Not So Typical Counselling

23/12/2025

Who can relate? 😂

22/12/2025

So wonderfully put by The Contented Child, Child Wellbeing Consultancy

SECOND CHANCE SUNDAY

This is the voice of a child living with PDA and high anxiety.

A child who wants to do the right thing — but whose nervous system goes into threat when demands feel overwhelming.

Behaviour like avoidance, refusal, or shutdown is not a lack of care or effort.
It is anxiety, fear, and a body trying to stay safe.

When we shift from pressure to connection, from control to collaboration, everything changes.

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19/12/2025

What does Christmas Dinner look like for your family?

11/12/2025

Getting presents can be difficult for those with a PDA profile.

10/12/2025

For many people with a PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) profile, Christmas isn’t just a holiday, it’s a month-long avalanche of expectations, social rules, and unspoken demands. What looks joyful on the surface can feel overwhelming, intrusive, and impossible to navigate underneath.

🎁 PDA & Presents: Why ‘Happy Surprises’ Can Trigger Panic
We often picture gift-giving as magical, but for someone with PDA it can land very differently.

Opening presents can feel like:

A demand to react the “right” way
A loss of control over what’s inside
A moment where everyone is watching and waiting
A situation loaded with social expectations

This pressure, even when wrapped and with a bow on top, can be too much. Some may avoid the moment entirely; others may tear through everything quickly just to reduce the build-up. Both responses are forms of self-protection. Sometimes letting them open the presents on their own or buying the present when you are both out shopping, or get them to send you links to presents they want, can reduce the demand as they know what is beneath the wrapping paper.

📅 Advent Calendars: A Demand Disguised as a Treat
Advent calendars seem simple: Open one door each day. But for a PDA mind, that instruction is a daily micro-demand, a rule imposed from the outside.

Which is why many PDAers:

Eat all the chocolates in one go
Open every door at once
Or avoid the calendar entirely

It’s not impulsivity or naughtiness. It’s a way of removing 24 tiny demands in one decisive action.

🍽️ Christmas Dinner: A Perfect Storm of Social Rules
The Christmas table can be one of the most challenging parts of the day. It often involves:

Sitting still for a long time
Eating foods with unfamiliar textures
Navigating small talk
Managing noise, smells, and social expectations
Feeling pressure to join in, stay cheerful, or mask distress

For someone with a PDA profile, each of these elements is a demand on autonomy. Together, they can become overwhelming. Offering flexibility, eating earlier or later, choosing different foods, eating in a different room or dipping in and out as needed, can make the day far more accessible.

🌟 A Kinder Christmas
Supporting PDA individuals during the festive season means removing unnecessary pressure, offering genuine choice, and remembering that overwhelm often comes from demands we don’t even notice.

And as we rethink what truly matters during the holidays, it helps to remember:

“Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people.”
Sometimes the most meaningful celebration is the one that lets everyone breathe.

09/12/2025

♥️ADHD diagnoses aren’t “suddenly skyrocketing”. We are playing catch up.

I have been wanting to talk about this all day but with Fridays being my day off with my little one I am only grabbing a few minutes to leave this here to tell you I will be back and if you have been here a while, you know I WILL be talking about this.

In very short summary:

For decades, the medical model was built around boys.

Girls and women didn’t fit the checklist, so their struggles were missed.
This left them struggling at school, at work, in relationships, and with themselves. Feeling different and without understanding, blaming themselves for it.
They masked symptoms and carried their struggles silently but it often showed up in their bodies (and this was often medicalised as depression, trauma, and other conditions)

Now, research recognises how ADHD shows up differently in girls and women through emotional dysregulation, inattentiveness, burnout, and social interactions.

We are NOT over diagnosing ADHD in the UK (in fact, our diagnostic rates are aligned with the rest of Europe, but the data crunching is for another day)
We are now naming what was always there.
The rise in numbers isn’t an epidemic, t’s a very belated correction.
We should be celebrating growing awareness and shaping our society to be more inclusive, accepting, and adaptive of ND.
I anything, all the numbers show is just how badly we were under-diagnosing before.

⭐️Post incoming next week but I will be doing a mini-series on ND in the new year in my newsletter, including ASD and ADHD.
✨If this interests you, subscribe to my ‘Talking Sense’ Newsletter (link in bio).

08/12/2025

03/12/2025