Learning at PDA North America Conference and What Comes Next

In early March, I had the privilege of attending the 6th Annual PDA North America Conference in Chicago.  We had three days immersed in learning, connection, and more than a few moments of personal recognition.

PDA originally stood for Pathological Demand Avoidance and is now increasingly referred to as Persistent Drive for Autonomy.  It is a nervous system profile, one that is recognized in people with neurodivergent neurotypes, characterized as a nervous system that is fundamentally wired around autonomy and safety. It’s not defiance. It’s not bad parenting. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a particular way the nervous system orients toward the world, where perceived demands, even subtle, everyday ones, can register as genuine threats.

The “persistent drive for autonomy” framing matters to me, and it’s the language I use in my practice. It’s less pathologizing, more accurate, and far more useful as a starting point for understanding someone’s experience rather than diagnosing what’s wrong with them.  Getting to identifying versus diagnosing is a post in the upcoming weeks.

What made this conference different wasn’t just the quality of the speakers, though they were exceptional, it was the room itself. Clinicians, parents, PDA adults, and researchers all in the same space, many of us navigating PDA in our own families and nervous systems as well as in our professional work. I had the privilege of being there alongside colleagues I’m honored to call friends, and the combination of formal learning and real human connection made the whole experience land differently than a typical training.

One of the highlights was meeting Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman, creator of The PDA Safe Circle® a strengths-based framework for understanding and supporting PDA across the lifespan. The Safe Circle approach is visual, intuitive, and genuinely actionable in a way that a lot of clinical frameworks aren’t. It applies not just to kids, but to PDA teens and adults as well and it centers the nervous system, not compliance. I left that conversation genuinely excited.

Which brings me to what’s next — and there’s a lot of it.

This April, I started in the inaugural PDA Safe Circle Clinician Certification with Rabbi Shoshana, the first cohort of its kind. We have just finished week two and I’m already looking forward to how this training will add to how I support clients, how I talk about PDA with families, and how I share resources with the people who find their way to this practice.

PDA is a profile I encounter regularly in my work, in neurodivergent clients, in the families I work with, and honestly, in my own life. Having a structured, affirming framework to offer is something I’ve wanted for a while, and this certification feels like exactly the right fit.

And there’s more happening this month.

Some of the incredible clinicians I connected with at the PDANA conference joined me, also this month, for an episode of That’s Me: Autistic Lives. Unfiltered., a podcast hosted by my friend and colleague Kory Andreas, LCSW-C. Kory is a late-diagnosed Autistic clinician, autism specialist, and one of the most thoughtful and direct voices in this space. Her podcast centers the real, unfiltered experiences of high-masking autistic adults, skipping the textbooks and the outdated stereotypes in favor of honest conversation with people who are actually living it.

Getting to sit down with clinicians I deeply respect, on a platform built by someone I’m proud to call a colleague and friend, to talk about PDA specifically, it feels like exactly the kind of cross-pollination this community needs more of. I’ll share the link here as soon as the episode is live.

What this means for Winding Road Counseling

As I move through the certification, I’ll be adding PDA as a dedicated focus area on my Resources page with curated links, explanations, and tools for individuals and families who are just beginning to make sense of this profile, or who have known about it for a while and are looking for more.

If PDA is part of your world, whether you’re a parent trying to understand your child, an adult who recognizes yourself in this description, or a professional navigating this with clients, I’d love to connect. Stay tuned here for more as both the certification and the podcast episodes unfold.