We're pretty sure our daughter has PDA. It's relatively mild, but when it strikes there's nothing virtuous about it. She would fight us continuously on almost e

We're pretty sure our daughter has PDA. It's relatively mild, but when it strikes there's nothing virtuous about it. She would fight us continuously on almost everything from the age of 2.5. After 5.5 or so she settled down a bit, but it's still rough pretty frequently. People would often tell us things like "oh, it's great to have a girl who knows her own mind", and the virtuous framing sort of implies that way of thinking. But that's not it at all - the PDA society in the UK say that it should be treated like a panic attack, and that's basically what it is, at least in her case. It's not her carefully considering the options and rejecting the "normal" one, it's that when a demand triggers it (and not all do, for reasons that we can't work out) her brain completely shuts down due to crippling anxiety. We cannot talk her down, we can't reason with her or apply logic, discipline, bribery or anything else. We basically just have to wait a bit until it passes, and then discuss it afterwards. I know it's more fashionable these days to refer to it as Persistent Drive for Autonomy rather than Pathological Demand Avoidance, but at least in her case it is absolutely pathological. She is now aware that it happens and hates it and the conflict it provokes in her life. She'd do anything to change it but realistically can't, especially since any sort of therapy feels like a demand and is almost impossible to follow.