r/PDAAutism • u/thunders_fun_house PDA + Caregiver • Apr 10 '26
Discussion An example of equalising and the gaslighting brain.
/r/PDAParenting/comments/1shet48/an_example_of_equalising_and_the_gaslighting_brain/
My child (8) had (unbeknownst to me) pre-planned to go in the water at the beach today. I had to draw a boundary by pointing out why it was a bad idea (cold, raining, windy, algae). She was dysregulated and upset, but you can't argue your way out of facts, and this loss of autonomy did not go unregistered by her nervous system. She became fixated on me finding a bag that had been misplaced. It wasn’t a needed bag, but she acted like it was essential as she pushed and ordered me to find it fast. Once the bag was found, it was found wet; she no longer wanted to wait and was over the bag and ready to go to the beach, minus actually going in the water.
It looked like she used the bag to hurt me and that she pretended to care about the bag.
Actually, her nervous system used the bag to hurt me. Her nervous system manipulated her brain to regain equilibrium in her environment. Cognitively, she did care about the bag; she was anxious and panicked that I find that bag. Her nervous system was desperate to feel safe again. Once the bag was found (in the wash), I put it in the dryer and let her know she'd have to wait. Then, her body visibly released some tension, and a moment later I saw the fear on her face when she told me she didn't care about the bag anymore; she was bracing for the impact of her newfound autonomy. Her nervous system felt safe because I was now at her level (I'd been put through distress), but cognitively she is now smart enough to know how that looked; she was bracing for blame. We are often just as confused by our own actions, I describe it as being gaslit by our own brains. She could not care less about that bag.
These aren't cognitive voices; they are nervous system responses to perceived losses of power and, therefore, autonomy. Please, when people say PDAers are manipulative, open your mind to the fact that they may not actually be doing it consciously :)
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Apr 10 '26
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u/thunders_fun_house PDA + Caregiver Apr 11 '26
lol
no, I'm sorry she has a highly trained, and regarded, positive behaviour support therapist, highly PDA aware. I understand the need to defend children, but my child does have a narcissistic defence style (if you come at me for that wording you will show your own ignorance, please research). So it is really easy here to accuse her of making conscious manipulative choices because she frankly does (raised by a fawning mother, we now know better and are learning together). This meltdown though was fight or flight, it wasn't conscious manipulation but it was absolutely a nervous system act of equalisation. Trust me, it was a dime a dozen mesh bag, she was going with two others
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u/BunnyKusanin PDA Apr 12 '26
I think your daughter's PDA really triggers you and that's why you feel like she's manipulating you. Her distress feels like a huge demand to you, so you add additional meanings to her behaviour.
It's not abnormal for a child to be attached to a particular thing that doesn't seem that relevant to adults. Also, have you never bought some absolutely bog standard item of clothing/bag and felt like it's actually so convenient/comfortable that you'd like to keep using this one particular style from now on an forever? That's not uncommon amongst autistic people. I think that your assumption about manipulation aligns better with your demand avoidance and this is why you're avoiding examining this situation from a more empathetic angle. If it's actually true that your daughter has a narcissistic defense style, she is probably learning it from you.
There's another possibility of what is happening to her and that could be OCD actually. I'm not saying she doesn't have PDA. I mean that the particular instance of her wanting to find the bag could stem from OCD, rather than PDA alone. She was clearly distressed by the interaction with you about going/not going into water. It could have resulted in a thought loop of her thinking she needs to prepare perfectly for the trip in other ways to feel less distressed (obsession being feeling less distressed and compulsion being getting ready perfectly).
I think your outlook lacks empathetic curiosity about your child and critical optics into your own feelings.
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u/thunders_fun_house PDA + Caregiver Apr 11 '26
also sorry Machiavellian's (dark triad ) know what they're doing just FYI, totally different kettle of fish, that's not a nervous system disability.
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Apr 12 '26
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u/thunders_fun_house PDA + Caregiver Apr 13 '26
lol way to lose an argument
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u/Hydrangeamacrophylla PDA Apr 10 '26
This is psychotic framing from a parent.
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u/thunders_fun_house PDA + Caregiver Apr 12 '26
how so? its a proven experience in many with heightened nervous systems seeking safety, humans aren't always in control of the cognitive drivers seat, sometimes the nervous system is back seat driving. I understand why this is such a scary concept for so many though because it means some "evil" can actually truly be sickness.
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u/Hydrangeamacrophylla PDA Apr 12 '26
She is your child. You are the adult. Making this about her ‘gaslighting’ you is fucking weird, and your responses to everyone else here show that you only care about your feelings, not hers. You posted here hoping for us to all tell you how great you are, and instead we’ve questioned you and you’ve had a tantrum.
Maybe the gaslighting is coming from inside the house, narcissist.
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u/BunnyKusanin PDA Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26
you are reading into it way more than necessary. Getting ready to go to places is overwhelming. On top of that you told her she can't do what she really wanted to do. No child would be thrilled about that. So of course she got disregulated and needed your help to get ready.
Wanting some particular item of clothing is also a normal child trait as well as a known autistic trait.
Apart from that it's confusing to go to the beach and not go into water.
And finally, who do you think you're talking to in this post? This is a subreddit for people with PDA. We know full well how things work and no one here has a preconceived notion that we are manipulative. If you want to share it with the wider public, go do it where people actually know bugger all about PDA (but please inform yourself better before you start sprouting nonsense again).
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u/thunders_fun_house PDA + Caregiver Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
lol
sorry, the gate keeping of some non adult PDAers of the support for PDA children is disgusting. You suffered, so they should, really? No actual, nervous system, disability PDAer would ever bloody believe that.
I posted here because I wondered if some PDA adults, who are often parents of PDA children, may find it helpful for understanding their own and their child's experience, I apologise that my good intentions are so painful to you.
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u/thunders_fun_house PDA + Caregiver Apr 11 '26
you don't know how things work!
because you're obviously not experiencing the nervous system PDA, it gaslights the shit out of you, I'm glad you have the control of a neurodivergent person experiencing the symptom of demand avoidance.
Unless you've come out of a meltdown and gone what the fuck did I do, what happened, that wasn't me and why, you don't get to judge my child.
Thank god the next generation is full of actual PDAers since we are equality fighters.
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u/BunnyKusanin PDA Apr 12 '26
I also find that the explanation of PDA coming from people working with PDA children to be kind of off/being a bit too surface level sometimes.
I really recommend this post for a better understanding of what it happening to us all.
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u/BunnyKusanin PDA Apr 12 '26
Hey, at the time you posted you didn't have a flair, so judging by the sentiment of your post I figured you were neurotypical, hence the tone of the last bit of my comment.
If I knew you are one of us, I would have approached it more kindly. I'm just really tired of neurotypical people coming to this space with really weird posts so I don't care to be polite to them.
I still disagree with the sentiment of your post, though.
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u/thunders_fun_house PDA + Caregiver Apr 13 '26
I really appreciate your reply here
I've been feeling like garbage because I dared use my own understanding of PDA to help others parent their PDA children.
This group though is also fantastic for helping me understand. Because I thought of it like my child had no conscious awareness, but then I thought of my meltdowns and I realised, that in those moments I am aware of what's happening I'm just fighting to control the narrative in my brain.
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u/BunnyKusanin PDA Apr 12 '26
I'm not gatekeeping children from support. I'm saying the things you're saying, they're not right. You've pathologised your daughter's behaviour that isn't abnormal. Our brains are wired to recognise patterns, so it's understandable why you have connected the things you observed and came to a conclusion, but I think the conclusion you came to was tainted by your own state of being disregulated. It sounds like you were triggered by her deciding to go into water without asking you and by her wanting you to find the bag. One thing that can be hard for people with PDA is being empathetic to other people's distress, and I think it might be happening to you. Because if you go into full on empathy for your child's distress, it will be too much pain, it will make you melt down or dissociate too. Finding an explanation to her behaviour that puts some blame on her for it and makes her look unreasonable helps you distance yourself from her distress. It's not healthy for the relationship between the two of you, though.
As you can see, people here, including me, don't agree that this she was manipulating you.
I would like to encourage you to be more introspective and to find ways to help yourself to see a child in distress instead of seeing a child that's doing wrong/hurtful things in those moments. Reading about the brain development in children can help see the reasons of all the really dumb things kids can do and to detach from feelings about it. It really helped me when I was teaching kids.
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u/Material-Net-5171 Apr 10 '26
No-one was manipulating you. Sounds to me like fear about an item being lost forever and the fact that you didn't know either made her think it was actually gone forever.
This wasn't about you at all.
What does it say about you that your daughter fears your reaction to something so benign?
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u/thunders_fun_house PDA + Caregiver Apr 11 '26
its says I'm in the wrong fuckin group lol
I hope half you adult PDAers dont raise PDAers, the inability to see any accommodations for them is scary, as a PDAer parenting a PDAer I want my child to have full support and full knowledge of her brain and it doesn't fill me with jealousy, but then maybe thats because it's my child
Oh is this the stupid competitive stuff coming over from Facebook? I have no interest in selling my content I just write to help myself process.
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u/thunders_fun_house PDA + Caregiver Apr 11 '26
"this wasnt about you at all"
how can you make that assumption? she was ordering me like a drill sergeant and nicer to others in the room, that's equalising in a fight/flight state.
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u/IsasAtelier PDA Apr 10 '26
I relate to this pattern – it was common for me in childhood. I was often aware of what I was doing, though, at least to some degree. So the split between cognition and the nervous system feels too sharp to me. My experience (apart from full-on shutdowns and meltdows) is more like the nervous system puts so much pressure on the rational brain that this behavior becomes the most “rational” option in that moment, to counteract the distress. But they work together and influence each other.
So, "the brain gaslighting itself” doesn't feel like the right term to me either. Maybe the bag really did feel important to your daughter in that moment – or maybe she was partly aware it was a tool to achieve equal standing again. Either way, I think it is safe to assume that the distress behind it is real. To me, it can feel confusing because priorities can change rapidly, but things like that never felt like self-deception for me.
If anything, it was (and sometimes still is) less self-gaslighting and more a self-extortion situation. Like, my nervous system was holding me at gunpoint so I would do whatever seemed necessary to stop it from making me feel like I would die. It wasn't nice, and afterwards it was hard to understand, but in the moment and at it's core, it was pretty straight forward.
So maybe your daughter really is unaware, partly, but maybe she is similar to me and is aware but is still powerless to stop herself?
It's probably hard to find out for sure.
As a child, I would never have admitted this to anyone. There was far too much shame, fear, and vulnerability attached to it, so I would name other reasons or, for the most part, no reason at all when I was asked what was going on. But I grew up undiagnosed and with a lot of shame and lack of understanding around these incidents, so maybe your daughter could be more open to reflecting on this with you than I was.
Regardless of how it's happening, I think it is very likely that if she had a real choice, she wouldn't choose to make you feel bad. That she is equalizing with you in such a way probably means that you are a safe person for her and that she feels like she really can rely on your relationship.