"Where Did That Fiery Little Girl Go?"

From "The Strong-Willed Child" to autonomy-first healing

This is a story I’ve been carrying for a long time. It’s about growing up as an undiagnosed PDA-profile autistic child—about how shame and control were used as parenting tactics, about childhood resistance, and the deep need for autonomy. It’s also about what it means to come home to the parts of yourself you had to bury in order to survive, and how healing can begin, slowly, on your own terms.

Content note: This essay includes reflections on childhood trauma, emotional neglect, spanking, and self-harm. Please take care while reading.

---

At dinner last night my dad and I were talking about how, when I was a child, I was rebellious, strong-willed, and defiant of authority.

For much of my adult life, he used to ask me, “You got older, and then that rebellious, fiery little girl who knew exactly what she did and didn’t want, she went away. She got shut down, shut off. Where did that little girl go?”

“I hope you can find her again.”

I understand now that I was an undiagnosed PDA-profile autistic child. Pathological Demand Avoidance, or Persistent Drive for Autonomy, is a profile on the autism spectrum marked by extreme anxiety around demands and a need for autonomy.

Demands triggered my nervous system into a fight-or-flight response, and I had meltdowns (not “temper tantrums,” meltdowns) because I felt betrayed and devastated every time I didn't have a choice. As a kid, that’s the majority of your experience.

When you're a child, especially a child of the early ‘90s, with parents who read books like The Strong-Willed Child by Dr. James Dobson—you don’t have much autonomy. People make your decisions for you: which sport you play, what after-school activities you're signed up for. And in those sports, they push you, and push you, and push you. You don't get to stop and rest when your body tells you that you need it. You have to keep going, because the coach is yelling at you. Faster.

Adults in your life tell you what to do, where to go. What clothes to wear, even though the lace is so itchy you want to scream, and you do scream. But no one cares, because “Look how pretty you look.”

You’re not an adult with adult money, so you can't change your circumstances. You can't just go buy new clothes, or take off on an adventure for a week.

Resistance is viewed as defiance, not communication.

When you’re screaming, crying, sobbing, holding onto the door frame with the tips of your fingers as your mom tries to pull you inside. You don’t want to go to bed just because she says you have to. It feels like the world is ending. No one understands transitions, no one taught you to check in with your emotions, no one asked what you needed to feel supported. No one taught you how to downshift your nervous system.

You were just a kid, and in Dobson-world, your needs are secondary. The priority is whether or not your parents have control over you.

No one takes the time to talk to you about why going to bed right now is important, because you're being defiant, obstinate, willful, when you should be obedient. You’re the problem.

You better listen to what we tell you to do.

When you’re three years old and you do not want to get into that stroller, because you can see with your three-year-old eyes that none of the adults are in a stroller.

Excuse me!? I want to walk like everyone else! I’m not a baby, don’t treat me like one! This is a cage. Don’t put me in there! And do NOT buckle me in!!!

When you’re not allowed to come whitewater rafting with everyone else because you’re too small, and you have to stay behind with your grandma, who you barely know—but your mom is the only person you have in your life who co-regulates your nervous system, and so it feels not just annoying, frustrating, or inconvenient, but actually dangerous. Your brain is telling you that you've been abandoned.

Like many PDA kids, I didn’t resist because I was trying to be difficult. I resisted because I needed agency to feel safe.

You feel in every moment that you have no control. You are powerless. At any second, everything that makes you feel safe could get ripped away from you, just like that—and what's worse, time and time again has proven to you that no one cares.

You are hurting. Scared. Uncertain. And no one cares.

Go to your room. Go to time-out. Don't come back until you're feeling better.

You're taught that when hard, painful, scary things happen, you are left to deal with them alone.

I wasn't the only one. Later, I'd learn that so many of us who grew up this way ended up in the same place. Chronically trying to please everyone, masking, hating ourselves, not trusting our own feelings.

We learned to get smaller to survive. We exited our childhoods with C-PTSD, no longer trusting our emotions, our needs, or our worth.

“What should we do about Tina?” I'd hear my parents say.

There are a few moments that burned themselves into my memory, where I realized that love didn’t always mean safety.

When I was four, my dad spanked me for hurting my mom.

And I fucking hated him for it.

I will never, for the rest of my life, forget the betrayal I felt when he spanked me. In my eyes, he turned into a monster, and I wanted nothing to do with him. He worked out of town four days a week, so it was even less of a reason for me to like him. This person is dangerous. This person is not safe. They say that they love you, but they are hurting you.

And then my mom slapped me. And she became my enemy, too.

I only remember being spanked once, slapped once.

But it was enough.

That fiery little girl got shut down because as she grew up, she began to see herself as a problem. The more she tried to advocate for herself and her needs, the more her parents tightened the control.

So I buried my needs, because it was the only way I knew how to survive.

I didn’t have the language back then, but now I understand. Instead of externalizing—expressing my fear, anger, frustration, putting it out into the world, showing that I'm hurting, asking for help, as I used to do when I was small—I internalized it all. I got quiet.

When you're a kid who feels misunderstood and unsafe to reach out for support, that pain turns inward.

But it was all still happening, the storms inside my brain. It’s just now, no one could hear the noise.

I started hating myself. I thought I was ugly, awkward, stupid, worthless, broken. Unlovable. Unwanted. My inner critic got louder. I wanted to not exist on a regular basis. I started self-harming, because it was one of the only things that helped me calm that quiet fury, the hatred I held towards myself.

I began binge eating as a way to cope with my feelings. I gained weight, and hated myself even more.

But my grades were good. And I obeyed. And I was compliant. So, clearly, everything must be okay.

My dad began to notice my depression. Instead of being a bubbly, happy, smiley little girl, I was withdrawing inward, caged by the emotional pain I carried alone.

He suggested that I see a therapist, and my mom told him, "No, there's nothing wrong with her. She's fine."

I know she found the razor blades I hid in my bedroom. She never spoke a word to me about them.

And then, she got sick.

And more than ever, I had to figure so much out on my own.

It wasn’t until my thirties that I discovered that I was autistic. It was a while later that I understood that I have PDA.

I can tell you that autonomy-first, unshaming, supportive frameworks for doing the things we want to do, need to do, love to do—they’ve changed my life.

I went from hating myself and internalizing the demands as weapons of shame against my worth, to supporting. Nourishing. Caring.

When something happens that I have little to no autonomy over, I ask myself how I can find more, feel more.

The Strong-Willed Child tries to crush resistance. PDA support frameworks try to understand resistance.

My parents did the best they could with the world they lived in, the resources they had available, and what they knew. They loved me, and they did their best.

And—I deserved better.

As an adult, I've been able to reparent myself, giving little Tina the gentle understanding that she always needed.

Flexible pacing (and trusting my pace), invitations, autonomy, and co-regulation are my footholds.

Everything I do is framed by my own consent. And when that isn’t possible, I still look for the smallest ways to experience empowered choice.

If you're asking if that fiery little girl is ever going to find her way back—I think she’s already on her way. Some days I hear her laugh. Some days I still lose her. But I always know where to look now.

I know, with certainty, she is cared for and cherished. No one’s telling her to go to her room anymore, or to push down her feelings so others don't have to see them.

Her feelings are asked about, explored, and validated. She isn’t told to please others, but encouraged and celebrated when she pleases herself.

She’s asked, “What are you feeling right now?” “How can I help you feel supported?” “What do you need, little dove?”

If my dad is still wondering, “Where did that fiery little girl go?”

I think she’s already coming home. Slowly. On her own terms.

Maybe she doesn't have to be so fiery anymore, because she finally knows she is safer than she’s ever been.

And she believes it. Not every day. But more and more.