Hi, I’m Sorcha Rice

I’m an Autistic and ADHD Senior Occupational Therapist with lived experience of PDA, masking and significant school burnout.

Young woman with curly blonde hair smiling outdoors in a gray sweater with pearl embellishments.
My Services

My Framework

Two children, a boy and a girl, climbing a wooden pole with a sign that says 'Chimney' and a lightning bolt symbol, surrounded by green trees.

  • My work focuses on supporting PDA through a regulation-first, neuroaffirmative occupational therapy framework. I do not approach PDA as a behaviour problem or a set of strategies to manage distress. I understand it as a nervous system survival response to threat, loss of autonomy, and unpredictability.

    This site is a space to understand PDA properly, access resources, and engage with work that prioritises nervous system safety, autonomy, and dignity.

    • PDA is not a behaviour problem

    • Regulation is not calm

    • Distress is communication

    • Autonomy is a nervous system safety need

    • Masking is not coping

    • Occupational therapy is foundational for PDA support

    These beliefs shape everything I create and offer here.

  • Many PDAers and families reach support only after burnout has already occurred.

    This is often because distress is misunderstood, masked, or treated as refusal, and because systems prioritise attendance, performance, and compliance over safety.

    My work exists to offer a different framework — one that explains PDA through nervous systems, not behaviour, and that supports capacity rather than control.

    • Clear explanations of PDA through a nervous system lens

    • Free, shareable resources grounded in neuroaffirmative practice

    • Webinars and training for parents, educators, and professionals

    • An online course in development

    • Writing and education informed by lived experience

    Everything here is designed to reduce pressure and increase understanding.

Let's Begin

A note on fit

If you are looking for behaviour modification, compliance-based approaches, or strategies to push through distress, this work will not align.

If you are looking for a nervous system–led, neuroaffirmative understanding of PDA, you are in the right place.

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I don’t think most parents, teachers, or professionals who struggle with nervous-system-led PDA support are uncaring. I think many have spent their lives surviving through structure, rules, and predictability, often without realising that&rsqu
We’re so quick to label this as separation anxiety but when we do, we often miss what’s actually happening in the nervous system. For many PDAers, proximity isn’t about fear of a person leaving. It’s about regulation, safety,
We keep asking why schools need more and more SNAs without asking what they’re being asked to hold. When health systems don’t meet children’s needs, schools inherit unmet regulation, unmet therapy, unmet support. SNAs become the pl
Slow ripples. Real change. 💛 The quiet shifts matter..the conversations, the rethinks, the moments of actually listening. For neurodivergent people (especially PDA’ers), this is how change grows: relationally, humanly, slowly… and stea
I use the term school burnout intentionally. From my own lived experience, and from the children and teens I support, this was never about refusal, avoidance, or a lack of resilience. Burnout is the slow build-up of pressure on the nervous system,
I was never anxious about people. I wasn’t afraid to speak. I wanted connection. I was quiet because my brain processes differently because back-and-forth language can be hard, because initiation takes energy, because safety and regulation com
Honestly obsessed with this sensory wall ✨ Predictable, pressure free and built right into the environment so regulation can happen naturally. This is what thoughtful, neuroaffirming design looks like. #neuroaffirming #sensoryregulation #traumainfor
✨Child-led, neuroaffirmative practice through a PDA lens isn’t just about children.It’s about how you treat everyone.✨ It looks like listening first. Validating lived experience. Sharing the why behind your beliefs and decisions without
For a PDA nervous system, safety changes everything. This was the easiest yes I’ve ever said because it felt steady, mutual and deeply safe. Being met with humor, patience and real respect for each other’s nervous systems is something t
When a parent says ‘this feels abusive’, I don’t hear blame or cruelty. I hear panic, exhaustion, and nervous systems at breaking point on both sides🩷 This isn’t about power or control. It’s about survival, predictabi
✨PDA isn’t internalized or externalized✨ It’s a dynamic nervous system response to loss of autonomy What we often call “internalized” or “externalized” is really about which survival response is most visible and h
“Looking calm” is often treated as the goal but calm on the outside can still mean survival mode on the inside. When we focus on behaviour, facial expression, or volume, we miss freeze, shutdown, masking, and internal pain. We miss the n
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