PDA fae

Author: plumfae

  • High demand capacity

    I’m having a rare day of low demand anxiety/high demand capacity. Seems slightly odd after the demand that I fix the ways I didn’t meet standards in a room inspection within three days – it has to be said yesterday that made me extremely anxious and tanked my mood.

    I guess a good 17 hour sleep was exactly what I needed in that state, after being awake for 28 hours (fairly common for me). It seems to have restored things, and I can make sense of why the things need to be done, so that helps with the demand anxiety. It also helped that when I wrote out the tasks involved, it was less than I had estimated. Also, a local autism charity offered support to get the more difficult tasks done, after I called them for support in the anxious, dysphoric state.

    What’s been really awesome though, is that I’ve had capacity for hobbies. So far today I’ve knitted a little, played a solo TTRPG called Ironsworn, and played a board game with a friend and staff at the supported housing. After writing this post, I’m going to pick back up a book I haven’t touched in over a month.

    Days like this are rare, and very treasured when they occur.

  • Feelwheel

    Just wanted to highlight a rather cool tool for dealing with alexithymia:

    The feel wheel. Start in the centre, with the 5 core emotions, and work outwards to a more specific emotion word that ‘fits’ how you feel.

    https://feelingswheel.com/

    Nearly every time I want to work out how I’m feeling, I use this to do so.

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    Fancied a change up, so a change of blog theme. That’ll probably happen every once in a while.

  • Life is boring..

    .. life feels boring?

    Is life boring?

    It definitely feels it recently. Life has been feeling same-y, repetitive, lacking anything truly pleasurable, or worthwhile.

    I’ve also been sleeping a lot – regular 12+ sleeps, with very low demand capacity, struggling to cook, or want much food.

    Sounds like mild depression to me.

    So maybe life isn’t boring, but depression is making it seem that way. That’s what I’m hoping, because if that’s the case, there’s tangible things I can do about it.

    Though, part of me suspects that it’s also that human society is badly set up.. if you want to get out of the house and do something, what can you do?

    Shop? spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need

    Cafe? Park? Library? Cinema? It’s a limited range of options.

    OR

    There’s go down a pub… and we wonder why drinking is so common in society.

    It’s hard to think what there is to plan to go out and do with my time, that could be some spontaneous fun. I think that’s part of what I’m lacking, something different, out of the ordinary, spur of the moment… but it’s so hard to think what that could look like.

    All the options just feel like another part of the mundanity.

    I don’t know if depression is the reason that mundanity feels so oppressively unbearable, or not. If it’s not, I don’t know what to do about that feeling.

    But working on making sure I’m looking after my mood sounds like a place to start, and nothing has to be fixed all at once. It’s a journey… and yesteday (I write this at 3am), getting some sunshine, spending time with friends … and making plans with a local healthwatch* to do work around Autistic and learning disabled people stuck in prisons and ATUs was definitely a step along that journey. Definitely feels like a bigger step than the previous day which was made up of lonely sleeping and dozing (that horrible half asleep state where you want to just pop downstairs and see people you no longer live with). But I try to remember the value of rest, and perhaps that day of doziness was just as important and restorative – and prepared me for the day I had yesterday.

    *If you’re in the UK, you can find your local healthwatch here.

  • (untitled)

    Gonna link to this twitter thread; https://twitter.com/Autist_Writer/status/1638996227286093824 because it sums up all the feelings I have about Untypical that I struggled to express.

    Words are not proving easy at the moment. Not to the point of being completely mute, but not infrequently expressing myself proves tricky or harder than I can manage. There’s also a general sense of ‘No.’ from my brain about nearly everything, and a lingering sense of ‘life is really, really boring’.

    Hopefully this will pass in time.

  • Untypical, by Pete Wharmby

    When I was discovering my neurodevelopmental differences (I don’t say neurodivergences, as I include bipolar in that, which I already know about), I started processing all the trauma that was associated with them. It left me with the feeling that neurotypical society was deeply hostile towards neurodivergents, particularly Autistics.

    So I knew I wanted to read the recent release based on the tagline alone: “How the world isn’t built for Autistic people, and what we should all do about it”. It promised acknowledgement and validation, and that’s exactly what the book delivers. It also offered a sense of hope, that there’s things that can be done, that this hostility isn’t unavoidable.

    My brain isn’t braining very well recently, so it’s hard to find the words to express everything I feel about this book, but I heartily recommend it!

  • Exercise update

    A couple of times now, I’ve had a little tiny urge to try out some gentle yoga. Acted on it tonight, which feels like a little bit of progress.

    Unfortunately, I learnt that my 30 something year old. spinal fused body finds kneeling, laying, and adopting various positions on the floor rather painful, which is utterly motivation killing. It’s a shame, because gentle, slow yoga feels like the ideal not-overly demanding exercise that’d work for me at the moment. I’m not even sure what I could do to make it less painful, I already have an extra thick mat for padding.

    Maybe something like tai chi would be ideal, again nice and slow, but mostly standing. I ought to find time to get back into swimming as well, haven’t been in a long time and I have plenty of free time. Not that ‘ought to’ is the right approach as a PDAer.

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    All links to Harry Thompson’s content is going to be removed from this site. No further links to his content will be shared here.

  • Brain says no.

    The current thing my PDA seems to be preventing is exercise. Nothing seems to be helping. Knowing all the good reasons to do so, which is something that usually helps, is just adding to the ‘have to’.

    I don’t know if something like role play might help. It feels like it’d be good if I could find an equivalent to ‘tidy just one thing’, like something very small and simple. I’m not sure what that would be though when it comes to physical activity.

    It really doesn’t help that exercise is just not something that’s very intrinsically motivating to me. I don’t find it particularly enjoyable for the process of it, it’d be all about the results. So it becomes a ‘want to want’ and PDA doesn’t vibe with ‘want to wants’.

    If I weighed less, walking would be easier and thus more motivating. I definitely enjoyed my regular mile or longer walks when I was manic. Unfortunately, with the weight gain from medications, standing and long walks are now painful on my fused spine. So something like brief exercise routines would be easier in that respect but not in terms of intrinsic motivation.

    I wish I had a good answer to the internal ‘No!’ to the idea of exercise, but I really don’t.

  • Inside our autistic minds

    I’d avoided watching this. Partly from all the discussion about it, and from someone asking me if I’d watched it… so of course that expectation was paralysing. Mainly though, because of fear of a mainstream documentary just being shit.

    It wasn’t.

    It really, really wasn’t.

    Flo’s video to her mum had me in tears. I’ve asked my mum to watch it, because of that scene (well, the whole thing).. that scene felt like everything I’d say to my mum if I could find the words and courage. I related so hard to everything Flo had experienced and expressed. Being obviously different from a young age, but not knowing why. Knowing you needed to be more like everyone else.

    The sense that who I truly was, was Wrong.

    With PDA and the way it differs from non-PDA autism, for years I felt that autism didn’t even fit. That I definitely felt odd, and different, and struggled socially… but couldn’t possibly be Autistic. I was just Wrong. Not struggling as much as Autistics would, seeming to just be a failing neurotypical. Discovering that PDA explains the space of ‘surface social skills, but still impaired’ was life-changing. Finding that I do have a place in the community of neurodivergents feels like coming home to my own people. My neurokin.

    Not only coming home to my own people, but coming home to myself. My stims. My hyperactivity – and knowing the benefits of expressing it through physical activity. My intense interests. My demand anxiety. My rollercoaster emotional experience. My ability to roleplay. My need for control. Myself.

    It’s so good to know that I am Autistic, and to find content that reflects my experience back to me. Not just this documentary, but all the content on social media. Books written by Autistic people (I recently pre-ordered Untypical by Pete Wharmby and will review it here when it arrives). The play I saw in July last year, Atypical Rainbow.

    But also learning about the experiences of people elsewhere on the spectrum. The documentary also focused on Murray, a non-speaking Autistic man with apraxia. His film made me think of the kids at the school I worked with, and my hopes that they are introduced to spelling to communicate. It made me think of my period of situational mutism, where I too had so many thoughts – I was manic, so many many racing delusional thoughts! There was a lot going on in my internal world that no one had any idea about. Murray expressed himself beautifully and eloquently through his film, clearly an intelligent young man.

    There’s nothing like the magic of neuro-affirming creations by, and interactions with my neurokin. I wish we could all grow up with this from a young age, instead of experiencing behavioural modification, bullying, and abuse forcing us into hiding our true selves.