Am I PDA? Is My Child? A big list of common PDA traits

Written by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman, PDA Coach

Kory Andreas, LCSW-C

Jenna Goldstein, Psychologist

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Who wrote this list?

We are a PDA coach (Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman, creator and founder of The PDA Safe Circle™), a social worker who works with mixed ages (Kory Andreas, LCSW-C), and a child psychologist (Jenna Goldstein). All of us are Autistic. Shoshana is PDA, too, and we all work with many PDA clients. 

Some disclaimers:

There is ongoing debate about the definition of PDA itself in the research and clinical world. However, we continue to see very strong patterns of behavior and inner experience of PDAers. We find PDA to be a highly meaningful designation that leads to effective support that can transform and even save lives. 

We have compiled this list based on combined lived and professional experience.

There is considerable current debate right now in the research, clinical, and grassroots PDA communities about the relationship between Autism and PDA. That said, we have organized some of the common traits below into categories of Autistic differences. This is because most PDAers coming to us are Autistic and these categories help to structure a list. It is not meant to exclude non-Autistic PDAers.

The list is not a peer-reviewed clinical tool. It is meant to support you in discerning whether you believe a PDA profile fits you and/or your child. If it does, or if you think it might, we hope you’ll join us in The PDA Safe Circle™ community (PDASafeCircle.com)

How to Use This List

Look for a broad picture of recognition.

No one person will be recognized as having all of these traits because every person is unique, and also because the list includes both internal and external PDA behavior patterns that may not be outwardly observable to every person/in every context.

And remember that you do not need to be positive about PDA or receive a clinical PDA designation to try out The PDA Safe Circle™. 

Click the arrows on the left to expand each section of text

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What is PDA?

PDA stands for Pathological Demand Avoidance or, as is preferred by most PDAers, Pervasive Drive for Autonomy. It is an emerging neurodivergent profile or cluster of traits, depending on who you ask.

The PDA Safe Circle™ approaches PDA as a profile and a nervous system disability, meaning it supports PDAers by looking at our inherent patterns of vulnerabilities and strengths, not only at "extreme demand avoidance" behavior which may or may not be present depending on the PDAer's level of distress.  Many identified PDAers are also Autistic and experience being PDA as a subtype of Autism. Some PDAers identify as being PDA and ADHD, or AuDHD, or another vulnerable neurology. 

At The PDA Safe Circle™, we support people with a PDA nervous system pattern and our loved ones in thriving. You are welcome here whether you or your loved one(s) are Autistic or not, or have a clinical PDA identification or not. (PDA is not in any formal diagnostic code at this point, but some clinicians do list it as an unofficial identification along with another diagnosis).​​

PDA is described in clinical literature through outward behaviors such as extreme avoidance of everyday tasks, engaging social strategies as part of the avoidance, emotional dysregulation, and obsessive behaviors often focused on other people.  ​

However! We join the many PDA advocates and educators who believe PDA is best defined from the inside experience of the PDAer, in which the PDA disability can be externally obvious or it can be internal and hard to see from the outside.  

When we listen to PDA people and parents of PDA children, we see a clear pattern: PDAers have autonomic nervous systems that very easily go into survival mode (i.e. fight, flight, freeze, flop, or fawn) when faced with a loss of autonomy, control, social equality, or – and this is one we add to the list – co-regulation. We also have common strengths that may stem from our nervous system sensitivity. The PDA Safe Circle™ starts by focusing on these strengths.

What is the nervous system disability of PDA?

PDAers have highly reactive autonomic threat responses with certain triggers.

The three of us believe the most compelling hypothesis of what causes PDA is a highly reactive autonomic threat response.

While everyone gets triggered or "activated" sometimes, PDAers' nervous systems sense danger when faced with a lack of autonomy, control, social equality/status, or a loss of co-regulation source in daily life. This threat response is disabling, which means that unless we receive accommodations the threat response limits our ability to function and thrive. 

The PDAer may express the threat response in the moment, hold the threat response inside of them until it is safe to let it out, or they may accumulate a feeling of threat inside their bodies for years, unaware of why they are struggling.

PDA threat responses include:

• Fight (i.e. critiquing, correcting, objecting, yelling, hitting, breaking, swearing, insulting, throwing)

• Flight (i.e. changing the subject, making excuses or rationales, manic silliness, running away or feeling that legs want to run, climbing on furniture, hiding, fainting)

• Freeze (i.e. situational mutism, racing heart with immobile body, slapping arms, rocking, being unable to move, "my legs don't work")

• Flop (i.e. situational mutism, sleepy, falling asleep, yawning, staring into space, slowing down thoughts, dissociating, being unable to move)

• Fawn (i.e. following all the rules, smiling even when scared, pleasing other people out of fear, making extra rules they need to follow)

When activated enough, a PDAer's nervous system triggers around autonomy and control will compromise or completely disable our ability to meet one or more needs of daily life. This is clinically called demand avoidance. 

The drive for autonomy, control, and feeling socially equal or high status is so strong in a PDA person that it can override our ability to meet survival needs or do something the PDAer actually wants to do (from brushing teeth to trying a new food to attending a party to being kind to a loved one). This is not a matter of poor character or manipulative behavior - rather, it is an expression of the vulnerable PDA nervous system in distress.​

Basic and secondary needs include:

• Eating

• Sleeping

• Bathing

• Tooth brushing

• Toileting

• Taking medication or medicine

• Staying physically safe

• Connecting with loved ones

• Communicating

• Wearing clothes

• Leaving the house

Some PDAers subconsciously manage our threat response by making up strict rules about how we meet basic and secondary needs. 

Examples include rules around food that have nothing to do with taste or texture; only bathing in certain bathtubs or with certain soap; only wearing certain clothes; or only allowing certain people in the house.

The difference between PDA rigidity and the preferences of other sensitive people is that when the nervous system is activated, a PDAer cannot back down from our rules even if we want to, and even if a loved one reasons with us or cajoles us. This is because the rule is stemming from a survival response to a subconsciously perceived threat.

When activated, a PDAer will often find ways to exert control or status over another person or people in a (usually subconscious) bid to regulate our nervous system. 

This behavior is known as equalizing (coined by Casey Ehrlich) or leveling (coined by Kristy Forbes). Equalizing can be subtle (i.e. correcting, being the expert, critiquing, micromanaging) or overt (hiding or breaking a favorite object, swearing, yelling, hitting, insulting).

PDAers have more limited nervous system capacity than the neuromajority.

PDAers are easily exhausted and easily dysregulated by daily life. Many of us are dyregulated by preferred social stimulation and activities we love. Note that this dysregulation or exhaustion is often bottled up inside the person until it’s safe to let it out. Or it may not be outwardly apparent in “high masking” PDAers in childhood until they go into burnout later in life.

Conventional Western child-rearing practices don't work. PDAers can experience developmental trauma due to lack of accommodations, even in the absence of classically recognized adverse childhood experiences.

When troubling behavior in PDA children is met with conventional authority-based interventions (i.e. rewards, punishments, cajoling, strict boundaries, behavioral goals, and set routines) the child's distress and limitations increase, either right away or over time. Doubling down continues to make it worse. PDA children and teens can end up in cycles of crisis as well-meaning parents and professionals follow a rule book that fundamentally misunderstands how the PDA nervous system works.  

People often find the PDA community when one or more of these things happens:

• Conventional parenting and/or therapy strategies are increasing your or your child’s struggles.

• You or your child are in burnout or a behavioral crisis and conventional interventions and professional advice like rewards, boundaries, rules, or institutionalization are making it worse.

• Professionals have said things like you/your child is “a complex case,” “has Oppositional Defiant Disorder,” is “maybe bipolar but doesn’t quite fit” or “can’t possibly be Autistic because they are too social.” 

• The suspected PDAer has an Autism diagnosis but many meltdowns or rigid behavior have nothing to do with routine disruption or sensory distress.

• The family has been doing an intuitive version of low demand parenting or living, are being harshly judged by others, and are looking for an understanding community.

• You recognize you or your child as PDA from reading about PDA strengths, even if the level of disability and distress is not yet at crisis levels. You want to learn how to avoid burnout. (I love when this happens!) 

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In Autistic PDAers, differences or disability in social interactions and relationships often look like:

• Social anxiety, which can look like the person creating “busyness” for themselves in stressful/unstructured social contexts, particularly those that call for neuronormative social behaviors (e.g. greetings, small talk). It can also look like situational mutism, use of grunting/noises in place of language, reliance on comfort items/people, and a restricted range of physical or emotional actions/expressions.

• Strong drive for physical co-regulation, often “on the body” of a parent or partner even if the other person is cueing they don’t want that touch.

• Gets triggered or scared when someone is in an authority position over them, even subtly. Exceptions may happen when engaging a special interest. 

• Loves people but easily exhausted or dysregulated by social situations, such as school, offices, playdates, parties, conversations.

• Looks completely fine in a social or high-stimulation situation but then melts down or shuts down at home or in another safe place. PDA children can look like “two different kids” and lead extended family or school staff to not believe parents who say their child is struggling at home.

• When another person asserts authority or control, the PDAer will assert their own control in subtle or intense ways, i.e. critiquing, giving a cold shoulder, hiding or breaking objects, swearing, insulting, antagonizing. This is usually against the weakest or safest member of the house, which could be a parent, sibling, or pet. (The behavior is known as “equalizing,” a term coined by parent coach Casey Ehrlich, or equity-seeking behavior, a term coined by Kristy Forbes.)

• PDA children often have very different relationships with different caretakers. For instance, being compliant with parent A and demand-avoidant or equalizing with parent B. (This erroneously leads parent A to conclude parent B is too permissive, when the reason for the different behavior is actually that the PDA child feels less safe with parent A. They therefore hold in their threat response until they are with parent B, their safer person). Children may have particular activities they will only do with one parent and not the other.

• Intense need to control their own actions or the actions of others. May look like perfectionism and/or intense need to control the actions of others, such as micromanaging, or even physically moving a parent or partner’s body.

• A need to be in control in all or most social situations. Thrives in social roles where they have control or status without needing to wade deep into messy interpersonal group dynamics. Examples: Director, leader, facilitator, creative, prankster, know-it-all. May check out or be unable to participate in social activities (including therapies) where they cannot play a preferred/safer social role.

• Obsessions or special interests may be focused on people, such as a friend, parent, sibling, teacher, or romantic interest. This can look like platonic or romantic infatuation.

• Extremely sensitive to other people’s energy and mood

• Often has a preference for one-on-one friendships over groups if they are not the group leader. However, some PDAers are very outgoing in groups.

• May lose friendships without understanding why

• Can hold grudges for a very long time. 

• People are often either “in” or “out” of the PDAer’s safe circle. 

• Friendships are most easily made and maintained through shared special interests.

In Autistic PDAers, differences or disability in language and communication often look like:

• Charismatic and outgoing, leading clinicians trained in Autistic stereotypes to miss Autism

• Makes intense eye contact or dysregulated by eye contact (may mask this by looking at nose or forehead) or make eye contact anyway and get dysregulated.

• Preference for info-dumping or taking turns info-dumping, rather than a back-and-forth conversation.

• Strong desire to communicate in a “teaching” role. May explicitly request that you state you “don’t know” things so that they can “teach” them to you, or that you “didn’t know” something they just shared so they can feel that they have been the first to inform you and confirm that they were aware of the information before you.

• Loves being inundated by factual information on topics of interest

• May be hyperverbal or verbally precocious, with early speech/language and/or a huge vocabulary. May learn new words very easily and be thought of as an “old soul” because of their casual and highly accurate use of sophisticated language and phrases

• May have a speech (articulation) or language delay. Some PDAers are primarily Gestalt Language Processors who acquire language in large “chunks” that they then break down and rearrange/”mitigate.” Some PDAers need communication devices (AAC) to speak.

• Misses or cannot respond to some neurotypical social cues, such as body language, tone of voice, innuendo, flirting

• Interrupts a lot

• Experiences talking as a demand sometimes. May go situationally mute when stressed or have increased heart rate or dysregulation while speaking even when they want to be speaking.

• May benefit from non-spoken options for communication, even if they can speak with their mouths, particularly when tasked with communicating more vulnerable information, such as their needs, wants, or feelings, and especially in environments with stressful sensory, social or emotional components.

In Autistic PDAers, differences or disability in sensory processing can vary widely and may look like:

The below are just examples. Everyone’s sensory profile is unique. If they are Autistic, a PDAer will have a “spiky” sensory profile, where several or all senses are either very sensitive or very insensitive. For instance:

• Vision: May crave intense or soothing visual input, sensitive to sunlight, and other bright lights, may notice details or beauty that others miss.

• Hearing: May crave loud music, intense rhythm, or be sensitive to small noises, have misophonia, pick up on noises other people miss, need white noise to sleep, hear very subtle speech/language “errors” or even near-errors that others make (e.g. they reliably notice and highlight the comedy/absurdity of you starting to say the first syllable of a wrong word and correcting yourself). May be highly attuned to accents and intonation and readily asks others about their tone of voice if it deviates from what was expected. May mimic accents or mannerisms easily and unconsciously.

• Touch: May be sensitive to clothing, prefers being naked, likes loose comfortable clothes. Sensitive to touch, or may only allow touch from certain safe people. Alternatively, may seek intense tactile input by wearing layers of clothes, many accessories, and seeking to cover skin with substances like paint, dirt, soap, or sand.

• Taste/food texture examples: May crave intense tastes, like salt and vinegar or sweets, dislike plain water. May be extremely sensitive to food taste and texture, may meet criteria for ARFID (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder). May benefit significantly from engaging in regulating physical or other activities while eating to facilitate processing of taste/texture sensory inputs. May also make up food restrictions that have nothing to do with taste/texture, in order to feel in control in the face of the demand to eat.

• Smell: May be extremely sensitive and easily dysregulated by smells, and highly comforted by others.

• Proprioception (the sense of where your body is in space): PDAers usually crave intense sensory input on their body, like pressure, jumping, crashing, exercise, weighted blankets, vibration. May get hurt easily. May walk into walls, trip, drop things, grip a pen very tightly. May seek very tight hugs for proprioceptive feedback.

• Vestibular sense (sense of balance): May crave spinning, being upside down OR may get motion sick or car sick very easily; may have exceptional balance.

• Interoception (sensing inside the body): May struggle to notice, interpret, or respond to internal body cues, such as hunger, thirst, bathroom, location of pain, under- or over-stimulation.  

• Empathy: Hyperempathy, hypo-empathy, or anywhere in between. May be so overwhelmed by empathy they are unable to express it. May appear to lack empathy, but only because they are in threat mode. When feeling safe, empathy may be expressed.

• Other sensory traits:

  • Delayed or precocious fine motor skills

  • Delayed or precocious gross motor skills

  • Uses stims (repetitive movements, fidgets, or other sensory input) to self-regulate

In Autistic PDAers, differences or disability in attention often look like:

• Monotropic attention, which means more attention for fewer things at a time, leading to hyperfocus, special interests, sensory overwhelm in polytropic (multiple concurrent attention tunnel streams) environments. Monotropic attention styles, when allowed, can facilitate flow states that allow the Autistic/PDA person to best think, process, regulate, engage deeply with the activity/context, feel emotions, and express themself.

• Special interests, which can be stereotypical Autistic interests like games, science, or a fandom; or can be a person, friend group, animals, a social cause, a creative medium, a project, or a common or obscure activity or topic. (Special interests are not defined by topic, but by the role the interest plays in the Autistic person’s life. PDAers may have similar interests to typical peers, such as drawing or sports, but hold them more intensely. Common PDA kid special interests include gaming and YouTube, especially in burnout.)

• PDAers need novelty, and may cycle through special interests every few weeks or months, or they may have a long-term special interest with shorter-term “fixations” at the same time. Once a fixation or special interest ends, the PDAer is usually averse to interacting with it for a while.

• Very difficult for another person to get their attention when they are focused.

• Difficulty transitioning. Warnings often increase stress and make transition harder. May resist more common transition supports like timers because they feel rigidly outside of the PDAer’s control, and also are often facilitated by an adult trying to exert control over a PDA child.

• Remarkable memory, both for specific facts and long term memories 

• Craves novelty such as new fixations, new special interests, or buying new things. May become disheartened by their own disenchantment with previously novel/beloved items.

• Sees details before the big picture, and/or has trouble screening out irrelevant details. This may also appear in contexts when others in a shared space are speaking to one another. The PDAer may be engaged in another activity but readily and reliably ask others what they said/are talking about despite the conversation seemingly not involving him/her/them.

• May not be able to learn or work if the learning or working is not self-directed and/or directly involving their current special interest.

• Talented autodidact with a strong drive to master when interested in a topic or skill 

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Common PDAer Preferred Social Roles:

Creator/Artist/Experimenter Builder/Tinkerer/Maker Redecorator/space changer Animal/nature caregiver Storyteller/Info-dumper Role play director Entrepreneur Consultant Game designer Performer Director Responsibility manager/doer (for PDA children, “adult” responsibilities may be sought out, like packing vacation bags, managing all aspects of grocery shopping they can access, feeding the dog, etc.)

Designer Fixer (of physical things) Problem identifier and Problem-solver Master of Ceremonies Leader Hero Critic Teacher Investigator Salesperson

Facilitator Champion Host/Greeter Inventor Jester/Fool Shaman Prophet Truth-teller Activist Iconoclast Helper (physically, verbally) Translator/explainer

Common PDA Strengths:

In the realm of Creativity:

Creative problem solver

Fixer, tinkerer, crafter, maker, artist

Imaginative

Great at role play

Out-of-the-box thinker

Often completes tasks in novel ways

Creative use of language

Develops new systems

Silly sense of humor

Creative song adaptations

In the realm of Leadership:

High drive for integrity

Values-driven

Entrepreneurial

Likes to teach back areas of expertise

Charismatic, magnetic

Comfortable in a leader role in a group

In the realm of Learning:

Strong autodidact (self-teacher)

Quick learner when ready

Ability to deeply focus when motivated

Strong drive towards mastery (Special Interests are often skill-based*)

Extraordinary memory

Fiercely determined

Thrives in project-based learning around their passions

In the realm of Empathy

Loyal to those in their safe circle

Empathic, may be hyper-empathic

Attuned to animals and nature

Upstanders in the face of injustice, unfairness

Gifted BS-detector

Uncannily good at reading others’ energy

Wants to help when others are in need

Deeply invested in others’ rights being respected

Derives great pride in having thought of or attended to something important for someone else’s well-being

If you are still unsure whether a PDA profile fits you or your child and whether The PDA Safe Circle™ would be supportive to you, here are several additional thoughts to consider:

• The PDA threat response can look many different ways. It can be subtle at first and may only escalate if more subtle bids for autonomy are ignored. (If you ask your child if they want to go on a walk and they ignore you, you can let it go and they won’t escalate. You’ve taken their silence as an indication they aren’t up for answering your question.  If you keep pushing for an answer, they may get activated and you’ll see the threat response show up if they yell at you, throw something, or say they never want to go on a walk again, or shut down and not be able to answer).

• The PDA threat response can also be highly masked and hidden from view for years for those who freeze, fawn, or flop as our go-to threat response. These folks are called internalized PDAers in the PDA community. Many PDAers have a mix of external (fight/flight) and internal (freeze, flop, fawn) expressions of threat.

• Another easily missed PDA strategy is using socially acceptable behaviors to maintain a sense of control (like being a perfectionist, know-it-all, or straight-A student). Not all perfectionists are PDA of course, but for some people their PDA coping strategy can look like intense self-control. Extreme self-control/perfectionism in this way can act as a preemptive measure for the PDAer to prevent others’ control of them, and to maintain a feeling of high status with respect to the activities they are engaging in.

• If a PDA child grows up in an environment or culture where they can access special interests, use their strengths, and have a lot of autonomy and co-regulation, the disabling aspects of being PDA may hardly show up. I (Shoshana) have clients who recognize PDA in their very young children because of a pattern of threat response and a pattern of strength, but the kids are nowhere near burnout yet. These parents work with me to prevent burnout. Levels of distress and disability are not written in stone for PDAers. While research attention on PDA is scant, and we don't have longitudinal studies, anecdotal evidence suggests that for many people the levels of distress and disability in adulthood depends on how well or poorly the PDAer is understood and accommodated from a young age.

If you see yourself or a loved one in the patterns described here, you can head to PDASafeCircle.com to join our growing community.