Open Submission Call: "Community PDA Interview"
- Your childhood (this is the hook) What’s a specific moment where you were labeled “difficult,” “defiant,” or “too much”… but you now see it as autonomy? What did adults misunderstand most about you?
👉 We want a scene, not a summary.
- Your internal experience
When a demand hit you as a child (or now), what did it feel like in your body?
- tight chest
- mental fog
- shut down
- masking
Did you want to comply but couldn’t? Or did it feel like a hard “no”? When there wasn't the risk of a beat down I moved to the beat of my own drum. When I learned I could not be beaten anymore I made my own rules and followed no one elses.
👉 This grounds the cognitive science in lived reality.
- Adult you (this is credibility)
How does PDA show up now in your work or daily life?
What systems have you built to protect your autonomy without burning everything down?
👉 This is where you shift from “story” → “authority.”
- Parenting (this is the bridge)
What is something you refuse to do to your kids because of your own experience?
What does “defending their autonomy” look like in a real moment?
👉 Not philosophy—show it in action.
- Your bold claim (this is the thesis)
You said:
“I believe PDA is simply human free will…”
Push this further:
Are you saying PDA is:
a spectrum of human autonomy?
mislabeled resistance to control systems?
a feature, not a condition?
👉 This is where your piece becomes controversial (in a good way).
- The “pathology critique” (this is your edge)
What specifically bothers you about the term Pathological Demand Avoidance?
What harm have you seen it cause (in yourself or others)?
👉 Name it cleanly. No rant—just precision.
“Once you take autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and all the other ways that you can developmentally be different from the typical, you actually don’t get many typical people left. That is going to change society, but not in a bad way.”
-- Francesca Happé, The Times (UK)