Pathological demand avoidance, also called pervasive drive for autonomy (though if you ask me-a PDAer-both names are lacking), is a hot topic in the neurodiversity-affirming mental health realm. I often see colleagues chastise each other in therapist spaces: "It's not oppositional defiant disorder, it's PDA. ODD isn't affirming." I get the same "ick" I used to get in treatment team meetings when my boss would interrupt staff who used the term "attention-seeking" by saying "Th

The dog rescue worker brought out the puppy that ended up being my dog son, followed by his brother and rotated the two of them multiple times before I announced that I was stuck in indecision because I loved them both so much. When she reflected to me that it was clear to her based on my mannerisms and emotional expression that I liked one more than the other, I was truly astounded. How did this person know how I was feeling better than I did? Did it make sense to outsource

At my cousin's funeral the week before I turned 16, I was fixated on my anger about the people approaching his casket, decked out in Christian regalia, saying prayers that reflected a religion he didn't believe in. I was aware that it wasn't socially acceptable to confront these fellow mourners on what I felt was selfishness, so I looked at his corpse and rolled my eyes as if to say "Do you believe these people?" in order to have an outlet to express my disdain. No one else s

The idea that relationships should not be "transactional" is in line with the anti-capitalist values around which I live my life and practice therapy. It is true that healthy relationships are built on more than give-and-take exchanges of favors, but the key word is "more than." Those exchanges are still there, and they are still crucial. While it's romantic and Hallmark card-esque to believe that love and friendship should be unconditional and that care is best when it's giv

For many people, recovery from an eating disorder is a long and winding road, full of self-discovery and unlearning harmful beliefs. But what happens when, after years of work, you realize that the recovery you fought so hard for was actually another form of masking? When the version of healing you were praised for was, in reality, compliance-based and centered around neurotypical norms? The Realization: Unmasking Recovery Many late-identified autistic individuals come to und

For those of us who are autistic and have an interest-driven nervous system, "special interests" (SpIns) are not just hobbies—they’re integral to our identity, offering comfort, focus, and a sense of mastery. An eating disorder may become a SpIn in and of itself or it may arise tangentially through other SpIns that either necessitate heightened awareness of one's body, eating, and movement habits, or are just muddied by the messaging of diet culture and involve a body ideal,

In college, I volunteered for a program to teach second-graders to guess what their peers were feeling based on flashcards of facial expressions, petting therapy dogs and imagining how they felt, and all kinds of reciprocal communication skill-building exercises. The program was called “Empathy Matters.” Those who had been signed up were the kids identified as having “behavioral issues,” bullying classmates, and seeming from the outside to not care about others. I wouldn’t be

Given that every individual has a sensory profile as unique as our fingerprints, and that every sense is involved in our experience of embodiment, it only makes sense that the way we approach healing our relationships with our bodies should be adapted to fit our very specific sensory needs.  It’s exciting to hear more and more eating disorder providers remark that treatment can no longer be “one-size-fits-all.” But when individualizing a plan for healing, how are they taking