For adults seeking psychological evaluations, particularly for autism, ADHD, or mental health diagnoses, deciding between private pay and insurance can have significant long-term implications. While insurance may appear to offer financial convenience, there are compelling reasons why private pay could be the better option for many individuals. This article explores the benefits of choosing private pay, focusing on privacy, autonomy, and potential future impacts.

The holiday season, including Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s, offers opportunities for joy and connection, but can be overwhelming for neurodivergent children. Sensory challenges, changes in routine, and social expectations can make these festivities stressful. As a parent, your support and understanding can help your autistic or ADHD child feel more comfortable and engaged. By adapting traditions and focusing on their unique needs, you can create a holiday experience that is both meaningful and manageable. Here’s how to help your autistic or ADHD child thrive during the holidays while honoring their unique needs.

The holiday season, spanning Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve, and other celebrations, often brings joy, but can also pose unique challenges for autistic adults. The blend of sensory overwhelm, shifting routines, and heightened social expectations can make this time particularly difficult. Here’s a neurodiversity-affirming guide to understanding these difficulties and practical strategies to manage them.

Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), also referred to as Pervasive Drive for Autonomy, is a behavioral profile often associated with autistic children, though it can appear in individuals with other neurodivergence. PDA is characterized by an extreme need to avoid everyday demands, often due to the overwhelming fear of losing autonomy. While PDA is not officially recognized as a standalone diagnosis in the U.S., parents frequently seek evaluations to determine whether their child's behavior fits this profile. In the U.K., PDA is considered a profile of autism, but from my clinical experience, I’ve seen that PDA traits also manifest in children who are not autistic.

When you’re an adult seeking autism testing, finding the right clinician is crucial. It’s important to ensure that the person you choose to work with is not only knowledgeable about autism but also neurodiversity-affirming. This means they respect and understand the diverse ways autism can present in adults, and they approach the assessment process with an open mind and a supportive attitude, not a gatekeeping approach.

"Inside Out 2," the sequel to Pixar’s beloved exploration of emotions, promises to delve even deeper into the intricate world of our inner emotional lives. Just like its predecessor, this movie offers valuable insights into how we experience and manage our emotions, making it a powerful tool for understanding real-life emotional challenges, particularly anxiety.

In "Inside Out 2," we continue to follow the journey of Riley and her emotions – Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust – as they navigate the complexities of adolescence. The film beautifully illustrates how these core emotions interact, influence our behavior, and help us respond to the world around us. By personifying these emotions, "Inside Out 2" provides a visual and relatable way to understand the often abstract and overwhelming nature of our feelings.

Autism and BPD can share overlapping symptoms, further complicating diagnosis. Both conditions may involve challenges in social interactions, emotional dysregulation, and difficulties with identity and sense of self. However, the underlying reasons for these symptoms differ. In autism, social difficulties stem from challenges in understanding social cues and norms, while in BPD, they arise from unstable self-image and intense fear of abandonment.

Demand avoidance is a concept that many parents encounter in their children's behavior. It's important to understand that demand avoidance, in general, is a normal part of human behavior. We all have moments when we resist doing something we're asked to do, whether it's a mundane task or a more challenging request. However, when demand avoidance becomes persistent and significantly impacts a child's functioning, it may be worth exploring further.

If you're reading this, chances are you've been on a journey to understand yourself better, seeking answers to questions that have lingered for far too long. You may have found yourself questioning whether you could be autistic, only to be met with dismissive responses or misdiagnoses from other providers. I understand the frustration, the uncertainty, and the fear that comes with feeling misunderstood and overlooked.

Understanding and supporting a child with Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), a profile of autism, can be a challenging journey. However, by adopting a strengths-based, neurodiversity-affirming approach, we can help our children to thrive. Let's dive into some strategies that can be helpful.

In this article, we will focus on Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), a distinct and often misunderstood profile of autism. PDA is a term coined by Elizabeth Newson in the 1980’s to describe a specific profile of autism characterized by extreme anxiety, demand avoidance, and a need for control. Some people prefer the term Pervasive Drive for Autonomy to represent PDA because of the desire to maintain control and autonomy in one’s environment. Unlike other forms of autism, individuals with PDA often display a high level of social understanding and can be highly skilled at masking their difficulties, making it challenging to identify their needs.

Picture yourself on a busy road, surrounded by the sights of honking horns, flashing lights, and relentless traffic. For many, this scenario is a mundane part of daily life, an activity that requires minimal effort and attention. However, for some individuals, driving can present a unique set of challenges that are often overlooked. In this blog post, we will discuss how autistic adults and adults with ADHD may be impacted while driving and share some tips for success. By shedding light on these challenges, we aim to promote understanding, empathy, and better support for individuals who may struggle while driving.

In this blog post, we are going to be reviewing some common signs of autism in adults. It is important to note that each autistic person has a unique experience and may have different strengths, challenges, and ways of coping. A neurodiversity-affirming approach to autism values and celebrates this diversity, instead of viewing autism as a problem to be fixed.