r/PDAAutism

30yo female with PDA. As soon as I’m doing well on a task and sticking to the schedule, I start thinking “don’t fuck up…you’re gonna fuck it up and disappoint everyone again…you’ve never been able to get this right, what makes you think you will this time…” It gives me so much anxiety, then I shut down and actually do disappoint everyone. They’re intrusive thoughts obviously, but I can’t get rid of them. I’ve tried positive self talk. I’ve talked about it extensively in therapy. I’ve tried meds. It is sort of connected to childhood trauma so I worry it’s kind of baked in there at this point. Any thoughts?

Just wanted to forbid everyone from taking their medication and drinking plenty of water.

I'm also going to once again ask that you do NOT stop scrolling. Please make sure to stay in bed because the floor is lava and you're not allowed to stretch your legs or feel grass. Everyone's expecting you to not express yourself so keep that in mind. It also only works if you force yourself to stay up until 3 am because you're not allowed to sleep when you're tired.

Please see to these instructions at once.

Also don't you dare think about what vegetable your body is craving. There's a song that comes to mind for you that always lifts your mood and it's important that you never put that on during the day in order to build character.

Thanks for your attention to this matter, stay vigilant out there

Hi all!

I’m a therapist assisting someone with diagnoses of ADHD, PDA/Autism.

I’m looking to get some perspective on a piece of this that myself and my client are struggling to conceptualize. Everyone in the situation is safe for now.

1. Client feels stuck / trapped because they feel that living itself is the demand. Being conscious I guess is a better way to frame it. Like there’s the demands that come with living, eating, drinking etc, but there’s also the demand of “being here at all” because they didn’t choose to be here. They struggle with “the point of it all”

1a. To complicate the above, Mostly I see the biggest help to reduce suicidality is to reduce demands but the issue with that is the low support they have. No family, no close friends. Hoping to get them help in the home but even signing up for that / going through the process is a demand.

ANY perspective, advice, frameworks that have helped you etc would be much appreciated! Specifically about the first piece of living being the demand, but I felt like sharing the second piece was important context and the two are interconnected for sure!

I’ve read The PDA paradox, I follow @Erin Rackman, and I’ve read several other books written by autistic writers. I don’t have PDA but I am neurodivergent & try my best to be neuroaffirming Also this post was helpful. https://www.reddit.com/r/PDAAutism/s/g5rh08JtJU

Thanks for the help! (With acknowledgement that answering this post could be experienced as a demand! :) )

After much pda related activities surrounding my bike..I did it..finally after months..I took my bike out for a ride! Every step along the way I was secretly hoping for a reason to not get to ride my bike, but I persisted. I'm really proud of myself. Please don't congratulate me or tell me I did a good job. It might reverse my ability to do it again..but I wanted to share my win with the sub because its something im genuinely proud of!

I'm from near Welshpool in Wales, 19M, autistic, i play guitar, I'm good at fiddling with electronics, I'm very close to my mum, and right now I'm friendless. I'm completely uninterested in "romance".

We've always found the best place for me in the alternative education community and made some excellent friends there. My upbringing has always been child-led and I've been empowered to follow my interests and self-learn at my own pace, and now after all that i do not want to move on to overly structured, scripted education such as college, or get some Sisyphean 9-5 job, especially after seeing so many people struggle. I want to do something really worthwhile that i enjoy.

We travel long distances and can meet up anywhere within about 2 hours if it's worthwhile. The rest of the information that follows is supplementary and if you can't be bothered, you needn't read it.

In my early teens i fell in with the wrong people and became friends with a couple engaging in underage sex. I wasn't yet aware of the implications of this and put up with it, even as they increasingly tried to involve me, by just treating it as a joke. Fortunately they're not in my life anymore.

My dad has nothing to do with us and my extended family has cut us out. Since i turned about 16 we've been losing my friends. Some were a bit nasty anyway, some changed and became unbearable, some vanished inexplicably. I was planning to jam and possibly form a band with 3 friends and they've completely disappeared. I'm not clingy or demanding, i have the bad examples set me by my dad and the couple i mentioned to bias me against that behaviour. I just can't understand where all my friends went.

More understandably, some have just moved on to college, and even if i wanted to, my friend group was so scattered (we had friends as far as Worcestershire) that i couldn't follow them in if i wanted to. One old friend is a Polish immigrant and would probably be looked on by the government as a squatter if he didn't take that path. He still finds time to drop me a line every few weeks.

When i was 17 i was wandering around a park with my mum while my sister hung out with her friends. I sat around, queued for the swings, wandered, i had no friends to hang with, and then someone called park security and told them i was a paedophile staring at children - in fairness i look mature and beardy. I was lucky my mum was there, and they were embarrassed when they tried to arrest a 17-year-old, but still... now I'm old, i can't go to the park and exercise, i can't wander about on my own for fear it'll happen again.

We don't live a cloistered existence, we always follow our interests and go to interesting places, but still, apparently there's not much we can do. We've searched for and continue to try neurodivergent and homeducation groups of all kinds throughout Wales and the West Midlands, but this is long enough already and i can't be bothered to write a full account to justify myself to whoever you are.

Anybody out there?

one of the biggest (group of) things i struggle with bc of my pda is hygiene—whether it's brushing my teeth, showering, or even washing my hands (ik, gross) and it feels embarrassing to admit it and that i just... don't usually really feel gross? I've rarely gotten that want or need to take a shower or wtvr from "feeling gross" that i hear other people talk about, and usually the only times that i feel "gross" is when other people point out how gross it is or i think of how other people would think of it, but it's still not much of a motivator for me...

just wondering if anyone else gets this ? i would assume it's a mix of hyposensitivity or something like that from autism and the demand avoidance

(mainly for showering; I haven't showered in a little over 3 weeks and i feel bad sometimes because i know its gross even though I don't particularly feel gross...)

i hope tthis makes sense ? ^^;;

As I've been working with my 10yo ASD/PDA daughter, I've been wondering when — or if — she'll become self-aware about how she differs from her peers. It's had me reflecting on my own childhood, especially the moments my worldview got cracked open and I suddenly saw how different my behavior was from other kids my age. I'll give two examples, and I'm curious if others have had similar experiences, and how it shaped you.

I grew up being praised for my intelligence and leaning hard on that as my identity — the "smart kid." By 4th grade I'd developed a smug sense of superiority. If people didn't like me, obviously it was because they were stupid, or jealous. My father was emotionally distant, maybe embarrassed by me at times, I'm not sure. My mother tried to check my worst extremes but was otherwise proud of my grades and let it go.

There was also a broader family tendency to let kids be kids. We grew up moderately wealthy in Latin America, with maids, cooks, a gardener — no chores, no housecleaning. Not ostentatious, just normal for our culture and class. But I also don't remember ever being taught to say thank you. Adults took care of you; that was the deal. Few expectations of us beyond appearance, table manners, and grades.

Shock one came in sixth grade. My teacher finally hit her limit, took me aside, and got right in my face: "Nobody disagrees that you're smart. But you're insulting your classmates and me, and that ends now. You are not the smartest person in the room. Today you were flat-out wrong about [whatever I was on about]. Parents have been calling me about how you treat other students. This is a problem, and you need to turn it around." It was harsh, but it was also the first time anyone had been honest with me about how I was showing up in the world. I started rethinking my behavior.

Shock two came through a carpool. One of the other kids — American, well-spoken, my same age (11 or 12) — turned to my mom after his first ride and said, "Thank you for the ride, Mrs. H!" I'd been in carpools for years and it had never once occurred to me to say thank you, or even goodbye. Something cracked open. I became suddenly, acutely aware of the gap between my peer's ease and my own childishness — and unsure whether nobody had taught me basic consideration, or whether I'd simply resisted learning it.

******

Parenting has put all of this back in front of me. My daughter is bright in a lot of ways, but the PDA piece means she resists almost anything suggested to her — the gains we've made (hygiene, table manners, homework, piano) mostly came through brutal confrontations and outbursts before we got her diagnosed. She has friends, does OK at school, is seen as kooky and fun. But I've noticed some of her closer friends carry a level of emotional maturity she doesn't have yet — they can hold a dinner conversation with my wife and me in a way she can't — and I've started seeing early signs of those friends getting annoyed with her silliness.

My own awakenings came through confrontation and through quiet comparison to a peer — both fairly standard social-learning pathways. But PDA kids often have a nervous-system-level aversion to perceived demands or correction, which makes me wonder if the "sharp shock" model that worked on me would just backfire on her, or take a completely different shape.

Have any of you seen a moment like this land for themselves or their PDA kid — and what did it actually look like?

I strongly suspect that my husband is dealing with PDA. We have a five year old daughter who is autistic and is about to start kindergarten. Mornings are very difficult with her when she gets inadequate sleep, and soon she will be needing to consistently get up much earlier than she has been. I've been slowly waking her up earlier each morning, but I think my husband views putting her to bed as a demand, and actively resists it and tries to delay it.

His part of her bedtime routine takes less than five minutes. He carries her to bed, sings her a short song, and tucks her in. That's about the only quality time he consistently spends with her and has been part of her routine for her entire life.

Sometimes I will announce to her that it's bedtime, other times, she will actually say she's tired and ask to go to bed. He will then become irritated and say he's not ready yet. He will do things like go outside and have a cigarette for half an hour, start watching a video on YouTube and insist that we wait until it's done, or initiate a phone call with a friend or family member that will go on and on. If I press the issue, he will become angry and start yelling. He will say hurtful things and tell me that I don't love my daughter and I want to get rid of her because I want her to go to bed, etc. Obviously, this upsets our daughter before she is supposed to go to sleep.

Things I've tried so far:

1. Not verbally announcing bedtime, but slowly start dimming lights, setting my daughter's pajamas out, etc. This doesn't help anything.

2. Speaking to him calmly at other times (like weekend mornings) about how getting enough sleep is important for daughter when she starts school and how she needs to start going to bed earlier. He will usually agree with me at the time we have the conversation, but nothing will change come bedtime.

Any help would be very appreciated.

I (20f) was not diagnosed with PDA, but I do have level one Autism and am pretty sure I have PDA as well. Here are a few demands that have set me off.

* “Today, I need you to go through all your clothes / stuff for next week.”

* “You’re on dish duty today,” (when I was already doing them).

* “Let me show you the correct way to do this” (I do it my own way because I don’t appreciate others telling me the correct way over and over again).

* “You only did the chore halfway. If you’re going to do chores, try to finish it. Maybe we can work on focusing better. This is why you’re getting tested for ADD, you could benefit from medication to help you focus.” It’s not a focus issue, it’s my lack of motivation from all the reminders to do things a certain way.

* “Just say this, tell them this, say you’re going to do this.” Instead of getting me to talk and communicate, it shuts me down.

Is anybody else frustrated by this stuff?

I have always disliked when people told me what to do, though in work settings I developed coping mechanisms as telling myself that I'm only following the instructions because it is necessary and if it were a private setting, I wouldn't do anything they demand, so I try to separate the me that is at work from the me that is at home, if that makes sense.

I burned out and stopped working for a while and since two years I'm trying to study something new but here is the problem: As soon as someone makes a negative comment about what I'm studying and how it doesn't suit me and bs like this, I lose all interest and drive to learn and until now I changed 4 majors. Should I just not tell the people close to me or that I know what I'm going to study next? Is this pda, can someone relate?

I need to know and understand what it is because I really want to finish what I will start studying. I feel like I'm in some kind of loop.

I am not sure if anyone can relate to this, but sometimes my PDA will focus on something I have already done, this is usually a demand that I didn't have a problem with at the time. I will say and think things like I can't believe I did that, or I hate myself for doing that, and I have even hurt myself in the past as a way to punish myself. I was wondering if anyone here could share the ways they deal with this kind of thing. I am really trying to work on my PDA because of how detrimental it is to my mental health, and I wish there were more professionals who knew about it and could help.

I really struggle with my wife needs to take space. I totally respect that but I really suffer when I’m apart from her. I want to be around people but I find 99.9% of people exhausting and draining, but I constantly long to have that 0.1% of people that I connect with around me , unfortunately they are few and far between and now at my age generally pretty busy anyway just wondering if other PDAers felt this way?

What are you up to now?

Is your PDA externalizing, internalizing or masked/supranormal type?

Did you get a degree?

Do you work?

Have kids?

Are you surviving?

What worked for you?

I'm curious curious because I'd like to know how PDA people do later in life.

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Sub-Types and Expressions of PDA

Externalized (Fight/Flight): Outward resistance like arguing, outright refusal, running away, or meltdowns.

Internalized (Freeze/Fawn): Inward responses like shutting down, masking, compliance, perfectionism, or situational mutism.

Masked or Supranormal: Appearing highly capable, charming, or overly polite on the surface while suffering extreme internal distress and approaching burnout.

I constantly see parents asking for reassurance that their young PDAers will turn out "ok." It made me wonder about the PDA adults among us. We didn't experience what the young PDAers of today are; they (some) have the ability to go into fight/flight, whereas most of us had to freeze/fawn (or be institutionalized/severely punished). It makes it hard to predict their futures compared to ours (and of course, if you've met one PDAer, you've met one PDAer), but still, I wonder, as a PDA adult, who you are?

​I'm 38, attempting to study a postgrad in Autism despite not having a bachelor's degree. I'm a carer/parent, I have had more jobs in my life than I can count, and I've started and not completed more courses and businesses than I care to remember.

​I wouldn't be here without my child. Before them, I would burn out on every job/course/commitment with no understanding of why; I would contemplate giving up more and more each time. My child is the one thing I cannot/would not/have not quit, and that's saying something because it is the hardest job in the world—the parental bond seems strong in us. I am medicated to support the high level of demands I face each day.

​My days are spent parenting/caring and looking after our mini zoo (don't ask) and now trying to study. I have no formal routine or commitments, but I am bound by my child's needs, which can feel very constrictive.

​Nice to meet you :).

So according to the book about PDA that I am reading PDA can present differently in different cultures. This kind of already confirmed what I already knew, it makes sense that a PDAer in a culture where productivity is highly valued might have a different experience than one who grew up where it is less valued

I am a White Canadian who is from Quebec, everyone in my family are White quebecers (except for my sister ´s husband, but that doesnt count since I obviously didnt grew up with him)

If my question feels like a demand you obviously don’t have to answer it

PS: if you are a PDAer of color and want to share how things like racism and racial bias impacted your experience feel free to do so, but should I make a separate post for this

I used Claude AI to open up to, told it all my history of suffering with anxiety, depression and OCD. Turns out based on my extensive input, Claude thinks I have AUDHD. Can anyone else relate to my experience? I used Claude to generate this overview:

37M | Late-identified AuDHD | Does this profile resonate with anyone here?

Seeking formal assessment for the first time at 37. Never been diagnosed. Built a comprehensive document for my GP covering childhood diary evidence, thirteen years of school reports, family psychiatric history, and screening scores all above clinical thresholds. Wanted to share what feels most defining about my profile and see how much of it lands with others here.

Executive function

Task initiation is the biggest one. The gulf between intending to do something and actually beginning it is real and consistent — not laziness, the thing just won't start. Working memory fails in real time — I've begun sentences and lost the thought entirely before finishing them, having to tell whoever I'm talking to that it's gone. Analysis paralysis is significant — a television purchase once involved printing comparison charts repeatedly without ever reaching a decision. The more options available, the harder choosing becomes.

Motivation

Entirely interest-based. If something genuinely engages me I can produce extraordinary output. If it doesn't, no amount of importance or urgency generates the fuel to engage with it. The motivational window is present-tense and perishable — enthusiasm that exists when a plan is made doesn't survive to when the plan arrives. My mother used to note this throughout childhood without either of us having a framework to explain it. Hyperfocus followed by complete dropout is the consistent pattern across hobbies, businesses, and interests across my whole life.

Emotional regulation

Rejection sensitive dysphoria is significant — acute response to perceived criticism that goes well beyond ordinary sensitivity. Long fuse, then a threshold explosion when a specific limit is crossed, then permanent severing. No graduated middle ground. Difficulty identifying emotions in the moment — I notice physical sensations before I can name what I'm feeling.

Social processing

Masking is extensive and has been since childhood. Thirteen years of school reports document a popular, mature, thriving student. A contemporaneous diary from the same period documents a child with anxiety-driven physical symptoms, consuming infatuation, and existential worry. Both true simultaneously. Eye contact requires conscious management — it compounds in intensity the longer it continues. Communication is content-led rather than socially lubricated — I say things because they're true or relevant, not to maintain social warmth. This gets misread as bluntness or, in a previous relationship, as showing off or trying too hard.

Sensory processing

Chronic baseline overstimulation — so compensated it no longer registers as episodic. Audio overlap intolerance — two simultaneous sound sources in the same environment is actively distressing. Food texture more important than taste since childhood. Oral stimming lifelong — from dummy beyond typical age through to nail biting to rawness and seeking objects to chew in social situations. Recently noticed rapid rhythmic cheek puffing in low-demand public environments, noticed rather than chosen. Background noise dependency — silence is genuinely distressing.

Sleep

DSPD lifelong — documented in childhood diary from age 11, natural sleep 2-4am, waking 11am-2pm. Every attempt to correct it has temporarily shifted and then reasserted. The waking transition requires several hours before genuine cognitive availability — not grogginess, the system genuinely hasn't completed the transition. Revenge bedtime procrastination significant — the quiet nocturnal hours are the only genuinely undemanded time available and surrendering them to sleep feels like a genuine loss.

Demand avoidance

PDA profile is probably the most defining feature of my daily experience. The employment incompatibility isn't about not wanting to work — I've run two self-employed businesses and work hard within them. It's the structural ownership of time that's intolerable. The awareness that someone else holds my schedule, that time off requires permission, that the entire temporal structure of life is organised around someone else's claim — it feels like time held hostage rather than exchanged freely. Even within self-employment, tasks I've committed to carry a mild obligation quality that produces the same pull toward avoidance. PDA has a threshold — being asked to do the washing up sits below it. Five days a week nine to five sits well above it.

Identity

Frozen internal self at approximately age 18 — the internal model hasn't updated as the external reality has aged around it. Never felt aligned with same-age peers — too mature for them in childhood, not aligned with their conventional milestones in adulthood. Chronic low self-worth produced by decades of self-blame for things that had a neurological explanation all along. The guilt around self-employment and the aversion to conventional employment has been one of the most persistent and damaging features — the cultural voice saying lazy, can't hack it, why can't you do what everyone else does, running continuously without the framework to refute it until very recently.

Burnout

Currently in significant burnout. Even gaming — ordinarily one of my most reliable sources of genuine engagement — isn't accessible in its usual immersive form. Everything feels like passing time. The anhedonia has a specific imposter effect — the features that would most visibly confirm the profile are precisely the ones burnout suppresses. The periods when I most doubt whether any of this is real are the periods when the evidence is least accessible.

The late identification experience

The more I learn, the more the imposter feeling activates. Each new piece of framework reveals another dimension of incompatibility that was always there but is now visible and named. That visibility can feel like accumulation — more problems, more difference — when what's actually happening is illumination of something that was present all along.

Does any of this resonate? Particularly interested in the PDA employment picture, the home orientation as regulatory necessity, the late identification imposter experience, and the burnout suppressing the very features that would confirm the profile.

I think a lot of this dynamic comes from his family. They honor explanations more than they look for actual repair. It means he holds his words in high regard and expects to also be able to just completely quit our relationship too for hours and call it space. He struggles to verbalize that it is just a need and instead will mismanage life so he can say he is having to because he is overwhelmed.

I do understand this a lot. What's hard is that he cannot biologically actually end being a son and dad. No matter the break he takes he can't lose that. It's difficult for a relationship though because it's painful and he frames it as almost ending it.

His family is very avoidant so they are ok with his ebb and flow because they do it too.

I have been thankful for the ways he has tried to take ownership of saying something before (sometimes it's just two seconds before he hangs up).

I don't know where this falls in this but he rewrites reality backwards. If the outcome wasn't favorable he will change in his mind what he said about it and then get upset I didn't listen to him.

It does seem like he has been using what he wishes as coping for so long that he may be truly believes it but it's a little frustrating to often have my words and reality not be accepted by him..

*However*. I am learning that a lot of this is from trauma and often I will stop trying to orient (?) him I guess you could say. It reminds me actually of when my mum is manic and she seems cognizant like a child but later doesn't recall it.

Sometimes he will want really hurtful things (usually leaving me out when he originally said I could be included )and I will finally cave because I see he needs the autonomy.

What are things (even unrelated to this all) that is advice?

For reference both of us have likely AuDhd & PDA but it shows up in very different ways. He's avoidant and I am not.

We live separate places. I have my own apartment and he lives with his mum because of health needs for her. She is pretty controlling because he is her extra money .