How can we support a PDAer through a meltdown? (Yourself or a loved one)

When PDAers get upset or frustrated, we can get VERY upset or frustrated. How can we support ourselves as PDAers, or a PDA loved one through a meltdown?

In PDAers with an external threat response like fight or flight, being in survival brain can look very, very big. It can be alarming for other people to witness, or to know what to do.

For internalizing PDAers, our threat response can look like self harm, shame attacks, freeze, or situational mutism, or falling asleep.

It is so hard to witness another person suffering, especially your child or partner.

The instinct is to fix it. To do anything you can to make the pain go away.

The tricky thing is....

The more you push back at a PDAer who is upset, the more our threat antennae will detect a loss of autonomy.

You trying to make it better is an arrow jabbing at our safe circle on top of all the arrows that got us into threat response to begin with!

Instead of trying to fix, the better move is to do your best to hold space for the PDAer to work it through in their own way.

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Here are 6 tips on how to do allow emotional autonomy to a PDAer in a meltdown:

1. Put 80% of your attention on your own inner child right away.

Find a memory or sensation of feeling upset, and then send love to your own inner child. 

This helps you feel safer. It also allows emotional autonomy for the PDAer to be upset without you putting 100% of your laser attention on them. It gives them psychic space.

2. Assess whether safety is a true concern. Is someone at risk of true injury or is valuable property at risk? or are we just alarmed by big feelings? If safety is a real concern, you make a cost-benefit decision (thanks Casey Ehrlich). Is it better to allow the upset and its consequences or to intervene and further escalate the PDAer? This is your call to make. Every situation is unique. 

3. Breathe and self-soothe. You can even place a hand on your chest if you like, or gently stroke your face. I sometimes hug myself or rock back and forth.

4. Refrain from speech as much as possible, especially any problem solving, correcting, or scolding. Even words like "I get that," or "That must be so hard," may actually make it harder for a PDAer to move through our feelings. 

5. Refrain from touching the PDAer. Unless they want that or you are saving them from extreme injury. Let them come to you for touch.

6. Tap into trust. This person is on their own journey and it is trustworthy. The more you can lean into this trust, the easier a time the PDAer will have eventually moving through our threat response. Why? Because we aren’t ALSO fighting for autonomy against your agenda to fix us.

The other piece to meltdown support is allowing a physiological arc of completion for the threat response.

The PDAer needs to be able to discharge the energy in their body, or exert control in some way that satisfies their survival drive for control.

Then we can come out of threat response, back into our safe circle, and think clearly.

Safe ways to equalize for externalizing PDA children: 

• Punching a pillow in front of your face instead of punching you.

• Pushing you onto soft furniture. Hiding an object.

• Temporarily blocking a door. Pillow fighting.

• Wrestling.

• Screaming matches.

• Tug o’ war.

• Moving furniture (heavy pushing can help relieve fight response)

• Making a rule or limit for you to follow

Safe ways to equalize for externalizing PDA adults:

• Punching a pillow or bed 

• Wrestling or pillow fight if regulated enough not to injure

• Silent screams

• Tug o’ war

• Pushing against a wall

• Going on a run

• Controlling something in the physical environment

• Winning an argument, even if you end up bringing it up again later when they are regulated.

‼️ If you are in a relationship with an adult PDAer who is going into meltdowns where you feel unsafe, you get to make a decision about whether this is a relationship you want to stay in. Just because a partner or friend or family member is neurodivergent and/or disabled does not mean you have to stay in relationship if they abuse or mistreat you. All it means is they may not have the ability to stop.

Safe ways to equalize for internalizing PDAers:

For PDAers who internalize our threat response, unhealthy equalizing might look like disordered eating, self harm, destroying our own property, going into deep shame, hitting ourselves, pulling our own hair, and negative self-talk or suicidality. 

Essentially, internalized PDAers’ go into fight or flight mode, but we turn the fight inward because we feel unsafe turning it outward. Or we flee our own body, through falling asleep or dissociating. Or we abandon ourselves by fawning and pleasing others.

If an internalized PDAer is in a meltdown, it can help tremendously to provide: Strong yet safe physical sensations and Movement for the threat response to leave the body.

• Ideas that can help internalizing PDAers in meltdown

• Holding an ice cube

• Being hugged very tightly

• Rocking back and forth

• Slapping our own bodies or faces but not excessively hard

• Pressing a finger into an object that is sharp enough to give a sharp sensation but not sharp enough to injure us (a stone, a pottery shard, a piece of metal hardware)

• Grabbing our own hair down by the roots and squeezing. This gives soothing strong sensation but does not injure the person's head or pull out the hair.

• Going on a run, if we are regulated enough to be safe

• Listening to loud, angry music

• It can be very hard for an internalizer to do so, but if we can yell and beat a pillow - safely externalizing the fight response - that can be very cathartic and supportive. 

If you believe you or a loved one Is PDA, you can head to PDASafeCircle.com to join our growing community practicing the strengths-based PDA Safe Circle™ Approach together.

The PDA Safe Circle™ is not only a course with transformative content that decreases distress and increases thriving for PDAers of all ages and our loved ones.

It is also a community of practice that connects you to others for the long term, and empowers you as a peer coach in the strengths-based PDA Safe Circle™ Approach.

Written by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman, PDA Coach