Off The Cuff Remarks On PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance / Persistent Drive for Autonomy)

I told AI to create an image about PDA and this is what it created.

Some off the cuff remarks about PDA: pathological demand avoidance or persistent drive for autonomy

It’s so funny I had to look up what off the cuff meant because I had a vague idea but like with all non-literal things, I wanted to be sure. I also believe this looking up behavior is left over from my higher masking days as I have slowly moved toward just showing my true colors and not hiding my autisticness from the world. So here I am!

I haven’t spoken about PDA for a long time but people reach out to me about it all of the time, so it was time. After many months of listening to the PDA discourse on social media as well as my own self-study, this is what I think:

PDA (pathological demand avoidance / pervasive drive for autonomy) exists. Of course it does, it is a cluster of experiences both internal and external that people can have. I meet the criteria, my children do too. But I have come to the conclusion that for me, it doesn’t help me to conceptualize these experiences as a separate thing from being AuDHD. Every one of the PDA traits can be explained by Autism or ADHD or OCD, for me any way. 

I realize it may be helpful for folks to conceptualize their experience as PDA, separate from Autism or ADHD and I respect and honor that. I work with plenty of people who deeply identify with PDA and find the PDA community and PDA-centered resources extremely helpful, if not lifesaving. I will always respect this and serve these clients centering their PDA experience as they define it. 

For those who are curious, I will go through the PDA criteria and explain how these traits apply to me but most likely have an explanation related to my official diagnoses (OCD/Autism/ADHD).

Criteria used from neurodivergentinsights.com

1. Resistance and avoidance of everyday demands, including those that are perceived as trivial or routine
   

Cause for me: All routine/every day demands are hard for me for various reasons, perhaps they are boring or tedious. For me, this is due to ADHD and my lack of dopamine as well as pressure I put on myself to be extremely productive and small tasks seem to get in the way of making money/being uber successful which I believed would save me as a child (hyperindependence). 

2. An overwhelming need to be in control and avoid being controlled by others. 

Cause for me: I have been diagnosed with OCPD (obsessive compulsive personality disorder) and this can cause me to want control literally everything. I also don’t trust others due to attachment trauma and resist being controlled by others because, due to mismatched caregiving and being a glass child growing up, I learned that I needed to be 100% self-reliant and ultra independent. 

3. Uses Social Strategies as part of their avoidance

Cause for me: I’ve used social strategies to my advantage as a way to accommodate myself, especially before I knew I was disabled. This is due to having an invisible disability and lacking support and understanding. 

4. Surface social communication abilities, despite difficulties with social interaction and understanding

Cause for me: For me this is explained by AuDHD masking/camouflaging and being socialized as a girl. I was taught that I must deny my own needs and please those around me. I became obsessed with human behavior and “passing” as a successful hyper independent girl that is desirable and perfect enough to attract others and maintain their interest in me. 

5. ‘Obsessive’ behavior, often focused on other people or can be focused on performance demands (due to acute anxiety)

Cause for me: This is part of my anxiety and obsessive personality which was all a strategy to overcompensate for being disabled and not supported growing up. Being obsessive, especially about other people (we are a social species, other people = vital to my survival), makes sense to me. I have been obsessive about anything that has to do with my survival: working, safety, other humans including human psychology and behavior, growing food, etc. I rarely obsess about things that aren’t connected to me surviving. 

6. Appears comfortable in role play and pretend, sometimes to an extreme extent

Cause for me: Imagination and role play comes naturally to me, in fact, these traits are what have helped me to survive. My autistic brain is actually extremely flexible, I can put myself into another person’s shoes easily and I can feel deep empathy. If I think too much about it, the lines can get blurry between myself and other people which I believe is due to having such a flexible brain that absorbs large amounts of data and tries to find patterns in everything. So, I believe this is compatible with autism in and of itself. High masking autism essentially is “role playing” because its cosplaying being not allistic. 

I realize that everything I wrote is open to interpretation. I too use to interpret of those traits as PDA not just autism or ADHD or OCD, etc. But, as someone with such a flexible brain, I use occam's razor* to guide me in situations like this. What is the answer to why I am the way I am with the simplest amount of diagnoses and explanations. What I have concluded is that AuDHD and OCD explain most of my experience and even those could probably be simplified even further as I truly believe that the OCD is simply my autistic brain being overly flexible and anxious but I digress. I hope my musings on PDA were helpful! 

*(Per wikipedia.com:  In philosophy, Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; Latin: novacula Occami) is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements.)