Just Started Listening?

I don't expect schools, professionals, or parents to have all the answers. I certainly don't. There are complicated situations, competing needs, limited resources, and times when we have to make difficult decisions. But I do think we could approach things with a lot more curiosity and a lot less certainty.

Maybe the child who needs to leave class isn't avoiding learning - Maybe leaving class is what allows them to return and learn.

Maybe the teenager who can't attend school full-time isn't lacking resilience - Maybe they're already using an enormous amount of resilience just to manage the attendance they can.

Maybe the adult who needs to do things differently isn't being inflexible - Maybe they've spent years figuring out what actually works for them.

And maybe, when someone tells us what they need, our first response doesn't have to be explaining why they can't have it.

I keep thinking about that principle from person-centred counselling. The person is the expert in their own life. It's such a simple concept, but one that seems to get lost when we're working within systems built around expectations, policies, and ideas about what people should be able to do.

I don't think the goal should be to make neurodivergent people look more neurotypical, or to make children appear regulated simply because their distress is no longer visible. I think the goal should be to help people feel safe, understood, connected, and supported in ways that actually work for them.

And maybe that's where a trauma-informed society starts. Not with another program, another policy, or another set of strategies that we decide people should use, but with a willingness to believe people about their own experiences.

Being trauma-informed or neuroaffirming isn't about the language we use or the values we put on our websites. It's about what happens when someone tells us what they need. If we're only willing to accommodate differences when they fit within our expectations, are we really practising inclusion? Or are we simply asking people to conform while calling it support?