2025 • reference

PDA & Monotropism

Pathological Demand Avoidance through the monotropism lens.

What is PDA?

Pathological Demand Avoidance — A profile of autism characterized by extreme anxiety-driven avoidance of everyday demands.

Also called Persistent Drive for Autonomy (reframe).

Key features:

  • Resists and avoids ordinary demands of life
  • Uses social strategies to avoid (distraction, excuses, negotiation)
  • Appears socially capable on surface
  • Extreme mood swings
  • Comfortable in role play and pretend
  • High anxiety underneath

The Monotropism Connection

Woods (2018): PDA Through Monotropism

Insight: PDA may be monotropism + demand sensitivity.

When attention tunnel is pointed at one thing, demands from outside the tunnel are:

  • Intrusive
  • Disorienting
  • Anxiety-provoking
  • Feel impossible to comply with

It's not defiance. It's architectural.

Why Demands Are Hard

Monotropic attention + unexpected demand:

  1. Attention is deep in current focus
  2. Demand arrives from outside the tunnel
  3. Switching requires enormous effort
  4. The demand feels impossible (not won't — can't)
  5. Anxiety spikes
  6. Avoidance strategies engage

The avoidance isn't the problem. It's the symptom.

The Reframe

Traditional view: "They refuse to do things."

Monotropism view: "Switching attention to do things is extremely costly, and the anxiety of being interrupted triggers protective avoidance."

Accommodation: Work with the attention system, not against it.

Practical Strategies

For PDA + monotropism:

  • Indirect requests — "I wonder if the dishes need doing" vs "Do the dishes"
  • Advance warning — "In 20 minutes, we'll need to..."
  • Negotiation — Let them have input on timing/method
  • Reduce demand language — "Would you like to..." vs "You need to..."
  • Respect current focus — Wait for natural transition point when possible
  • Explain why — Demands without rationale feel arbitrary

Not Just "Won't"

The key insight: PDA presentations often involve genuine inability in the moment, not willful defiance.

When you understand this as attention architecture + anxiety, you stop trying to force compliance and start trying to reduce demand load.

Key Resources

→ Back to Related Theories

← Back to home