PDA fae

Category: PDA

  • Demand free time

    Recently I’ve needed a lot of this. I’ve been dealing with a series of traumaversaries throughout July and August, which has been Very Not Fun, and they obliterated my demand capacity.

    I re-downloaded tiktok, with better knowledge of how to curate a better feed for myself than when I first started with the app back in 2022. It’s now a lot of Autism/ADHD/Trauma recovery content with the occasional pet content (usually cats), and sometimes cleaning/cooking videos. It now feels replenishing to spend a number of hours browsing those videos.

    I find tiktok an ideal way to have demand free time that isn’t ‘understimulating’. Sometimes demand free time does need to be time spent just sitting, maybe with music on, and that can be replenishing in a shorter amount of time. But my ADHD finds that very difficult.. or sometimes there is just a very large amount of demand free time required. In those moments, social media becomes the perfect activity. I can engage in multiple special interests, without being required to expend very much effort at all.

    Of all the things that learning about PDA taught me, demand free time was the most useful, life changing concept I learnt of. I can finally recuperate from life properly, and much much faster. It helps me stave off (and when needed start to recover from) burnout. I now know it is a vital need to empty my demand cup.

  • 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.

  • relationship anarchy and being gentle with my selves

    I need alternative relationships – I’m demiromantic, for a start. We’ve been talking about the concept of relationship anarchy and all interpersonal relationships in a persons life being (close to) equal.

    For me, I would prioritise a queerplatonic (QPR) or romantic partner, but all my other relationships are equal. Family is not more important than friends for example. Discussing this helps me learn how to make these kind of approaches work healthily. I want to structure my social network that only those who can cope with being equal to everyone else remain in the network, over time, but first I need to build a stronger network in line with that principle.

    I’d hope to find a QPR or romantic partner, but that can come with time.

    I wanted to share a resource that was shared as part of the discussion: https://robynlposin.com/being-gentle-with-our-selves. It’s important to allow ourselves to be very gentle with ourselves in life, and to avoid what we need to avoid. Particularly for me, being gentle with ‘my selves’ is an important concept. I don’t want to push my inner child too hard, and I want to learn to work with my inner critic for example.

  • Encouragement is my PDA anathema

    I’ve read far more about PDAers hating praise, and wondered why it doesn’t seem to bother me – a cause of imposter syndrome at times. However, with praise, I can view it as a response to an act, not a request to repeat the act.

    Encouragement however, has always led to my digging my heels in to a refusal. I don’t know how I only just realised that, but it was only recently I realised that that was the reason I couldn’t exercise.

    When I first learnt about PDA, I identified with every part but couldn’t see the avoidance. I assumed though, correctly, that likely the demand avoidance was there but I was disconnected from it. I used to be very dissociative and this has happened much less since I realised this and attuned to my demand anxiety.

    I learnt to fawn, because of responses to my demand avoidance, so that aspect of PDA had become very masked.

    However, I have always refused with more intensity the more I am encouraged. That realisation has dispelled any imposter syndrome that I had somehow tricked my assessor.

  • PDA and agency

    It strikes me that PDA impairs agency.

    When we respond to ‘you should’ or hunger or really wanting to do something with a hard no.. we have lost our agency.

    I feel this might actually be more central than autonomy seeking, as not all PDAers claim to experience a drive for autonomy. Responding to expectation with avoidance however, always affects our agency.

    Interestingly, realising this.. makes me feel controlled. For example, I have been reacting to encouragement to exercise with a hard No, you can’t make me. I.e. I’m being a typical PDAer. But I’m also being a PDAer who is being controlled.

    My therapist stated that a healthy PDAer acts from choice and at the time I wasn’t convinced. Thinking about agency makes that make sense though: avoiding is being just as controlled as complying, just in the opposite direction.

    So I suppose the work is to learn to respond to encouragement with ‘I will do it if I want to’ rather than ‘You can’t make me’.

  • Having a future, once more

    When I was manic, I declared I’d become a human rights lawyer. This was grandiose, I wouldn’t get through law school. I do have an interest in human rights, and so I’ve been researching alternative careers in the field that don’t require law school.

    It feels so good to have options around my career. In my 20s I was heart set on clinical psychologist (because I wanted to offer people better services than my friends were offered). I dropped out of undergrad, and since then, learnt that you can’t overthrow a system by being the system. So I moved on from that goal. It felt like a loss initially, but it really wasn’t.

    Now I’m looking at working in local autism policy, or autism research, human rights work, or setting up a peer support company.

    times are exciting again, finally .. after 6 years of stagnation after my first manic episode and not being offered any help to regain my functioning,

    I now have supported housing (which is limited, for reasons) and living here and recovering from mania has shifted my mindset into thinking about the future again. This is why I call this period of time a metanoia.

    It’s bloody amazing.

    What helps in all this, is learning about the idea of the PDA flow. This sort of stuff is exactly my PDA flow.. and I’ve been so much more motivated to be functional in life because I know where my flow lies again. Existing disconnected from the flow seems to be a surefire way to be depressed for me. Even when I was manic, I was finding my flow again, and that was a very good thing.

  • This is so true

    Sally Cat’s recent post

    If you’re looking for new PDA resources, Sally Cat’s content is one I can highly recommend.

  • Putting shoes on

    This is a tip I came across in Sensory: Life on the Spectrum (which I will do a review of in due time), that was corroborated by the experience of a PDAer I know online. The comic author, with a PDA profile, said she gets into ‘doing things’ mode by wearing shoes, my friend has to be wearing doing things clothing, like jeans rather than tracksuit bottoms.

    So I thought I’d give it a go, and put shoes on when I’m doing care tasks. It definitely helps to keep the momentum going, and seems to signal ‘this is not rest and relaxation time’. It’s definitely less tempting to curl up on the sofa with them on.

    Another simple trick in the toolbox of adulting with PDA!

  • The power of daydreaming

    I used to daydream all the time as a young teen, usually on car journeys. I’d sometimes get back indoors and head to my bedroom to continue them as well. Since being a late teenager however, I’ve found sustaining daydreams much harder, and for years I stopped.

    Recently I’ve been starting to daydream again. Today I made an active decision to spend a couple of hours indulging in a fantasy plotline in my head, just as I used to do when I was younger.

    It was lovely. I forgot the world around me completely and all it’s stresses, to the point where it took a little while to re-orientate to the real world initially. A couple of hours later from then though, and I’m noticing a massive improvement to my mood, and demand capacity.

    I had been feeling very stressed and upset recently, spending a lot of time dozing to avoid the world. That can be quite dissociative in it’s own right, hours will pass that feel like minutes.

    However, purposefully engaging in a fantasy storyline felt a lot better for me. It felt like taking time out from the world in a structured, purposeful, creative way, rather than a despondant, avoidant way.

    I rather get the feeling I should put work in to reconnect with this aspect of my PDA nature, and that it might just do me some good.

  • Going back to university

    Yesterday I applied for my student finance and disabled students allowance, so it’s real now. I’m definitely planning on returning to university level study – though it might depend on the outcome of my student loan application given I’ve previously studied and received an overpayment. Hoping that works out in my favour!

    It’s exciting, but also very nervewracking.

    What if it wasn’t the fault of mental health, trauma, undiagnosed neurotypes… but just me not being good enough?

    Am I certain, if it was those things, that they won’t cause exactly the same problems again?

    Am I 100% sure I’m thrilled about the world of deadlines, assessments, assignments, citations, references, essays?

    I’m excited to learn new things, I’m excited to have a second chance to achieve a degree. I’m excited for distance learning at a more supportive university. I’m excited for the sense of purpose.

    I’m really hoping that having a better understanding of myself will provide me with better ways to address the challenges I will face. I know I’m going to have to frame studying as something I want to do, not something I have to do – as a goal on the path to living within my PDA flow. I’m also aware now that my brain thrives on novelty, not routine, so finding ways to mix up my studying should help. Equally, I could try role playing an academic, because that might help lessen the felt demands of studying.

    I’m going to be able to get accommodations for a more complete amount of my disabilities now. I especially predict that helping with ADHD, as PDA isn’t as well known or a recognised diagnosis in itself. My hope is that because my diagnostic report specifies PDA that those supporting me will have an awareness and a willingness to be flexible in their approach.

    The only aspects that aren’t covered is my complex trauma history, which can in itself be disabled when I am triggered, and re-experiencing, and potential dyscalculia. I think eventually I will have to seek a private diagnosis for both, likely starting with the dyscalculia as this will affect science modules (especially as I’m going to have to take a biology and chemistry module! Not looking forward to that – but credit requirements and prerequisities makes it necessary).