Welcome to the Autism, ADHD podcast. I am so happy that you join me today. I want to take a moment and ask for your help. Please take just a second and give the podcast a five-star review.

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helpful information. Thanks so much again for taking the time to give that five-star review. Now,

let's get started. Welcome Dr. Melissa Neff to the Autism-AdHD podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Holly.

I am thrilled that you're here, so I'm going to introduce you really quick. Dr. Neff is a clinical

psychologist, educator, author, and speaker. The current focus of her practice is neurofeedback. For more than 10 years,

Dr. Neff specialized in conducting psychological evaluations for children and adults. She has specific

expertise in diagnosing, consulting, and providing education and training on the subject of

pathological demand avoidance.

She is also passionate about trauma, recovery, and post-traumatic growth work.

So today, we're going to be talking specifically about pathological demand avoidance or

people sometimes will just say PDA.

Yes.

Yeah.

So let's talk about what that is exactly.

Like what are some characteristics of PDA.

Okay.

Yeah.

So there's the label of PDA and then there's, I think, a more appropriate label that some folks that are PDAers themselves have kind of come up with. So I would love to talk about both if we can. Yeah. Let's do it. Okay. So pathological demand avoidance is a subtype or a profile of autism, not yet identified in the diagnostic manual,

but very much identified in clinical and research settings.

And it is characterized by, at least on the outside, resisting and avoiding ordinary demands and

requests.

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