Why is it impossible to have PDA without autism?

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I mean why can't someone just have anxiety about demands and feel the need to be in control and that's it and lack all the other autism symptoms, why is this not possible? If there are actually people out in the world like this, I wonder what diagnoses they would have? Would it just be anxiety disorder or OCD?

I was just watching a British TV show online called Born naughty (I think that is the name of it) and they had a girl on there who had PDA. In that TV show these people visit these families of kids who act naughty to see what the root cause of their behavior is and kids do get a diagnoses. So far it's been autism and ADHD and one boy had anxiety with trying new foods and PDA. They tested the girl and she had PDA but she also had social interaction issues and impaired social imagination. She also had limited eye contact and she preferred animals than people. She also feared new situations so she would get anxiety about it and act up and have her meltdowns. So that is how I learned why PDA is considered part of autism because she did score on the autism test than off it. Now it makes me wonder why isn't it possible to just have the demand avoidance issue and lack all the other symptoms? What would they call it instead of someone was that way?

I think it's much like how social anxiety, avoidance personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder and ASD have some (often superficial) differences.

Other dxs would probably be oppositional defiance disorder (these children are often viewed as naughty but most of them have either ADHD and/or anxiety about others having control or doing the work set (e.g., they think it will be/it is too difficult and they react to avoid it) - they prefer predictable 'bad' responses) or simply viewed as challenging behaviour that some alongside difficult backgrounds or attachment difficulties.

You often see this outside of PDA.

Okay then so they just have different labels for each set of symptoms. So I suppose if someone had autistic special interests and autistic routines and rituals but yet they lacked all the other autism symptoms, they would be diagnosed as having OCD. Just like how someone who has autism that comes and goes or don't have enough for an autism diagnoses can be diagnosed as having anxiety. But I still don't understand the whole PDA thing and why it needs to be a thing. Why not make it part of autism that people don't like to give into demands and don't like demands because it causes them tremendous anxiety than making it its own name? I wonder if this is why 40% of people with ASD also have ODD when in fact it could just be PDA?

Persistent Demand Avoidance aka Being a Teenager.

Yep....you had to have seen the girl over an extended period of time.