The PDA Therapy Collaborative is a high-level concept developed by my national professional consultation group. We are thought leaders in PDA affirming professional practice who support one another’s work. We meet weekly. Sometimes bimonthly.

Without knowing you, we want you to know a bit about us. And you might. Recognize us and how we think. You, just like us, are dotted all over the country and likely thinking similar things about your work.

If this is not the place for you that’s ok. We are not the right therapists or the right colleagues for everyone. But we hope to inspire your practice and provide the spark you need to evolve affirming strategies and grow in your own work.

Don’t use our insights and practice skill to interpret specific cases. Monitor your own ethical practice considerations as you normally would by seeking state specific and in-depth individual supervision for complex situations. Do not see this as supervision space. Rather:

Come here, to ask and consider, “how do YOU do your work”?

How do you organize your day, navigate your strong feelings, use yourself to best effect and draw from your existing practice skill to translate this to PDA affirming work?

Further: What do you understand to be PDA affirming? How do you understand natural, organic PDA strengths and validate them? These are some of the questions we ask ourselves and one another.

We place our strong feelings, our growing awareness of skill, our vulnerable areas and we put them in the hands of colleagues we can trust and say, “how would you be PDA affirming?” We look to encourage your growth and inner work rather than make demands on you. PDA professionals need community as much as PDA families do.

This is a step beyond training. This is the nuts and bolts of day-to-day work. Good therapy grows in Community. THIS is a community. As the high-level concept evolves, we will add handouts and client worksheets to support your practice. We may even offer ways to connect you to us and to one another!

We are constantly evolving and growing in our work and conceptualizations as will you! I love my work and hope you do too.

To begin, I offer up my Guide to PDA Affirming Therapy one chapter at a time until all 11 chapters have been published.

Who am I, beyond the pictures of me on this site? I am the founder of the first ever national PDA case consultation group and now run The PDA Therapy Collaborative. I’m a private practice social worker specializing in PDA out of Acton Massachusetts with two PDA children, 22 and 16, and diagnosed autistic in August of 2024. I have been sharing my writing on Facebook at The PDA Practice Corner since December of 2023 and wrote it for clients and area professionals, but it received a much wider audience.

I want to ring a bell so that professionals can find us here and find one another. Professionals and professionalism have always had a vital role in supporting PDA adults and families. We genuinely can, create spaces for listening, growth and insight.

We can be the change makers. Especially those of us who are merging their professional and personal lives in order to do this work.

I will share “my story” here first to give you an idea of who I am. When you subscribe, you support our individual practices, maintain this site and support the time spent mentoring, teaching and organizing.

I wish I had had a Guidebook to affirm my instincts not just as a parent but as a professional. It is my hope that my Guide fills a need in others for good information on cultivating PDA practice.