さらっと見る目次
Last weekend, my beloved mentor (← a PhD psychologist) asked me, “Where did that information come from?” I promised to send her the links, and now I’m turning what I sent her last night into a blog post. I’d love to share this with anyone interested.
Everything here is written or otherwise delivered in English. I tried searching in Japanese as well and found only a handful of Japanese-language sources (and I have a library degree). I have a feeling we’ll start seeing Japanese content in explosive quantities before long, though.
By the way: every few years, I make a point of obsessively updating my knowledge and understanding on topics relevant to my work and my personal life.
As my long-time readers know, I’m generally a “little by little, steadily” type of person. But when it’s time for an update, I bulldoze through as much of the available information as I can on topics I normally only skim (not everything, obviously, that’s impossible for any human).
This time around, I did another update on demand avoidance for the first time in several years. I think the last time was around 2022, during the pandemic. Back then, I wasn’t using the term “PDA.” It wasn’t widely used, or maybe I was oblivious. I was just calling it plain “demand avoidance.” And before that, I was using the word “rebel” to describe it, and before that, various other terms I made up. Can that be a part of my herstory?
Anyway. Let’s get to the information.
standard PDA sources
1. PDA Society UK A UK-based support organization
2. PDA North America A North American support organization
3. Dr. Mona Delahooke Pediatric psychologist
sources that resonated with me personally
1. Divergent Connections
An amazing newsletter written by a therapist who grew up with PDA parents. The author is a non-PDA person on the spectrum and is also a parent of neurodivergent (including PDAer) children. His newsletter articles are found on the archive page for free.
2. Neurodivergent insights
A blog by an AuDHD PhD psychologist. Lots of information here. I like the way the blog posts are organized.
3. The PDA Paradox: The Parenting Guide to Pathological Demand Avoidance, Low-Demand Parenting, and Reducing Meltdowns in Neurodivergent Children
A book written for parents of children with PDA tendencies. By Emma P. Daily. 2025.
I really liked this book. What’s in this short book will be useful for caregivers of non-PDA children as well as someone like me, who is not involved in taking care of small people in any way. It was worth reading as a book about how to live as a human.
4. PDAers often struggle with being perceived
A blog post written by Kristy Forbes, an Australian PDAer who is also a parent of PDA child/ren, including a nonspeaking child on the spectrum. I will quote from the post.
PDAers often struggle with being perceived.
By that I don’t simply mean being seen. I mean the experience of someone observing, interpreting, forming conclusions, or assuming meaning about what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, or why.
It can feel like someone accessing internal information that we haven’t chosen to share, while perceiving via their own biased lens.
Even when the other person believes they are being helpful, supportive, or insightful, the experience for a PDA nervous system can be exposure and loss of autonomy.
This resonated so with me. I don’t mean this is how I feel. I am NT, and this is what I have perceived in the presence of some PDAers. This and Kristy Forbes’ YouTube videos validated my internal and mostly unshared (because my first instinct is to seem like I am not perceiving whatever it is that they don’t want perceived, which used to make me think that I am mad for doing this, and it turns out that I was not, though I am mad in other ways) experience.
first-person PDAer accounts
1. PDA by PDAers: From Anxiety to Avoidance and Masking to Meltdowns
Edited by Sally Cat. 2018. You can read about 45 pages for free, including the abstract and the reference.
I only read the free version. I like stories.
academic papers
Plenty of search results on PDA in children (including adolescents), but far fewer on adults.
Some links that offer a look at differing perspectives:
1. Response: Anxiety and behaviour in and beyond ASD; does the idea of ‘PDA’ really help? – a response to Green
2. Pathological Demand Avoidance: symptoms but not a syndrome
Their argument is that PDA lacks sufficient evidence, can be explained by other factors, and what is explained by PDA are symptoms rather than a syndrome. The commentators include academics from UK organizations. 2020.
an article with a different perspective
1. Australian Psychological Society article: How pathological demand avoidance (PDA) blew up online
An examination of whether PDA that’s trending online is credible… or sketchy. Interesting.
Written by a news writer who seems to conflate PDA with ODD, but I think, from the outside, that’s probably how it would look.
other (the biggest name in the field)
1. Casey Ehrlich
The best-known PDA coach and advocate in the world and a parent of a PDA teenager, Casey Ehrlich has an Instagram account and a YouTube channel with a massive number of followers.
I might add and update things here, little by little.
This post is dedicated to my beloved mentor and therapist, N.
today’s special
something new: a new experiment of adding the “willingness and willfulness” practice to my routine
something read: rick hanson “making great relationships,” a little bit of
