PDA fae

Category: food and eating

  • Demand avoidance and food

    Something my demand avoidance really affects is my relationship to food and eating. There’s also sensory issues involved, I’m very sensitive to taste and texture.

    Mostly though, my issues with eating stem from demand avoidance, particularly around preparing food. I swing between eating a lot of low effort junk food, and eating out too much for lunch, and then periods of eating very little of anything.

    The latter causes weight loss which always gains me praise, which makes it very appealing to repeat. The former causes weight gain, with the opposite societal effect – disapproval. Particularly from doctors, especially if I dare seek help for my chronic pain (which I tend to avoid and self-medicate for as minimally as possible).

    I find deciding what I’ll want to eat for the week ahead very difficult, and demanding. Even more than that, preparing a proper meal is too many demands for me, so I often eat take out or microwave meals.

    I’ve recently discovered, via tiktok, the idea of a “snackboard” which sometimes makes lunchtime a little easier – it provides variety in a meal and can get me eating fruit and pickled vegetables. Sometimes though, even preparing on of those feels too demanding.

    I really would prefer if, much like sleep, if food just wasn’t needed.

  • Advice for the teens

    Hi, you teeny terror tots

    • learn to accept deadlines as a way to channel your passions
      • whether that’s uni, starting a business, cleanliness, whatever: deadlines are a part of life. Don’t take them too seriously, because the only ultimate one is actual death, but still
    • learn to tidy AND learn to clean
      • Anyway you can, anyway how
      • These are the skills that truly prevent self-neglect
    • I bet you’re a better cook than I am!
      • If not, start out with baking
    • Embrace your own personal form of brilliance
    • Learn to use some form of AAC
      • A big part of PDA is the language aspect, and AAC helps all humans communicate
      • even if it’s just a ‘I’m ok, I’m NOT ok’ wristband – you’ll help all your interpersonal relationships
    • Learn to be ok with your own company, and learn when you’re getting too intense about one specific person
      • No one loves being the focus of a special interest/a favourite person – not even your partner
    • Forge your own paths, please: we’ve all got ways to shine.
    • Also; let’s teach this world the beauty of stimming, eh?

  • Post solstice hygge

    Gosh I had a lovely “hygge” tonight with family. Hygge is a loanword from Danish, meaning a dark night, twinkly nights, good company (and good food and alcohol)

    Me and my mum cooked a starter and main, we had cheesecake, or cheese and crackers for dessert, so many snacks. Played a runthrough of a new board game I had in my yule stocking (a personal tradition), and a general knowledge quiz to finish up.

    I’m leaning into Christmas in a big way this year, as it’s the most normal Christmas I’ve had since 2019 (covid, mania, supported housing, mania, all got in the way of “normal”). It’s so nice to be well enough to be at home, to host an event even if prepping was so super demanding it took me 8 hours to complete getting ready (due all the the demand free time and pacing needed to cope).

    That’s the essence of a PDA christmas – you do it your own way. Lean in, or avoid most of it. Do it but in an unorthodox way. Adhere religiously to the rules of Christmas. Cling film wrapped presents.

    Whatever works for you, and the PDAers in your life.

    What worked for us mainly was that I set a “no expectations” rule – aside from no shoes in the flat. Other than that, we didn’t expect things of each other, and everyone was much happier. We made our own drinks, we did what we offered to help with, we’ve left the washing up for me and my carers to work on tomorrow (within reason).

    The Yuletide magic that I’ve been waiting for!

  • Update: struggling a little

    Recently I’ve been very lonely. I don’t see my friends in person very often, nor do I have that many. Where I live is only a small town. All the activities are attended by women in their 50s and 60s.

    My care coordinator said it best when he said ‘there’s nothing to do in X for 30 year olds, unless you like drink or drugs’. Suffice to say, I don’t intend to take up substance abuse to gain social connections!

    I struggled making friends at university in Cardiff. So it feels like if I couldn’t manage whilst surrounded by 30k students my own age, how do I expect to make friends in home counties small town? It leaves me feeling like the problem is me – that there’s something wrong with me.

    This loneliness and low mood has been making food a particular struggle at the moment. It’s feeling far too demanding to decide what meets my sensory needs, shop for it, store it appropriately, prepare it, cook it, eat it and clean up afterwards. I’m tempted to survive of Huel and toast for a while – low spoons food. Nut butter for protein, toast for carbs, Huel for vitamins and minerals. Not the best diet, but better to be consuming something at least, and it would be easiest with my spoon level and sensory needs at present.

    Hopefully things will get easier soon. I am very glad to be spending a Christmas with family, in the community, doing all the usual Christmas things. I missed out in a big way last year, and I have a lot to be thankful for that I’m well (not psychotic) this time around.

  • Carer support

    It’s been arranged that I have the support of carers in my new home. This was due to the PDA society insisting that I get a care act assessment to support me in day to day life and I’m really grateful that they stressed this point.

    The assessment was carried out by my community mental health team whilst I was still in hospital. That meant the carers were ready as soon as I moved in. They used the report put together by the occupational therapist at the hospital, but also came to talk to me at my request. That felt really important as a PDAer, to have a chance to give my own input. It helped me feel in control of the situation.

    The carers come four times a week, and help with tasks such as cleaning, hoovering, laundry, food shopping and cooking. Basically, activities of daily living. I can also go for trips such as bowling with them, which I will definitely make use of in the future. I get on well with them, which helps a lot. I also plan to do some baking with them soon, should be super fun.

    I definitely recommend this more than supported housing – there’s a lot more control and autonomy in having support in your own home. Supported housing comes with a lot of expectations of managing everything by yourself in my experience, and to someone else’s standards. In contrast, carers are actually willing to do tasks either with or for, depending on your capacity for the day.

  • Almond butter autonomy.

    It’s never a good start to a day when at 4am, after a night of pain and no sleep, you develop a craving for almond butter on toast… and have no means of having that for breakfast.

    I’m likely going to struggle to eat breakfast at all. My demand capacity is going to be quite a bit lower. It might seem odd, but a large part of that will be due to the loss of autonomy of the choice of what to eat, not pain or sleep deprivation. Of course, I’d probably cope better if my stress cup wasn’t filled by those things – see Tomlin Wilding’s page for information on ‘cups’.

    Odd as it may seem though, the simple lack of the food I actually want for breakfast – and the inability to pop to a shop beforehand to pick it up, or that it wouldn’t be listed on deliveroo groceries, is a problem. I’m already grumpy just thinking about breakfast without my autonomous choice. Nothing else is going to be a good substitute, which is not ideal when pain has already reduced my appetite.

    Sigh. I foresee a taxi ride to the nearest big supermarket today.

  • “Just prepping”

    I made a small instagram post about this – the hack of telling myself that I’m not “Doing The Thing”, I’m just “preparing”. It’s something I’ve used a lot throughout life, usually to get myself to study. It started in high school, I would set up my pens, my books, my computer at the kitchen table, often taking quite a lot of time over an exact layout. I’d tend to feel unable to start until things were laid out “just so”, but also that that was all I was going to do – just lay things out.

    Somehow, starting by “getting things set up” reduces the demand anxiety to get the rest of the task done. I think I’ve used this with tidying as well, with setting up llama life, or a pomodoro stream. I wonder if it could be used to effect with cooking, laying out the ingredients and the materials needed, like the dish, frying pan, or chopping board and knife. I imagine that might actually work pretty well.

    It’s strange to me how this is a little hack I came up with years before even having heard of PDA. I guess I have been living my life having to find some ways around the feeling of demand anxiety – a lot of that involved dissociation, which I think I’ve mentioned before I do a lot less now I have acknowledged my demand anxiety.

    It’s good to live a life working with my brain, not against it.

  • Food..

    .. is hard. Demands, sensory aspects, executive function, these combine to make food a complete nightmare for me.

    So it definitely doesn’t help when I start losing my appetite again. Might be to do with reducing my risperidone. Might also be to do with staff nagging me too much about how I’m going to lose weight – I do not need extra demands around food or exercise because then neither will happen.

    For now I’m aiming for low spoons nutrition. Smoothies, cereal, microwaved baked beans, protein from the freezer, lots of potato, meals that just need putting in the microwave or oven (and nothing else), and multi-vit water. The highest spoons food I have is apples, which I need to cut up to eat because biting into them makes my gums unhappy.

    Hopefully I can settle into a good rhythm, eating like this, that can sustain me. Smoothies are definitely a low demand, low effort way to get a little more fruit and veg than I was previously.. and the more fruit, veg, carbs and protein I eat, the less processed food I should need to snack on to feel full.