Webinars, Trainings, and Events

The Power of Play with PDA:

Introduction to Play Therapy with Pathological Demand Avoidant Clients

May 30, 2026, 9am-5pm PST

6 non-contact CE’s for Association for Play Therapy

Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), also described as a Pervasive Drive for Autonomy, is a neurodivergent profile long recognized in the UK and increasingly explored by play therapists. Understanding PDA often brings a “lightbulb moment” for therapists, reframing clients previously seen as resistant, oppositional, or difficult to engage. Patterns such as power struggles, attendance challenges, abrupt termination, and intense limit testing are understood not as defiance, but as nervous-system-driven responses to perceived demands.

While PDA is commonly associated with autism, ADHD, and sensory processing differences, it has distinct underlying drivers that require a different therapeutic stance. Play therapy is uniquely positioned to support PDA-affirming work, offering relational, experiential, and nervous-system-based approaches that help therapists move with the client rather than against them.

This presentation explores how play therapy and related nervous-system-informed models can be adapted to support PDA clients. It includes in-depth discussion of assessment in both child and parent sessions, guidance for helping parents shift toward a PDA-affirming, low-demand approach at home and school, and strategies for reducing demands within the therapy space to prevent overwhelm and early termination.

Particular attention is given to the complex balance between demands, limits, and boundaries, integrating concepts from Child-Centered Play Therapy (ACT limit setting) and Synergetic Play Therapy to support both PDAers and their caregivers in developing sustainable, respectful boundaries.

Register here!
Register here!

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

  1. Describe 1-3 approaches of lowering demands in PDA affirming play therapy

  2. Explain to parents the specific benefits of nondirective play therapy for PDA

  3. Gather and assess information in both parent and client play therapy sessions for symptoms of PDA, and differentiation from common misdiagnoses

  4. Identify 1-3 aspects of PDA that make healthy limits and boundaries challenging

  5. Identify 3-5 play therapy strategies and techniques to support PDA clients and their parents in building a healthy relationship to boundaries and limits

  6. Explain how the idea of “limit testing” from play therapy is connected to increasing a sense of agency and safety for PDAers, and identify 2-3 ways it can show up in the play room”

2025 Summer “Lunch and Learn” Series on Supporting PDAers

  • Supporting PDAers in Therapy Series: Supporting PDA Parents

    Engaging with parents and caregivers of children and teens with PDA through regular sessions is crucial for overall efficacy of play therapy with PDAers. The sessions begin by helping them understand how PDA shows up for their child and what approaches and techniques might help them better support, understand, and build a stronger relationship with their child. The therapist can share perspectives, benefits, and resources related to non-directive play therapy and other adjunctive therapy services to help create a wrap-around supportive environment for them and their child. With direct rapport built with parents, the therapist can directly share information and troubleshoot challenges in the necessary shifts to low demand and agency-centered parenting approaches. It also offers the therapist an opportunity to provide compassion and encouragement to the parents in ways that then help them better provide it to their child, thus improving the parent-child relationship.

  • Supporting PDAers in Therapy Series: Supporting PDA Clients in Burnout

    Burnout is a very common experience for clients of all ages with PDA to struggle with, and may show up as intense behaviors and emotions like school or work avoidance, severe anxiety, compulsive body focused behaviors, treatment resistant depression, self-harm, and suicidality. There are also unique recovery challenges for the PDA neurotype because approaches commonly recommended for these challenges may reduce the necessary sense of agency and backfire by increasing burnout symptoms. The use of play therapy and creativity can uniquely help identify PDA burnout, as well as support them in burnout recovery and moving towards growth.

  • Supporting PDAers with Healthy Boundaries

    Demands, limits, and boundaries are often one of the most challenging aspects in the relationship between parents and PDAers, and for PDAers across the lifespan with themselves. Demand avoidance and the need for a strong sense of agency in life can connect with PDA burnout and make it difficult to meet personal, relational, larger life goals. Concepts of limit testing, ACT limit setting from Child Centered Play Therapy, and approaches from low demand parenting for PDAers can be utilized to support both parents of PDAers and PDAers themselves in better understanding how to meet their needs for agency while also identifying and moving towards their goals.