16/10/2023
✨Demand Avoidance is the most commonly known trait of PDA.
✨Demands can be anything from using the restroom to attending school.
✨Demands are seen as a loss of autonomy, and therefore a threat, to a PDA nervous system.
✨A person with PDA will respond to threats to their autonomy (demands) with the stress response of Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn.
✨This is an anxiety response and not something that can be controlled or outgrown.
✨I get the comment that PDA sounds the same as C-PTSD often. Demand avoidance is present in many different conditions, and not all demand avoidance is PDA. While they may present similiarly behaviorally, they have different underlying neurology.
✨PDA is INNATE. PDAers show traits of PDA and autism from birth, and it is not something that can be cured or outgrown, unlike trauma.
✨Another difference is that those with trauma would not prioritize autonomy over safety- PDA demand avoidance impacts us at a survival level. A lot of PDAers will go without food no matter how hungry they are, for example, if it is perceived as too much of a demand.
