Which comes first? Trauma or PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance)?

Often it's enough to be in a world that does not accept us, or that we find so incredibly challenging in terms of the differences between the way we are wired to exist and live; and the way society is set up.

There are huge disparities between the two. Inconsistencies in what we know and feel deeply as PDA children and how that truth is oppressed, ignored, and overlooked in the larger community is extremely confusing and dysregulating.

When our children are in this state of confusion, they are extremely fragile, very easily triggered and upset, and very reactive because their threat response is more activated than their typical baseline, which is already very activated.

I'm often asked about PDA and sleep, and I find it's worth looking into circadian rhythm differences:

Circadian rhythm differences arise when the body's internal clock, or circadian clock, is not in sync with our environment.

This internal clock typically runs on a 24-hour cycle, known as the circadian rhythm, and influences our sleep-wake cycle among other bodily functions. This poses a challenge with additional interoceptive processes such as needing to use the bathroom, eating, being tired, all processed by the PDA brain as demands.

When we examine this closely, we understand that the PDAer's internal clock is not really in sync with much outside of ourselves and in our direct environment, let alone sleep.

When there's a mismatch between our internal rhythm and external cues and processes like day and night (already challenging for autistic people due to the brain often not creating enough melatonin - sleep hormone), expected participation in 'life', and everything existing on a schedule such as eating and playing, we may experience problems with sleep quality and timing..just as a beginning point.

Scheduled times for these things can remove the joy of accessing the freedom of expression in how we eat, play and live.

But is this really a deficit or an impairment in the brain of a person wired to be an outlier? Wired for creativity, leadership and stepping outside the norm in order to thrive?

(A retro photograph capturing my first day of school. I'm smiling, dressed in a dark outfit with striking red accents on the sleeves from my school bag, standing in front of a wooden cabinet displaying a silver tea set. The indoor setting, warm lighting, and nostalgic quality of the image evoke the memory of an important childhood milestone. And, I remember the anxiety. This was my second school in six months of beginning Prep.)

What we don't find among all the information is the process whereby a consistently activated threat response will shift into a different sleep pattern in the body's natural drive to access safety in whatever way it can. What this can look like is our PDAers being awake all night (gaming, etc). When I was a child, it was reading all night under the covers by a small light, and for many PDAers, then sleeping all day.

This isn't laziness, it's the result of a culmination of many natural consequences of being a PDAer and having an exhausted adrenal system as the result of consistent cortisol levels flooding the body, along with adrenaline, lack of serotonin and dopamine and being a child that is not wired to rest in conventional ways.

Generally speaking, when children become overtired, they become overstimulated and tend to become hyperactive rather than tired, as adults would. They're unable to take themselves off to rest at times, and of course as PDAers, our threat response resists social and cultural constructs and unspoken social contracts we haven't agreed to. SLEEP.

We begin to see that what are very standard, benign practices and rituals most people are able to engage with (sleep, eating regularly, showering, etc.) become incredibly threatening, and over time, our daily lives become more and more threatening and terrifying for us.

Being different is rarely safe. And being who we are supposed to be is rarely the safer option.

Parents seek out answers for their PDA children. They want the right ones, too. And when I'm asked about how to navigate sleep, or food, or school, I will always say this:

It's up to the family to observe where their child is at, and make decisions accordingly.

The challenging part about this is that we're navigating very rarely treaded territory (publicly, at least), and we're forced to rely on our intuition, which can also be somewhat thwarted by the pressure placed on us as parents to 'handle it'.

We also know that the ways we'd be expected to 'handle it' can further push our children into the abyss of 'can't,' which is also often the entrance to the abyss of trauma, depending on the response we are met with when in that delicate state.

(A minimalist and modern design with a question "How do we navigate this?"centred in a pink rectangular box. The background is a soft, neutral beige with splashes of a coffee-like texture, evoking a sense of calm and contemplation. The simplicity of the design suggests a focus on reflection and thoughtfulness.)

I ask myself a few questions:

What is disturbing me most?

Sometimes I have to sit and write it out or talk about it out loud in the car while driving (to myself). It's an exercise of getting very real with myself (as real as my neurobiology can allow). When I ask myself what is disturbing me most... some of the answers may be -

• "I'm afraid I'm failing my child"
• "I'm afraid I'm going to make things worse by allowing a messed up sleep routine"
• "This will cause problems between my partner and I"
• "We'll be judged or criticised" ..the very real fear (and reality) of being at risk (child protection, mandatory reporting, etc. from outside sources such as school, professionals, etc that do not understand).

Sometimes I find in my own process that I am gaslighting myself. I may find I'm in the space of thinking I have it all wrong, and it can't be this bad and there must be a simpler solution or the perfect expert or the right answers somewhere, and I'm just overcomplicating things.

It doesn't help when we often do face outside (and inside) judgment and criticism from others, including those supposed to love and support us. This question is something I ask myself because more often than not, whatever is creating resistance and terror in me, preventing me from being able to make decisions or find clarity is my own ‘stuff’.

(Image 1: A nostalgic photo of a young Kristy standing confidently with hands on hips, wearing a striped sleeveless top. The backdrop is a lush garden with tall trees and a clear blue sky, hinting at a warm, sunny day.)
(A vintage photo of Kristy in a colorful sweater and light pants, hands on hips, with a confident stance. The background shows a room with a wooden cabinet displaying bottles and books, giving a warm, retro vibe to the picture.)

As a child, I didn’t sleep. I was up in the night, dragging the TV around to my door to watch, I was reading, I was playing in my room all hours of the night in the quiet. It was the 80s, and it was unheard of in my world for children to be allowed to be up during the night.

This doesn't mean they weren't, though.

As an adult who had to mask, who had to fawn, the way I approached my own parenting was along the same lines. Rules. Children sleep. They eat regularly, they shower or there are consequences. I’m the boss, I’m in charge and this is my role.

There are very particular embedded, entrenched, unspoken (and spoken) rules around conventional parenting in society, and for those of us who are navigating a life we have had to carefully craft; an identity we have had to carefully craft via observation of others (masking), anything that threatens to undo that lifetime of hard work that we’re often not even consciously aware of as being hard work because we don’t have any other experience to compare it to; is a threat to US.

It’s a threat to us being accepted; it’s a threat to us being viewed as ‘normal’ or ‘fitting in’ or being ‘good enough’.

Along with that often comes intergenerational trauma in families where neurodivergence is unidentified and adults believe life is just hard and that’s how it is. This can mean that for us, there is unrecognised loss, grief, sadness that starts to make its way into our parenting (research shows that parents with trauma begin to experience the effects of that when parenting begins, sometimes even in pregnancy.)

This is the opportunity right here:

Do we support ourselves to go gently, into that space where the sadness, the desperation, the fear, the loneliness, the isolation, the feelings of unworthiness are waiting to be seen, heard, and known; or do we push forward with force, continuing the generational patterns of what has created such sadness, not only within us but in society?

Is this about my child, or is it about me?

Both, of course. And yes, of course many of the experiences our PDA children are having, and we are having are at the surface level agonising. They are real. There are times where are are living in a consistently activated, perpetual heightened state of arousal, and we are experiencing what our children are, at varying degrees.

I sit with hundreds of parents, in private consultation, in community spaces, in real-time, and I am able to identify whether they’re PDAers within the first five minutes.

I don't identify PDAers because I get out a checklist and manually go over it. I don't recognise PDA because I see impairment or deficits.

I see incredible strength. A 'resilience' (ugh, a weaponised concept) like no other.

We speak the same language of the heart.

I am identifying neurokindred.

This is not an insult. It’s a beautiful way of connecting energetically with those I know to be my kin.

These parents are often carrying their own trauma as well, and while the point of focus may be on our child eating chocolate for breakfast, or gaming for hours on end, or not attending school (and these are without a doubt, very real stressors, as is our biological drive to nurture and soothe our children); the deep unrest sits within us, remaining unseen, unheard, and unknown.

We were not insubordinate children who needed more discipline.

We were not intentionally creating stress and suffering for our families, although we felt it.

We were here with purpose, with an energy that didn’t match the frequency of that which is forced onto all of us in society.

(A smiling Kristy, again with hands confidently (nothing confident about it!) on her hips, wearing a yellow sleeveless dress and headband. The indoor setting and the style of the photograph suggest a home environment from several decades ago. That's downright rude..several decades ago? It was 1984, and it was her Mother's wedding day.)

As a child, I was wild. My spirit was alive, awakened. I was connected to Country, to life, I was happy. I swam, I danced, I would sing loudly and I had lots of questions.

Too many questions? Never.

Just the wrong types of questions. Unsafe questions. Questions reflective of critical thinking; that were curious about the agenda and the blatantly obvious reality of adults being mostly unhappy and in pain.

Why do adults give up their lives to work for others?

Why do all the adults in my family take sleeping pills to get to sleep? Why do all the adults in my family use medication to ‘feel better’?

Why do the adults in my family drink so much?

Why are adults not here, in this moment, noticing how beautiful life is?

Questions that forced adults to become aware that their children are aware.

PDA children see and feel deeply, what is not yet even skirting their parent's periphery of consciousness.

We know when our parents are in pain, when they’re sad, when they’re lonely, and we know when it’s old pain. Untouched pain.

When we live within a world filled with the unheard, unseen, and unknown; it is a threat to our spirit. It threatens our livelihood. We don’t want to ever be this way as adults.

It was never so much the compliance that scared me; it was the chance of resulting pain that accumulates with it, all that remains unseen, unheard, and unknown.

I did not want that for myself. And, it's exactly what I got when I became a parent.

Layers. Complexity. Nuance.

Nobody to blame. Nobody is at fault.

We can't know what we don't know until we know it.

We are all TRYING to remain on course, and some of us just cannot.

We might for a while, and then we can’t. We can't pretend, we can't adapt, we can't comply, we can not be anyone or anything other than who and what we are. 

Or, it will quite literally lead us toward our ending.

Can’t.

Not won’t.

Can’t. Not won’t.

(A weathered, rustic house with peeling paint and an old-fashioned veranda. Kristy's eldest daughter stands on the porch documenting with images and videos, dressed in a checkered dress. It was Kristy's grandparent's home and the place where her happiest days were spent. Today it looks very different.)

I have memories of a beautiful, and wounded Mother, for the first four years of my life. Memories of sitting on her knee, my head against her chest and the sound of her voice—it’s soothing vibration playing against the side of my face as I slept against her.

We co-slept. We swam and we fished. We’d play a card game traditionally called SNAP!, but we renamed it “Pick an animal’s bum” or “Pick an animal’s nose”. We had chickens, a huge veggie garden and Country. So much connection with Country.

She was young when I was born, all of 19. It won't surprise you to know I was the same age when I had my first baby.

Over time, I lost the Mother I knew. She was (is) PDA.

I watched and heard her family speak poorly about her in my presence, and to me directly.

My family; her own family, would say she was “as mad as a cut snake”. I watched her slowly go away to some place within herself, and become a 9-5er, then a 5-6er, then she was gone most hours, until she was working weekends too. Desperate for acceptance, for approval, I watched her seeking it for my entire childhood and still, to this day.

I watched my stepfather fall into addiction, and we became a family that had the police in the driveway of our family home, often. Family violence. Drink driving. All the things.

I have a perfect score of 10/10 on the ACE (Adverse childhood experiences rating scale).

Do I carry trauma as an adult? Yes. Is it childhood trauma? Yes, no, and it’s complex. Childhood trauma isn’t when it began. There is a growing body of research that reflects the concept of trauma being carried in our DNA. It’s possible we are born, carrying the unresolved legacy that is trauma within our DNA, from past generations..ancestors.

But it carries on, for life, until we ‘notice’, and even then, addressing it is also complex and nuanced and involves a range of factors such as accessibility, and our capacity and ability to navigate a society that also ‘mainstreams’ support, with generic frameworks based on the untruth that we are all the same, and we all benefit from the same supports.

And then, we’re often back where we started.

Many of us are using any energy we have to survive. We are keeping our children alive. When our children then come out of survival mode and begin to do well, it’s then that we can often begin our own rapid decline into ‘can’t’.

It is not simple. But this I know for sure:

I am the PDAer in my family that noticed and was not able to continue pretending I didn’t notice.

I am the person in my family who watched and experienced the impact of intergenerational trauma associated with not being who we are born to be.

(An evocative quote set against a calming background. The quote reads "Pain travels through families until someone is ready to feel it. -Stephi Wagner" and is placed within a pink rectangle that overlays a larger, beige circle with a splattered texture. The colors and design convey a sense of gentle introspection and the sharing of wisdom.)

In our PDA families, pain travels through families until someone has no choice but to feel it, carry it, and do something with it. And, it’s the doing something with it that is the hardest.

And, we completely overlook that we're expecting a child to snap out of this load they carry; simply because we approach their message via the lens of binary, redundant behaviourism.

How should it look, for a child to carry that load?

How should they behave?

How should they move, speak, sleep?

It often does not bring support along with it. It often means standing alone.

BUT..we watch our children thrive along the way, and we KNOW we’re doing something with the pain we carry by allowing them to be who they were always meant to be.

In turn, the beautiful resulting and surprising outcome is that we are no longer afraid to move further and further toward the unknown.

The greatest gift we can give our children, is to accept the gift they bring..to look into their eyes, peering up at us, asking us to join them in exploring the untraversed. 

To meet our sadness, to let the tears fall and to know we are safe, and that we are healing.

It won’t be perfect. It will be the hardest thing we have ever done. It will be messy and ugly and non linear, as life is supposed to be along the way to the best parts.

As life is.

And YOU are so worthy.

(Raising the coming generations of PDAers: Kristy's eldest daughter is feeding her baby cousin with a bottle. She has blonde hair and is wearing a red dress, and has a tattoo on her arm. Her and baby are sharing an intimate and tender moment between the two.)

Sending love to you, as we enter into a new year, navigating new territory.

I am here with you travelling the untraversed.

- Kristy

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