Hey y’all,
I’m a late-diagnosed AuDHD & PDA writer, partner (20+ years and counting!) to an AuDHD & PDA spouse, and a homeschooling mom to three neurodivergent kids.
Before my identity collapsed into the singularity that is MOM, I studied healthcare case management and worked as a full-spectrum doula, childbirth educator, and nanny. So I’ve spent most of my adult life either helping people through disorienting transitions or living through my own. Whee!
If you’re wondering WTF PDA even is:
PDA—Pathological Demand Avoidance, or Persistent Drive for Autonomy, if you’re on a personal crusade against medicalized language—is a behavioral profile characterized by an intense, persistent inability to meet everyday demands and distress that can manifest as intense, “dramatic” outbursts and/or behavior that breaks social norms.
The current consensus is that PDA is an atypical autism profile and that all PDA folks are autistic, but the research says: ???
You’ll often see PDA described as a distinct neurological disability—a hyper-sensitive nervous system that processes demands as threats, triggering a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. This is an interesting idea, and a lot of people relate to it, but right now, there’s no evidence to support this claim.
Basically, PDA is the dark energy of neurodivergence. Something is causing real things to happen, but there’s no consensus on what that thing is.
Except with dark energy, physicists have spent a bajillion dollars trying to untangle the mystery, while PDA has produced more Tik-Toks than peer-reviewed studies.
Broadly speaking, a PDA profile tends to include:
An involuntary, deep-seated resistance to ordinary demands, even personal goals or activities of daily living that most neurotypical people don’t process as a demand.
A strong need for autonomy and equality in relationships, along with an intense aversion towards (real or perceived) hierarchies and power imbalances.
A wide range of social strategies used to avoid or delay demands, like distraction, negotiation, withdrawal, or charm.
A strong pull toward role-play, narrative immersion, and fantasy, often preferring to engage with rich, expansive, highly-detailed pretend worlds.
A self-directed, flow-seeking way of learning and engaging with the world and discomfort with externally imposed rules, structures, and timelines.
Intense moods and behaviors that can shift quickly and may seem confusing or disproportionate from the outside, possibly including aggressive, destructive, or violent meltdowns or panic attacks.
I write about whatever falls out of my neurodivergent brain: stuff I wish my mom knew when I was 8, hyper-focused rants, unsolicited deep-dives, and things that made complete sense at 2am and slightly a lot less sense now but TOO LATE I ALREADY HIT PUBLISH.
I’m not an expert, I’m just really, really experienced.
