This session explores demand avoidance as a natural, anxiety-driven response rather than a behavioural choice. It examines how anyone can express demand avoidance at times in life, and what to do if it's become more of a persistent struggle. This means exploring what counts as a demand, and why they can feel overwhelming at various life stages.

Participants will be able to: 

• Define demand avoidance and explain how it differs from non-compliance, defiance, or deliberate refusal.
• Identify internal and external demands, including sensory, emotional, and social demands, that contribute to demand avoidance in autistic people.
• Apply low-arousal, collaborative strategies to reduce demand perception and support autonomy and regulation.

Instructor Details and Financial Disclosure 

• Loren Snow

Registration

• Online ONLY for 1 learner -- Access to Online Course for 365 Days/1 Year (1.5-hour CE course, downloadable handout, certificate of completion)

Timed Agenda

• Introduction: 1 minute (welcome, presenter background, ground rules)
• What Are Demands?: 1 minute (types of demands, demand overload, decision fatigue)
• Demand Avoidance as a Natural Trait: 5 minutes (demand avoidance as a natural response, stress factors, pathological demand avoidance)
• Growing Up Different: 5 minutes (challenges autistic people face, trauma, micro-corrections, masking)
• Executive Function and Learning Barriers: 2 minutes (task difficulty, reasonable adjustments, learning styles)
• Window of Tolerance: 1 minute (narrow tolerance windows, sensory overload, sleep/eating issues)
• PDA Strategies: 6 minutes (PDA Panda framework, picking battles, enabling choice, anxiety management)
• Reducing Perception of Demands: 2 minutes (phrasing changes, depersonalizing, distraction, role play)
• Changing Your Mindset: 2 minutes (reframing behavior)
• Other Contributing Factors: 1 minute (depression, trauma, physical health conditions)

• Conclusion and Resources: 1 minute (YouTube channel, website, additional videos)

   

  TOTAL: 27 minutes
  
  
   

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Content Disclosure: This presentation will focus on treatment methods related to the use of TalkTools® resources. Other similar treatment approaches will receive limited or no coverage during this lecture.

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