PDA fae

Category: adhd

  • Pomodoro stream

    Found another little thing that helped today, probably more so with ADHD avoidance and motivation issues than PDA. I think if my demand anxiety had been high, this wouldn’t have been so successful. I found a streamer on twitch doing pomodoros of 50 minutes followed by ten minute breaks. That’s longer than I can usually motivate myself to focus on something, but the body doubling effect of working alongside a streamer and her audience really helped.

    It definitely helps too to think of table tops and table legs (credit to Harry Thompson for that metaphor). When it comes to household care tasks, they’re the table leg towards the table top of eventually being considered independent enough to get a cat. I’ve come a long way on that goal, the main thing now is to learn to a. sustain the progress and b. keep on top of care tasks even during periods of blips. I’m no longer needing support sessions to achieve basic tidying care tasks, which I’m really proud of.

    Edited 8/3/23: I no longer recommend Harry Thompson as a resource.

  • (untitled)

    Found this graphic on my facebook feed, from the page The Autistic Teacher. It made me consider which of the two sides I fall on for each item:

    • Probably more likely to get upset if plans disrupted, especially as a child. Might occasionally make spontaneous plans, I’d need to mindfully observe myself to work this out
    • Struggle to organise, definitely
    • Impulsively spend!
    • Struggles when others are late (and likely to be early to compensate for bad time keeping)
    • Both: usually i’ll have a special interest I spend time almost casually engaging it, it’s very easy, it’s a low effort thing to spend time on. I’ll also have a range of hobbies that take effort to engage in, but that I can get fixated on
    • Forgetting steps in plans is more likely for me
    • Wanting new experiences, I love novelty.

  • Diagnostic report received

    After three months of waiting, I finally received my diagnostic report! It noted that my demand avoidance was ‘marked’ and causing ‘significant impact on my life’ which.. woah. I did not realise that it was that obvious and the impact so clear. Apparently the assessor had to make significant adjustments to the assessment process for me to be able to complete it, which I hadn’t noticed. It’s interesting that even though I feel as an adult, I fawn and mask, to a trained assessor my need for control was evident.

    It didn’t clearly state which subtype of ADHD I have, but did make references to both inattention and hyperactivity, so I assume it’s considered combined type. At the very least, I was right to identify hyperactivity in myself, as well as manic high energy – those two can be so difficult to distinguish! It didn’t help that during my last manic episode, I was exploring ADHD and explained manic high energy as ADHD. I will need to be careful to distinguish between the two in the future. Possibly noticing an increase in hyperactivity symptoms is a sign of hypomania for myself.