PDA: Resistance and Resilience

Inside the PDA Experience Report

Content note: This episode includes brief discussion of suicidal ideation, mental health crises, school avoidance and truancy proceedings, and harmful behavioral interventions. In episode 12, Marni and Chris are joined by Diane Gould and Melissa McKenzie of PDA North America to talk about the PDA Experience Report [https://learn.pdanorthamerica.org/products/digital_downloads/pda-experience-survey-full-report]: the first large-scale study of PDA lived experience in North America. Nearly 2,200 caregivers and PDA adults responded in just a month. Diane is the executive director and founder of PDA North America and a licensed clinical social worker; Melissa is a clinical psychologist and research scientist. Both credit the larger team behind the report, including Marni, who served as a final reviewer. Diane shares the origin of PDA North America, including the first conference held in Chicago the week before the world shut down in March 2020. The conversation then turns to what the report shows: the gap between caregiver perception and adult PDAer self-report (including underreported suicidal ideation), the near-universal endorsement of sensory sensitivity among adult PDAers, an 87.7% rate of school avoidance or refusal, and the financial hardship that shows up across the adult sample. They sit with the limits of the data, too—the whiteness of the sample, the mistrust of research in marginalized communities, and the real reasons the low-demand approach may not feel safe or accessible to families who don’t have the privilege to drop demands. Diane and Melissa close by talking about where PDA North America is headed next: more qualitative work, in-depth interviews with people from communities the survey didn’t reach, and a continued effort to help families act on what the report shows. PDA day (May 13) is this week, and PDA North America is hosting a full day of community programming. Links mentioned in the episode: * The PDA Experience Report [https://learn.pdanorthamerica.org/products/digital_downloads/pda-experience-survey-full-report] * PDA North America [https://pdanorthamerica.org/] * PDA Day [https://pdanorthamerica.org/pda-day/] * Episode 8: Mentoring PDAers With Trust and Curiosity [https://open.substack.com/pub/pdapodcast/p/mentoring-pdaers-with-trust-and-curiosity?r=2xu6y&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] with Amy Clark Connect With Us Wandering Brightly [https://wanderingbrightly.substack.com/] with Marni Kammersell Positive Disintegration [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/] and cosmic cheer squad [https://cosmiccheersquad.substack.com/] with Chris Wells PDA: Resistance and Resilience [https://pdapodcast.substack.com/] on Substack Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/pda_r_and_r/] If you enjoyed this episode on Apple or Spotify, please remember to click on the stars and leave a rating or write a review. Thank you! Get full access to PDA: Resistance and Resilience at pdapodcast.substack.com/subscribe [https://pdapodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Caregiving as a PDAer

After an extended break from recording, Marni and Chris return in episode 11 to talk about the reason for the gap: caregiving. Chris shares about supporting their friend and mentor, Michael M. Piechowski [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/p/who-is-michael]. The conversation moves from Chris’s specific experience into a wider exploration of what caregiving asks of PDAers, why the “selfish PDAer” stereotype gets it so wrong, and how the demands of caregiving land differently when they’re ones you’ve chosen. Chris and Marni discuss how PDAers they know are often deeply giving and compassionate caregivers, and Marni introduces Rabbi Shoshana’s circle of arrows model—where demands are imagined as arrows from outside a safe inner circle—as a way of understanding how the people we invite into our circle change the shape of caregiving entirely. They sit with the difference between caregiving for infants and elders, the importance of receiving care gracefully, and the cultural lie of full independence that Disability Studies has helped Marni name. The conversation also turns personal. Chris reflects on the contrast between caregiving for Michael now and being unable to be present for their father at the end of his life, and how watching their mother care for their father shaped what they later grew into. They talk about intellectual overexcitability as both a complication and a gift in caregiving, the identity rupture of new parenthood, and how interoception and embodiment have changed what they can offer over the past two decades. And they close with Michael’s own wisdom about cyclical dark times, staying present, and taking care of yourself. * Rabbi Shoshana’s circle of arrow [https://www.instagram.com/p/DXxd1H8Ecce/]s model * Marni’s piece on the teenage years [https://wanderingbrightly.substack.com/p/rhythm-not-schedule-in-home-education?r=2xu6y&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true] Connect With Us Wandering Brightly [https://wanderingbrightly.substack.com/] with Marni Kammersell Positive Disintegration [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/] with Chris Wells PDA: Resistance and Resilience [https://pdapodcast.substack.com/] on Substack Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/pda_r_and_r/] If you enjoyed this episode on Apple or Spotify, please remember to click on the stars and leave a rating or write a review. Thank you! Get full access to PDA: Resistance and Resilience at pdapodcast.substack.com/subscribe [https://pdapodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Voices at the Margins

Episode 10 is a special episode of PDA: Resistance and Resilience—a collaborative roundtable conversation with seven neurodivergent podcasters, recorded as part of a research project exploring what podcasting makes possible as a way of creating and sharing knowledge. This episode is the companion recording to a peer-reviewed article published in the journal Neurodiversity as part of a special issue on critical neurodiversity studies. The paper, “Voices at the Margins: Podcasting as Neuroqueer Collaborative Autoethnography and Epistemic Healing,” positions podcasting as a legitimate research methodology—one that centers voice, emotion, lived experience, and relational connection rather than treating them as noise to be cleaned up. The conversation was guided by five open questions: What does podcasting make possible? Where have we felt excluded by traditional knowledge spaces? When has our lived experience been dismissed? What truths live in the contradictions and messiness? And how does podcasting ripple into neurodivergent community and belonging? What unfolded was raw, funny, moving, and deeply real. We talked about why you wouldn’t go to a mechanic who’s never driven a car, why platypuses break the rules of what’s supposed to exist, what it means to show up as yourself when everything around you says you’re supposed to show up differently, and how a single podcast episode can ripple outward in ways none of us could have predicted. Read the paper: https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330261437265 [https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330261437265] *A PDF of the transcript is available here [https://dabrowskicenter.org/voices]. Hughes, C., Wells, C., Nicholson, E., Mayhew, B., Gay, S., Kammersell, M., & Mogler, T. (2026). Voices at the margins: Podcasting as neuroqueer collaborative autoethnography and epistemic healing. Neurodiversity, 4, 1–15. Podcasters in this episode: * Caitlin Hughes (she/they) is a queer, nonbinary, multi-exceptional Australian social worker, researcher, educator, and advocate. Late-identified as Autistic, ADHD, Gifted, and PDA, Caitlin co-hosts the Divergent Dialogues [https://divergentdialogues.substack.com/] podcast and brings a lived experience-led perspective to their work. They are committed to fostering epistemic healing through relational ethics, narrative reclamation, and accessible, lived experience–driven knowledge creation. * Chris Wells (they/them) is a multi-exceptional, nonbinary, and neurodivergent writer, podcaster, and developmental theorist specializing in Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. They co-host the Positive Disintegration [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/], cosmic cheer squad [https://cosmiccheersquad.substack.com/], and PDA: Resistance and Resilience [http://pdapodcast.substack.com/] podcasts, and are the founding president of the Dąbrowski Center and co-creator of the Positive Disintegration Network. Chris brings lived experience and a deep commitment to reframing neurodivergence through a developmental and relational lens. * Emma Nicholson (she/her) is a neurodivergent Australian Senior Business Analyst, creative and advocate, identifying as gifted, Dyscalculic, with all five overexcitabilities (psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, and emotional), as well as bisexual and Heathen. She co-hosts the Positive Disintegration Podcast [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/] and serves as Vice President of the Dąbrowski Center. She is driven by an unkillable passion to demystify positive disintegration and share hard-won truths to help others feel seen and supported. * Bee Mayhew (she/her) is a multiply neurodivergent (late-identified AuDHD, former gifted kid) writer, narrative collaborator, and communication coordinator for PDN Media. She co-hosts cosmic cheer squad [https://cosmiccheersquad.substack.com/] podcast and has a background as a hospitality specialist and business owner. Bee’s work centers on collective narrative-building and neurodivergent storytelling through activist, community-rooted practice. * Sheldon Gay (he/him) is a Black Gifted speaker and podcast host of I Must Be BUG’N [https://sheldongayisbugn.com/] (Black Underrepresented/Unidentified Gifted and otherwise Neurodivergent). Sheldon is guided by the belief that learning to deeply and wholly Love oneSelf, cape and kryptonite, is the path to finding, creating, and maintaining Love everywhere we go. * Marni Kammersell (she/her) is an American late-identified neurodivergent (Autistic, ADHD, PDA, gifted) parent of neurodivergent children. She is an educator, researcher, writer, and consultant, and co-hosts the PDA: Resistance and Resilience [http://PDApodcast.substack.com/] podcast. Marni is dedicated to honoring neurodivergent experience through relational, self-directed, and nervous-system-informed knowledge practices. * Teena Mogler (she/her) is an Australian AuDHD social worker, researcher, educator, and advocate, as well as co-host of the Divergent Dialogues [https://divergentdialogues.substack.com/] podcast. As a mother to neurodivergent children, Teena is passionate about amplifying neurodivergent voices and disrupting epistemic injustice through lived experience-led, neuroaffirming, and critically reflexive knowledge practices. Find the podcasters: * Divergent Dialogues: divergentdialogues.substack.com [https://divergentdialogues.substack.com/] * I Must Be BUG’N: sheldongayisbugn.com [https://sheldongayisbugn.com/] * Positive Disintegration: www.positivedisintegration.org [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/] * cosmic cheer squad: cosmiccheersquad.substack.com [https://cosmiccheersquad.substack.com/] * PDA: Resistance and Resilience: pdapodcast.substack.com [http://PDApodcast.substack.com/] Connect With Us Wandering Brightly [https://wanderingbrightly.substack.com/] with Marni Kammersell Positive Disintegration [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/] with Chris Wells PDA: Resistance and Resilience [https://pdapodcast.substack.com/] on Substack Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/pda_r_and_r/] If you enjoyed this episode on Apple or Spotify, please remember to click on the stars and leave a rating or write a review. Thank you! Get full access to PDA: Resistance and Resilience at pdapodcast.substack.com/subscribe [https://pdapodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Overexcitable, Not Broken

Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicide, self-mutilation, psychiatric institutionalization, and mental illness in historical and personal contexts. In episode 9, Chris and Marni dive into the theory of positive disintegration (TPD), developed by Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dąbrowski. Chris shares the theory’s origins—rooted in Dąbrowski’s own lived experience of intensity and suffering, his clinical work with children who were struggling, and his revolutionary insight that inner conflict, heightened sensitivity, and resistance to conformity could serve as engines of personality development rather than signs of pathology. They explore overexcitabilities—the five types of heightened psychological experience (emotional, imaginational, intellectual, sensual, and psychomotor)—and why they’ve been misunderstood for decades, confined to the gifted education community. Chris discusses how overexcitability was originally about “nervousness” that was functionally disabling, not a marker of giftedness, and why Dąbrowski should be seen as a forerunner of the neurodiversity movement. The conversation covers the difference between unilevel and multilevel development—the distinction between conforming to external values and discovering your own hierarchy of values through lived experience—and why conditions and relationships matter so much for which direction development takes. Chris shares openly about their own decades-long journey through unilevel disintegrations before finding the support and connection needed for multilevel growth. They connect TPD to PDA through discussions of children’s autonomy, lying as developmental experimentation, the importance of letting children experience difficult emotions like guilt and shame as pathways to growth, and the role of relational safety and low-demand approaches in creating conditions where positive disintegration can unfold. Links mentioned in the episode: * Wells & Falk (2021): The Origins and Conceptual Evolution of Overexcitability [http://dabrowskicenter.org/origins] [PDF] * Dąbrowski 101 [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/p/dabrowski-101] * Positive Disintegration podcast episodes with Autum Romano [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/p/polyvagal-pathways-part-1] Connect With Us Wandering Brightly [https://wanderingbrightly.substack.com/] with Marni Kammersell Positive Disintegration [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/] with Chris Wells PDA: Resistance and Resilience [https://pdapodcast.substack.com/] on Substack Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/pda_r_and_r/] If you enjoyed this episode on Apple or Spotify, please remember to click on the stars and leave a rating or write a review. Thank you! Get full access to PDA: Resistance and Resilience at pdapodcast.substack.com/subscribe [https://pdapodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Mentoring PDAers With Trust and Curiosity

In episode 8, Marni and Chris talked with Dr. Amy Clark, whose doctoral research uncovered why mentoring is uniquely powerful for PDA learners. Amy explains what real mentoring looks like: attunement, autonomy, flexibility, and deep curiosity. We discuss why traditional educational models fail PDA kids, how burnout happens, why praise can backfire, and how families can bring mentoring principles into everyday life even without access to formal mentors. Amy also shares case studies from her research, including how one PDA student moved from total shutdown to thriving through a slow, relational, interest-based process. We close with the biggest misconception about PDA kids: they don’t need more discipline—they need safety, trust, and people who truly see them. Dr. Amy Haynes Clark is a leader in twice-exceptional development and neurodiversity-affirming systems design. Drawing on her doctorate in Cognitive Diversity and Innovative Leadership, she mentors profoundly gifted youth and supports families with children who identify as or experience autism, PDA, anxiety, OCD, Tourette’s, or ARFID. She guides parents in adopting strengths-based, self-directed learning approaches that foster connection, confidence, and harmony at home. Through her consultancy, Exceptionally Engaged, she also partners with educators and organizations to create psychologically safe, autonomy-supportive cultures where creative thinkers and teams can truly thrive. Links from this episode: Exceptionally Engaged [https://www.exceptionallyengaged.com/] (Amy’s website) Find Amy on instagram [https://www.instagram.com/exceptionallyengaged/] Connect With Us Wandering Brightly [https://wanderingbrightly.substack.com/] with Marni Kammersell Positive Disintegration [https://www.positivedisintegration.org/] and cosmic cheer squad [https://cosmiccheersquad.substack.com/] with Chris Wells PDA: Resistance and Resilience [https://pdapodcast.substack.com/] on Substack Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/pda_r_and_r/] If you enjoyed this episode on Apple or Spotify, please remember to click on the stars and leave a rating or write a review. Thank you! Get full access to PDA: Resistance and Resilience at pdapodcast.substack.com/subscribe [https://pdapodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]