PDA in Clinical Practice
The modules
What Is Actually Happening
The proposed mechanism, and why a threshold account explains cases a contingency account cannot. What makes something a demand, including the property that catches most people out. The separation of sensitivity from baseline, and why the settled-looking stretch is the riskiest place to put demands back.
Reading the Behaviour
Equity-seeking as the descriptor for what the behaviour is doing, credited to Kristy Forbes. Why a concession granted in the wrong domain settles nothing. Why the adult version stays invisible for so long.
Therapy Is a Demand
The clinical core, and the uncomfortable one. An audit of the frame itself, from referral through to the outcome measure at the top of the session. Then the redesign.
Autonomy Elevation
Most useful if you already work low-demand and have found it insufficient. Demand level and autonomy support turn out to be separate dimensions rather than two ends of one axis.
Families, Systems, and Work
The cycle running between avoidance and control, which the nearest adult is standing inside and did not start. Schools, couples, and workplace adjustments. Then childism.
What comes with it
- A course workbook, built around recall and application rather than note-taking
- Five practitioner handouts, one per module, two pages each
- An evidence map, module by module, for the times you have to justify your approach
- A scope note setting out what this material is and is not
- A downloadable audio-only version of the whole course
- Six months of Against the Grain for anyone who buys in the first month
How it is built, and why
Teaching autonomy support through a format that runs on compliance would undercut the content on the way in, so the delivery was designed backwards from the argument. No completion tracking. No progress percentage. Nothing auto-advances. Chapter markers sit at every slide, so if the part you need is halfway through Module 3, start halfway through Module 3.
Every module makes exit available in its first thirty seconds, and the audio version says it too.
What this is not.
Not accredited, and there is no certificate. If your college accepts self-directed learning you would record it yourself.
Not supervision or case advice. It is professional education, and it does not replace your own judgement or your college's standards.
Not assessment or diagnosis training. The course takes no position on whether PDA belongs in a diagnostic manual.
The Elara InstituteBreaking Cycles / Building Connection
meghan@elarainstitute.ca