About Neuronesting
Hey y’all!
My name is Ariel and I’m a homeschooling mom to three neurodivergent kids, partner (of 20+ years!) to an autistic public school teacher, a late-diagnosed neurodivergent (AuDHD+PDA) disabled writer, and general health and wellness nerd.
I studied healthcare case management, and in my pre-kids life, I worked as a full-spectrum doula, childbirth educator, and nanny. I currently specialize in health literacy writing.
I started NeuroNesting in 2023 to share my experiences as a neurodivergent person, parent, and partner. I primarily focus on the PDA—pathological demand avoidance or pervasive drive for autonomy—profile of autism, an atypical presentation widely unrecognized in the United States and controversial even within the broader autistic community.
What Is PDA?
PDA—pathological demand avoidance or persistent drive for autonomy—is generally characterized as an atypical autism profile (the line of thought is that all PDAers are autistic, but not all autistics are PDA) but there’s honestly not a lot of high-quality research available to draw from.
Some folks strongly identify with PDA traits but do not consider themselves autistic, and usually identify with ADHD. Many PDAers consider PDA traits to be anxiety driven, but this is by no means universal!
I feel like the most accurate definition I can give, drawing from the research available, my own lived experience, and the experiences of other PDAers, is that PDA is a neurodivergent profile characterized by:
Involuntary resistance to the demands of everyday life that is destructive, violent, or otherwise viewed as ‘extreme’
A strong affinity towards or preference for role play and fantasy
A self-directed, flow-seeking learning style
A Brief History of PDA
Elizabeth Newson, a child psychologist working with complex cases, first coined the term pathological demand avoidance in the 1980s. She claimed that some children considered ‘atypically autistic’ had many shared traits.
After more than 20 years of research, she published Pathological demand avoidance syndrome: a necessary distinction within the pervasive developmental disorders in the Archives of Disease in Childhood medical journal. Newsom proposed that PDA should be recognized as a unique sub-type of autism, defined by six core traits:
Obsessive resistance to demands through manipulation and control strategies
Mood swings and panic attacks, which may include violence
Language delay with later catch-up, bizarre language content
Sociable but lacking a sense of identity, status, obligation, or boundaries
Comfortable in role-play and pretend
Very passive—increasingly “actively passive” as demands increase
The U.K. National Autistic Society recognized PDA in 2008, and the PDA Society, a PDA-focused information and support charity, was formed in 2016.
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