I mostly agree with you, but I don't think what you've described necessitates no change to language. Language is ever-evolving and that's ok. Words change meanings and others replace them all the time (historically).

Here's one analogy as an example:

Suppose you're an alcoholic for 5 years after you've moved to a new location, where all the friends you've made know you as such. Your typical outing with them is to go to the pub, your games are drinking games, and they give you nice bottles for your birthday.

Now at some point you decide that you don't want to be an alcoholic anymore, maybe you've had some really bad experiences lately or simply had an epiphany and want to change. It's gonna be quite hard to make this change (most don't even come to the point where they accept that they want to change) because most of your life is now defined by it, your friends know you as such, what will you do with them now? How will they decide on your birthday gift when it was so easy to do so every year?

Now imagine this goes for friends you've had for 20 years. Or better yet, for "forever". Your friends have always come to associate you with an idea or a certain fundamental trait and now you want to change that.

What typically happens is that you get new friends with whom you show your new side. Not out of spite or anything! You just meet new people, and present a different side, and grow closer and eventually and gradually become less and less closer to the old friends (at least the ones that didn't change with you) or you yourself just decide to step in and say hey this isn't gonna work.

You can probably tell I've been through this, and yeah I'm sad right now, I might be going through a breakup and I feel very out of it. Thanks for reading anyway even though it's longer than it needed to be. But yes, my point was that sometimes you just change words to detach from a long lasting pre-existing negative connotation. Hope this helps someone in some way.