Hello PDA Professionals,

You’re invited to attend the final Coffee and Connection of the Fall series scheduled for Friday 11/21 at 3pm EST.

Follow this link to RSVP on Google Calendar:
https://calendar.app.google/NU6Lj5zYdymaaBAc6

This is the final group before the holidays. We will be planning more ways to connect so look for the plans to emerge soon.

Ideas include:

an online community, more coffee and connection, and a study group where we can teach and present to one another.

I’d like for us all to benefit from a collaborative space where we share insights and engage in dialogue, camera’s on.

I will also be creating learning modules and sharing more about this soon.

Please join us Friday if you can! If you can’t Happy Holidays to you and look for future ways to join us. You’re welcome to attend!

Read on for a more personal note:

I live in Massachusetts and this time of year is glorious. The leaves have already changed color and many have fallen to the ground. It is dark early and there is a chilly wind every day announcing that soon we will get our first snowfall.

I am thinking about the holidays but still am not ready for the music, lights and shopping. My children are older and with my youngest applying to colleges for next year my days of holiday meal prep, travel to grandma’s and sensory overload are largely behind me.

This stage of life is transformative for me. Having older PDA children frees a lot of my creative and emotional energy because I rarely fight my nature anymore; I facilitate what my children want, I know what I want and I try to keep moving and make it happen. I am often prodding others along with me. But I also know how to rest and move out of the way of others! I know we are all exploring PDA practice together!

I have had the pleasure to drink my warm coffee with other PDA professionals and exchange ideas. I drink coffee constantly throughout the day and I’m always open to meeting you! Maybe we will have that chance, at our next coffee and connection or in a private meeting. I have shared many seasons now with some of my professional colleagues. You know who you are, and I thank you for your collegial warmth and care.

The PDA professional community deserves the chance to come together for discussion, connection and learning. I hope you will find your collegial warmth and care too and if it’s with us I’m glad.

I had an idea. And it was simply to strengthen our work by learning the commonalities in our thinking and from there build out our ongoing best practices. I am a relational psychodynamic therapist, and this works particularly well for my PDA clients.

I’ll be working more on my big ideas in the months ahead. “Beyond Low Demand” will become modules where concepts are defined and I will build the thinking so that you can engage with it, practice it and build your own insight with your client work.

People have stepped forward to help me and I am impressed but not surprised by the level of commitment. Along the way I am open to new friendships and will support your work too.

I process through big ideas and can often see the way others can get there too. As a result, I can get from beginning to end very quickly. It will be my task (with help!!) to slow and break down my process so that you can see it with me and I will endeavor to hold the space for you too.

If you have heard me talk about a case, it will feel, I hope, as if I can bring the person to life and be present with the feeling that’s there. I can see, feel and hold that space of big emotion for understanding and connection. This is sorely needed by PDA children and adults.

For many PDA people it can be the answer to the lack of mirroring and validation they experience and require to build self awareness and acceptance.

This is what is at the heart of “Beyond Low Demand”. It is demanding to see, validate and engage with PDA autistic big feelings. We can but not without our own community. Just as parents need one another, PDA professionals’ benefit from others to build and strengthen their work.

My earlier work, the guide to PDA affirming therapy, tells you how I engage in this intense mirroring and validation process with psychodynamic technique.

The ideas in the guide and in “Beyond Low Demand” will be broken down into 10 to 20 minute videos, with materials and time you can schedule with me to clarify and engage with each concept.

This will be fun for me. I live in the world of ideas but more importantly I know how to practice and build with them.

I’m looking forward to engaging with more of you and building out professional consultation and collaboration.

Like all of you, I am in professional private practice, and this is a passion project I can’t carry alone. All help is appreciated! Don’t hesitate to reach out and say hello.

Finally, I’d like to share an opportunity I have that represents bridge building with the larger established best practices professional community.

In January I will speak to a Harvard Behavioral Health clinical group that trained through Cambridge Health Alliance. This is a group of close to 50 clinicians all of whom are traditionally trained in CBT and DBT. They want to hear why an understanding of PDA changes how you conceptualize what constitutes “symptom” and “treatment” management. Wow, I bet all of you have a lot to say about that!

I hope you are building bridges of understanding in your own community! I encourage you to share what you know widely.

Join us, Friday, and don’t hesitate to reach out to share your thoughts and ideas for future PDA Therapy Collaborative offerings.

Kindly,

Elise Jacobson, LICSW
Private Practice, expertise, PDA
Founder, PDA Therapy Collaborative
Adjunct Professor, Practice, Smith College SSW