Sally Cat PDA

I’ve often come across parents saying their kids have rejected their PDA diagnoses; as well as parents of adult children who outright refuse to consider the idea of being PDA at all. I believe it best to be cautious about disclosing PDA (or other diagnoses) to PDAers. I’m not saying that information should be totally withheld, but that I think it’s important to bear in mind that we PDAers (both kids and adults) are likely to totally reject labels. This is a fundamental aspect of our PDA demand avoidance. This is contrary to current autism best-practice wisdom, which states that children should be told of their diagnoses immediately because they will have already realised they are different to their peers, so concealing diagnoses withholds necessary information for helping them understand why they’re different. However, I don't believe this is generally best practice for PDA kids. Although PDA is classed as as an Autism Spectrum Condition, it’s known that some autism strategies are ...

This is the transcription of an animated video I made for the Positive PDA Virtual Summit 2020 on the subject of PDA masking. Masking means hiding your true feelings; often seeking to appear calm and happy. A form of masking is social mimicry, which means copying what you think are the right behaviours  to fit in and get along with people. Before I get stuck in, I should point out that while many PDAers, including myself and Milly, do mask, some PDAers say they do not mask at all. So not all PDAers mask. Awareness that many PDA children mask, for example in school, has lately been growing. This awareness, to my mind, is of very high importance because, if educators, diagnosticians and other health practitioners are not aware of masking, and how extensive it can be, they will be bound to assume that the child has no real issues. I had direct experience of this when my daughter Milly was assessed for ADHD last year. The local child development centre had updated her autism diagnosis ...

(Originally posted on the Free PDA blog ) A disturbing stance is emerging within the PDA community that undiagnosed adult PDAer voices are invalid. I am writing this blog post, with passion, to counter this negativity, which I see as discriminatorily ableist and destructive. What is PDA? PDA, which stands for pathological demand avoidance, is a neurotype that is classed as an autism spectrum condition because it entails social communication differences & rigid thinking. In addition to this, PDA also involves strong control-need; anxiety; intolerance of uncertainty; tendency towards fantasy & role-play; disregard for hierarchy & rules; obsessive interests often focused on people; ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ emotions, and impulsiveness. My personal journey I first learned of PDA in 2015, eighteen months after gaining an adult autism diagnosis. At this time, Googling “PDA” returned results about difficult children, and nothing at all about adults. I resorted to ...

"Pathological demand avoidance" (PDA) is the name of a life-long neurological condition. The term was coined by Professor Elizabeth Newson, who first identified the condition in the 1980s. In addition to the trait of pathological demand avoidance, PDA entails: High anxiety, control-need, use of social strategies, sociability, mood swings, comfort in fantasy & role-play and obsessive, often people-focused behaviour ( link ).  And also: Disregard for social hierarchy, masking, love of novelty, dislike of routine, intolerance of uncertainty, creativity, quirky sense of humour, and (not always) a drive to rename people, animals and things. PDA Classification PDA was initially classed as a pervasive development disorder, but reclassified as an autism spectrum condition after the spectrum's definition was broadened in 2012 to include any neurotype featuring social communication differences and rigid thinking. You can read more about the history of PDA and its cl...

Transcript of my presentation at The Autism Show at ExCeL London on 15th June 2019. Hello, I’m Sally Cat I am a PDAer This means my neurology fits the Pathological Demand Avoidance profile, which is currently classed as an Autism Spectrum Condition  PDA is much more than the eponymous demand avoidance    The data I'm presenting is from a large study I ran in 2016 which compares the ranking of 155 potential distinct PDA traits between PDA and non-PDA autistic respondents  These 155 traits were whittled down from a preliminary 228 suggested by members of the adult PDA community via a preliminary in-group study  My role was coordinator, rather than leader (more PDA-friendly, as we none of us like to be led)  I am not a trained researcher  My interest was, and is, bottom up: a member of the adult PDA community seeking answers in the face of academic ignorance towards adult PDA  Being an enthusiastic ...