Perfectly Imperfect

16/10/2026

Some people with disabilities aren’t experiencing less distress. They’ve just learnt that expressing it comes at a cost. And we really need to talk about that.

The autistic person who stops communicating their sensory needs.

The person with an intellectual disability who agrees to everything because they’ve learnt that saying no creates conflict.

The ADHD adult who stops asking for accommodations because they’re tired of being called difficult.

The person with complex support needs who becomes quieter, more withdrawn and less expressive.

The person who stops advocating for themselves because every attempt has been labelled challenging, demanding or inappropriate.

And somehow, we call this progress.

Improved behaviour.
Reduced incidents.
Increased compliance.
Better engagement.

But have we actually improved their quality of life? Or have we simply reduced the amount of discomfort experienced by everyone around them?

Because there’s a difference.

A person can become easier to support while becoming increasingly disconnected from their own needs. They can appear more cooperative while feeling less safe. They can stop expressing distress without the distress actually disappearing. And they can learn to tolerate environments that are actively harming their wellbeing because they’ve never been given a meaningful alternative.

Here’s the part that should make every disability professional uncomfortable.

If your measure of success is how little someone disrupts the environment, you’re measuring the convenience of the system. Not the wellbeing of the person.

Real progress isn’t always quiet. Sometimes it’s someone finally saying no. Sometimes it’s refusing an activity they’ve spent years being pressured into. Sometimes it’s communicating anger, setting boundaries, requesting accommodations or walking away from something that doesn’t feel safe. Sometimes what looks like an increase in ‘challenging behaviour’ is actually a person beginning to exercise their autonomy.

That doesn’t mean every behaviour is safe or that distress should go unsupported. It means we need to understand what the behaviour is communicating before deciding it needs to disappear.

Disability support should never be about making people easier to manage. It should be about making their lives easier to live. More autonomy. More safety. More connection. More meaningful choice. And less expectation that people must suppress who they are to deserve support.

At Perfectly Imperfect, that’s the standard we’re interested in. Because being easier to support doesn’t necessarily mean someone is experiencing a better quality of life.

Perfectly Imperfect | Disrupting the Norm.

13/10/2026

IT'S BIRTHDAY MONTH AND WE'RE CELEBRATING WITH 50% OFF!

This month is a particularly special one for us at Perfectly Imperfect. We're celebrating the birthday of someone very close to our hearts, whose lived experience of PDA has shaped so much of our understanding, advocacy and the work we do today, and why we started Perfectly Imperfect!!

And what better way to celebrate than by making PDA-affirming education more accessible?

For a limited time, we're offering 50% off Beyond Compliance our online PDA-Affirming Training for Support Workers.

Across 9 self-paced modules, you'll explore demand avoidance, interoception, masking, nervous-system responses, co-regulation, sensory needs and practical low-demand strategies that genuinely support PDAers.

Usually $299 now just $149.50!

Use code: BIRTHDAY50% at checkout.

https://imperfect.samcart.com/products/beyond-compliance-pda-affirming-training-for-support-workers

09/10/2026

“I DON’T KNOW.”

As both a clinician and a parent raising a PDAer, I’ve heard those three words more times than I can count.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you feeling anxious?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did that upset you?”

“I DON’T KNOW!”

And here’s something about PDA that I find absolutely fascinating and that most people say they understand PDA - do not actually understand!! A PDAer can sometimes detect the tiniest shift in your tone, your facial expression, or the expectation behind your words.

They know you’re about to ask something before you’ve even opened your mouth. They can sense tension in a room that nobody has acknowledged.
Yet they may have absolutely no idea what’s happening inside their own body.

This is where the relationship between interoception and neuroception becomes really interesting.

Interoception is how we notice and interpret internal bodily signals, including those associated with emotions.

Neuroception, a concept from polyvagal theory, describes the nervous system’s unconscious detection of cues of safety and threat.

Some PDAers experience significant interoceptive difficulties alongside heightened sensitivity to perceived demands or threats to autonomy.

Think about that discrepancy.

Their nervous system may be responding to a perceived threat before they can even recognise that they’re anxious. Their heart rate increases. Their muscles tense. Their capacity to process language decreases.

But when you ask how they’re feeling? “I don’t know.”
Not because they’re being difficult. Not because they’re refusing to communicate. But because recognising a threat and consciously identifying an internal emotional state are two very different processes. So they often do not know.

And here’s where some people get it very wrong.
We keep asking questions. Encouraging emotional labelling. Trying to get them to explain their reactions. When the very act of questioning can become another demand.

You cannot expect someone to regulate an emotion they haven’t yet recognised. And you cannot assume emotional awareness simply because someone is incredibly perceptive.

This is why interoception matters so much in PDA support.

It’s also why co-regulation, relational safety and reducing perceived pressure often need to come BEFORE emotional reflection.

I’ve learnt this both professionally and personally.

Sometimes “I don’t know” is the most accurate answer someone can give us. And sometimes the most therapeutic thing we can do is believe them.

Perfectly Imperfect

Neurodiversity-affirming, trauma-informed support in Sydney. Counselling, NDIS services, & coaching for neurodivergent Australians, families, and professionals.

09/10/2026

JUST BECAUSE YOU WORK WITH AUTISTIC PEOPLE DOESN’T MEAN YOU UNDERSTAND AUTISTIC PEOPLE. (Yes - I said it shouting!!!)

And I think it’s time we started having this conversation, particularly with professionals undertaking family assessments.

You can have twenty years of clinical experience. You can have multiple degrees. You can have assessed hundreds of families.

And still have absolutely no understanding of the everyday nuances of neurodivergent life.

The child who holds it together at school and falls apart at home. The autistic mother who needs everything in writing because verbal processing under pressure is incredibly difficult. The father whose flat affect is interpreted as a lack of empathy.

The PDA child who genuinely wants a relationship with someone but whose nervous system experiences the expectations surrounding that relationship as threatening.

The child who says they had a wonderful time with a parent, then needs three days to recover. The parent who appears articulate and capable in an assessment but cannot manage basic daily tasks without significant support.

These aren’t obscure clinical presentations. This is everyday life for many neurodivergent families.

Yet I continue to see professional interpretations that fail to account for these nuances.

And here’s what concerns me. Some professionals are making life-changing recommendations about families whose lived experiences they fundamentally do not understand. Knowing the DSM criteria isn’t enough. Attending a two-hour webinar isn’t enough.
Having worked with a few autistic children isn’t enough. And being neurodivergent yourself doesn’t automatically make you an expert either.

It takes curiosity. Humility. Ongoing learning. Listening to lived experience. And the ability to recognise when your existing clinical frameworks are insufficient.

I’ve worked within the Family Court system, and I now undertake Single Expert family reports.

My work in behaviour support, complex disability, trauma and neurodivergent family systems informs the questions I ask and the assumptions I’m prepared to challenge.

Because I don’t just want to know how a child presented during an assessment. I want to understand what it costs them to present that way.

And if you’re undertaking assessments that could influence where a neurodivergent child lives, who they spend time with, and how their distress is interpreted?

Understanding neurodivergence isn’t an optional extra. It’s part of being competent to undertake that assessment.

We need to stop confusing experience working with neurodivergent people with expertise in understanding their experiences. They are not the same thing. And children deserve professionals who know the difference.

Jess Dolev | Single Expert Family Report Writer

Perfectly Imperfect | Disrupting the Norm

[email protected]

08/10/2026

“They need to learn that the world won’t accommodate them.”

Guess what? They already know.

They know when they’re left out of the birthday party.
When their support needs are treated as an inconvenience.
When another service says, “Sorry, too complex.”
When asking for help becomes harder than going without.

You’re not breaking news to them, or to us as parents or caregivers.

What they might not know is what it feels like to need help and receive it without a lecture.

To say “I can’t” and be met with curiosity.
To have someone notice the effort it takes to get through an ordinary Tuesday.
To belong before they’ve mastered all the things everyone keeps insisting they should.

And honestly? The world accommodates people constantly. Calendars. GPS. Automatic doors. Reminders. Someone else doing our tax because absolutely not.

But when a disabled person needs an adjustment, suddenly we’re very concerned about “the real world”.

Disabled people live in the real world every bloody day. They deserve a say in how it works.

- Jess xx

07/10/2026

“They seemed fine to me.” But did you see what it took to get them there?

Edition 2 of disrupting the “norm” explores high and complex support needs, the invisible care, the exhaustion and why a good hour doesn’t tell us about the whole day.

Personal words from Jess, practical psychoeducation and a reminder that needing more help isn’t a failure.

Subscribe and join us, fellow disruptors.

07/10/2026

I’m getting really tired of hearing the words:

“They’re too complex for our service.”

Too complex for the psychologist. Too complex for the OT. Too complex for the support worker. Too complex for the school. Too complex for the day program. Too complex for the SIL. Too complex for the therapist.

And eventually, somehow, all of that “complexity” gets handed back to the family.

A family who is already doing the night shifts. Managing the meltdowns. Replacing the broken things. Attending the meetings. Answering the phone calls. Keeping siblings safe.

Trying to keep someone engaged in school, community, hygiene, eating, sleeping and life.

Learning the NDIS. Fighting the NDIS. Training new workers. Losing workers. Starting again.
And then being told they need to practise more “self-care”.

Come on. Are we for real!?

Some people genuinely do have high and complex support needs. That doesn’t make them too difficult to support. It means the support needs to be better.
More skilled. More coordinated. More curious. More consistent. And sometimes, yes, more funded.

Families should not have to become the behaviour practitioner, OT, case manager, support coordinator, crisis team, advocate and 24/7 support worker because every service keeps saying:

“That’s outside our scope.”

At Perfectly Imperfect, we are intentionally building a service that doesn’t run away when things get complicated.

Because the people with the biggest support needs shouldn’t be the ones with the fewest places willing to support them. And their families should not be the system’s unpaid safety net.

Complex isn’t a reason to walk away.

It’s a reason to get the right people around the table.

* Behaviour Support
* OT & Functional Capacity Assessments
* Therapy
* High & complex support needs
* Support workers & AHAs
* Parent/carer support
* Multidisciplinary collaboration

Perfectly Imperfect. We do complex.

06/10/2026

We’re probably not the right service for everyone. And actually, we’re okay with that. (Minus a little RSD here and there!)

We’re not interested in making autistic people look less autistic. We’re not interested in teaching children to tolerate adults who don’t make them feel safe.

We’re not interested in calling distress “attention seeking” because nobody bothered to work out what the person was actually trying to communicate.

We’re not interested in congratulating a child for sitting quietly at school when they come home and completely fall apart.

We’re not interested in independence at any cost.

And we’re definitely not interested in making somebody more convenient for the systems around them.

We work with complexity. Kids who haven’t been to school for months. Teenagers who have completely checked out. Adults whose lives have become smaller and smaller. Families who have already seen six professionals and are absolutely exhausted from telling the story again. People with high and complex support needs.

Families living with behaviours that are genuinely hard, frightening or exhausting, without pretending that understanding the behaviour means the impact isn’t real. People who have spent years being told they are the problem.

We don’t come in with a shiny little strategy sheet and pretend everything will be fixed by Tuesday.

Sometimes the work is slow. Sometimes it’s messy.
Sometimes the first goal isn’t independence, compliance, school attendance or community access.

Sometimes the first goal is simply: Can this person feel safe with us? Because if we don’t have that, we don’t have much.

Perfectly Imperfect was never built to make people fit neatly into systems that weren’t designed for them. We built it for the people who don’t fit neatly anywhere. And, quite frankly, they’re our favourite kind of people.

- Jess xx (Founder of Perfectly Imperfect)

06/10/2026

This!!

01/10/2026

BOOK REVIEW

Just finished The Parents’ and Professionals’ Simple Guide to PDA by Laura Kerbey and honestly and the word simple is doing exactly what it says on the tin.

It’s short.
It’s easy to read.
It’s practical.
And you do not need a psychology degree, three uninterrupted hours and a functioning executive system to get through it. (My kinda book at the moment!!)

What I particularly like is that it gives parents, educators and professionals an accessible starting point for understanding PDA and, importantly, why the usual “they just need firmer boundaries/consequences/consistency” approach can go spectacularly badly.

Because when a nervous system is experiencing demands as threat, adding more pressure, more control and more consequences isn’t necessarily going to create capacity.

Understanding the why changes the way we respond. And this little book explains that without making PDA unnecessarily complicated.

Is it going to teach you absolutely everything there is to know about PDA? No. But that isn’t what it’s trying to do.

It’s the kind of book I’d happily hand to a grandparent, teacher, support worker, partner or parent who says:

“Okay… I think I understand PDA, but what does this actually mean day-to-day?”

And because it is genuinely SHORT, there is actually a decent chance they’ll read it.

Definitely one for the PI bookshelf.

And possibly one to casually leave on the desk of anyone who tells you: “But they need to learn they can’t always get their own way.”