Power Differentials in PDA
In this post:
PDA adult to PDA adult — what happens when two PDAers equalise against each other at once
Holding power over others — being the authority figure while your own nervous system resists hierarchy
Financial and institutional power — power that can't be equalised through relational strategies
Equalising, adult version — the same childhood pattern, relabeled for grown-up life
Most writing on power differentials and PDA covers one shape: an adult with more authority, a child or client with less. Adult PDA life holds several more that rarely get named. Here are four of them, with what actually helps for each.
What "equalising" means
The PDA Society describes equalising, also called levelling, as behaviours PDAers use when they sense unfairness or imbalance in a relationship or interaction, driven by a strong need to regain a sense of autonomy, control, and fairness. Coach Amanda Diekman frames it as a broader human need: equalizing expresses a need present in varying degrees across all of our key relationships, not just in PDA people. PDA North America traces where it often starts: PDAers' heightened social threat detection can register an ordinary power imbalance as a major threat, in a way that a neuromajority person typically would not. In short, equalising is the drive to level the playing field when a relationship feels unbalanced. It's a coping strategy, not a character flaw.
1. PDA adult to PDA adult
Two PDAers in the same relationship, partners, roommates, coworkers, can both be equalising against each other at once. Much of the writing on PDA and romantic relationships assumes one partner has a PDA profile and the other doesn't, so the advice is built for a demand avoider and a demand giver. What happens when neither person will accept being in the lower position? A request from one PDAer reads as a demand to the other, and their pushback (deflecting, going quiet, needling back) reads as a demand right back. This can spiral fast, because neither side is willing to yield, and neither side experiences the other's response as anything but a threat to their own autonomy.
Strategies:
Name the loop out loud, together, outside the moment it's happening. "We both go into equalising mode when the other one asks for something" is easier to work with once it has a name.
Swap demands for information. Instead of "can you do the dishes," try "the dishes are piling up," and let the other person choose how to respond.
Agree in advance on a signal, a word or gesture, either person can use when they feel a standoff starting, as a pause button before it escalates.
Build in a cooling-off period as a normal part of the relationship rather than a crisis, for when neither of you is going to concede in the moment.
2. PDA adults holding power over others
A good amount of PDA content assumes the PDA person is on the powerless end of the relationship. But plenty of PDA adults are managers, parents, landlords, teachers, or team leads. What does it feel like to be the authority figure while your own nervous system reacts badly to hierarchy, to being obeyed by default, to enforcing a rule you didn't choose? Some PDA adults overcorrect into being extremely permissive, because giving orders triggers the same threat response as receiving them. Others feel like frauds every time they use their position, because the idea of positional authority feels foreign, even when they're the one holding it.
Strategies:
Reframe authority as stewardship, not control. You're not issuing demands, you're protecting something (a household, a team, a classroom) that needs structure to function.
Build in collaborative language even when you're the one with formal authority. "Here's what needs to happen, how do you want to get there" keeps the relationship two-way without abdicating the role.
Notice permissiveness that comes from your own discomfort, not the other person's actual needs. Ask: "am I skipping this boundary because it's unnecessary, or because enforcing it feels bad to me?"
Give yourself permission to hold a role without needing to feel natural in it yet. Discomfort with the position isn't proof you're doing it wrong.
3. Financial and institutional power
Landlords, medical systems, disability benefits offices, and HR departments hold a kind of power that relational strategies can't touch. Equalising works because it's relational, when a person feels an imbalance with another person, they can push back, negotiate, stall, or find some way to level the field, and the other person can respond. A benefits determination letter doesn't respond. A phone tree doesn't negotiate. A landlord's screening algorithm doesn't know you exist as a person, only as a data point. Over time, that kind of unresolvable imbalance takes a real toll: chronic avoidance of paperwork and calls, baseline hypervigilance around mail and email, exhaustion that looks disproportionate to any single form, because it isn't about that one form.
Strategies:
Externalize the demand. The form is the obstacle, not you and not the person on the phone. Naming the system as the problem, out loud or in writing, can lower the sense of personal threat.
Borrow executive function without apologizing for it. A trusted person, advocate, or professional handling a call or form with you isn't a failure of independence, it's routing around a structure that wasn't built for your nervous system.
Batch and buffer. Institutional demands rarely require an instant response, even when the letter implies urgency. A buffer day between receiving a demand and acting on it can lower panic without missing the real deadline.
Find the one human in the system. A specific caseworker, bank rep, or HR contact you can talk to instead of "the system" brings the demand back into relational territory, where your actual tools work.
4. Equalising, adult version
Equalising gets described mostly in terms of kids: a child who wants to make every decision, who resists bedtime as a matter of principle, who needs to feel like an equal partner rather than someone being managed. Adult equalising doesn't get named as often as the same mechanism. It shows up as going quiet on a deadline instead of asking for an extension, needling a boss with jokes instead of raising a concern directly, missing a call back from someone with authority over you, or "malicious compliance," doing exactly what was asked and no more, out of a need to reclaim control inside a demand you couldn't refuse outright.
Strategies:
Name it when it's happening, even just to yourself. "I'm equalising right now" can create a half-second of choice where there wasn't one before.
Look for a lower-stakes way to reclaim autonomy inside the same demand, choosing the order you do tasks in, the tool you use, the time of day, rather than the demand itself.
Where possible, ask for the choice up front instead of taking it after the fact. "Can I have some say in how this gets done" is a direct ask that gets some of what equalising is trying to get, without the covert cost.
Notice which adult equalising patterns are actually working for you (protecting real boundaries) versus which ones are quietly costing you (missed opportunities, damaged trust), and treat those differently.
Sources
PDA Society, "Understanding equalising (levelling) in PDA"
Amanda Diekman, "Equalizing 101"
PDA North America, "20 simple ways PDA kids & teens can safely feel in charge of their adult"