First written last year on “The PDA Practice Corner” on Facebook and is based on personal insight and professional conversations in therapeutic work with PDA adults.

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Is PDA “extreme demand avoidance of everyday tasks” or extreme “INNER WRESTLING” with the thinking required to manage those everyday tasks?

PDA is seen as an extreme avoidance of everyday demands. Well, not under the surface!

The inner experience of the PDA person can’t be found in the description of PDA.

Therefore, puzzled parents struggle to see their children in the description until a crisis precipitates an online search. Adults can struggle to see themselves.
Using descriptors of PDA that only encompass what is seen on the outside limits understanding and public perception! It doesn’t allow families and providers a window into the PDA emotional struggle.

Inside, the PDA person is in an inner wrestling match with their thoughts. It is their WRESTLING with how to meet the demand, why to do it and if they want to, that generates an extreme number of thoughts. This in an effort to be self-directive and find their reasoning.

For many there is no OVERT rejection of the demand at all! There is no need to reject the demand. But it’s this wrestling that is pervasive and pathological. Most of my clients will say “why do I think so much”! It is one of the things that often defines my client work. Thinking can be about every day basic tasks which is how PDA can be “seen” by others. But it is actually a way of life where the PDA person applies their strenuous thinking to all that they do!

Replace WRESTLING with thoughts inside themselves (internal experience) with WRESTLING with the thought process of a parent or authority (external) and you see PDA isn’t about the demand at all it’s about the intensity of NEED to know their own thinking.

ALL my PDA clients THINK and think a LOT and expend enormous energy NOT doing the thing they think about until they have resolved their own questions or feel they have fulfilled their need to know.

On the inside it is the NEED to know why it’s important to them and the need to do something authentically that is the description of their PDA not their extreme avoidance.

THIS description of PDA helps the person accept the way they process. It also gives family the chance to understand how to engage with demand avoidance by providing access to questions that can stimulate the thinking that satisfies PDA need.

No PDA adult that I know of avoids demands in an extreme way all the time or even some of the time. They have found their way of doing relationships, kids, and careers through allowing for, interacting with and making peace with this internal wrestling which gives them momentum for their lives.

So much about autism is written by those who take a position of what can be “observed” not what is felt or experienced by the person.

This writing came out of conversation with clients. Read for understanding not for consultation. Reach out to Elise at EliseJacobsonLICSW@gmail.com with any questions or your own insight.