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Pathological Demand Avoidance or PDA is a term that was given to a distinct profile on the Autism Spectrum by Professor Elizabeth Newson in 1980. While it’s still being explored whether PDA is exclusively autistic, for my purposes I’ll restrict myself to referring to it as an autism profile.
To support people with this profile what is needed is an understanding that demand avoidance is behavior that results from an innate neurological difference — meaning a person cannot learn to follow demands or commands and needs a totally different approach even from recognized Autistic strategies.
People born with this autism profile need individual freedom and personal control. Those around them need to consider that demands, commands, expectations, rules, and traditional discipline are all triggers for anxiety driven avoidant behavior.
In fact this is often an indicator of PDA that these Autistic people do not respond well to techniques that work for other Autistic people such as routine and repetition. PDA’ers are much more responsive to spontaneity, novelty and fantasy driven creative play and thought. Rather than following a rigid format, set of rules, or charts to get ready in the morning, instead making the tasks into a game with added fantasy elements is much more likely to work. Using natural consequences will help the PDAer find their own logical motivation.
The main factor of this specific neurotype is a need for personal autonomy, often to being allowed the freedom to make choices and decisions (even opting to not have to always make choices). When all authoritarian approaches are removed the demand avoidant behaviour that is visible to others is dramatically reduced along with any anxiety and trauma that the person is experiencing from being forced to conform and comply with an expectation that is alien to how their brains work.
Of course the person still has the same brain and the same differences in the way they think and their perception of things; they still have internal demand avoidance which can limit their ability to do even things that they want to do. Sometimes highlighting how a person is Autonomy Driven is more helpful in understanding how to help support PDA, because anything that feels like it infringes on autonomy, even the existence of too many choices, can trigger avoidance.
PDA’ers come in all shapes and sizes with different personalities, beliefs, and histories. Some show their hostility to demands openly, others internally, still others are found somewhere in the middle, but all will fit the basic PDA framework.