PDA fae

Category: study

  • Finally home for good!

    NOTE: THIS POST IS AFFECTED BY THE REMANTS OF A SEVERE MOOD DISORDER, AND AS SUCH THE CONTENT VARIES FROM MY USUAL POSTING

    Oh gosh I felt so trapped on that ward. I literally had to run away from my discharge meeting because of that feeling – I needed to move, move move move move.

    Thankfully I know that coffee helps my brain, but that ideally it should not have milk in it (obviously!).

    Now I have my sensible meds, a sensible care co (lovely woman, B), sensible times to take them, a sensible psychiatrist in the community – and a sensible way to get diagnoses I need.

    I’ve had to defer a module at the OU which genuinely makes me very upset – but no worries, I can restart and do better than I was. It was a “bridge” module between level one and level two, which only makes me all the more determined – I will graduate this time, and probably in double time. I’ve studied full time before, I can do so again haha. For now I just need to finish the module I started and focus on the *maths content* – because everything else from that module is revise-able.

    Genuine study advice for anyone struggling: build in time to review. That’s what gets things into long term memory. My maximum working memory is literally SIX, and that’s where I get stuck – I have trouble holding things in my working memory to get to short term, to long term. My verbal working memory is better than my numerical as well, which might literally be stuck at 3 (working memory is 5 +/- 2, after all).

    As it goes, I’ll keep typing about specifically my life – here, substack, instagram, facebook. That’s all I can offer, my experience, my ways to cope: PDA style.

  • Module begins

    It’s the first week of the module, and I’m a week ahead. That’s because the website opens before the module commences, not because I’m superhuman and studied two weeks in the first week of term.

    It definitely feels better to be a week ahead. There’s less sense of pressure, and if I can keep up this way, I can take a rest week if I need to. I’m not sure if it’s going to be possible to get any further ahead with this module. Every week involves a lot of notetaking, so cramming two weeks into one would be very intense.

    I feel more confident now that I’ve managed a week of study in an actual week. Prior to the module starting it had taken me two or so weeks to complete the first weeks study – I think having the actual time pressure helped me register the importance.

    I like that this module moves frequently between sciences, that will keep my brain engaged and curious. I have to think about it little bit by little bit, because thinking all the way to May makes me feel rather overwhelmed. Instead, I’m trying to think in terms of tutor marked assignment (TMA), by TMA. Taking each one in turn, and focusing on the work each one needs as they come up.

    The TMAs on this module are lengthier than I’ve been used to on my previous module – rather more demanding! With gentle self care, perseverance and persistence, I shall tackle each one with mindfulness of demand anxiety. I foresee a lot of demand free time in my future!

  • Gamification

    I use this a lot to help me get tasks done. It involves turning activities of daily living into a game – scoring points, getting rewards (if that works for you), growing a character, going on quests.

    I find the best rewards for me are ones that aren’t part of the real world. For example, I use Finchcare, which is a little app with a finch, where the rewards allow you to dress up your finch, or decorate their little home. It’s not pushy – it does ask you to set a streak, but this feature is pretty ignorable. It doesn’t nag you to complete tasks, you can turn notifications off, it just celebrates what you do get done. I have tasks that are just there to be avoided, if I’m honest. If you’re interested, and would like to start with a micropet, my friend code is F9AQBHSE5D.

    The other main form of gamification I use is Habitica. In this one, you have a little pixel character, that again you can earn ways to dress them up. You can also set real life rewards, if that happens to work for you. There’s also quests to go on, to defeat monsters. This really helped me for a long time to carry out cleaning, and such tasks. I might use it again to encourage myself in my studies. I do tend to set fewer dailies, because these give damage when not completed, which can become demanding.

    I find the novelty of a little game a good way to work around perceived demands. It especially helps when there’s little to no consequence to skipping a task, but a boon to completing it.

  • How does a PDAer study?

    I have a lot of demand anxiety about studying right now, so I’m going to avoid by making a post about what usually helps me to study. This may or may not work for you, or it may help you think on what would work for you to be a student – take or leave whatever does or doesn’t feel right.

    1. ‘Just prepping’
      • This involves getting the layout of the desk right. Loading my OU page that I need. Writing out the title, date etc on the page. Sometimes telling myself ‘I’m just gonna prep’ gets me going (and today, it wasn’t enough.)
    2. Just do five minutes
      • Set a timer for 5 minutes. I promise myself I can definitely stop after 5 minutes – but I try and get that amount done. I’ll have 5 minutes more work done than I would, I might find my flow.
    3. Avoid one study task with another
      • Too anxious to make new notes? I review some old ones. Or type up handwritten notes into new. Or work on a different section of the course – the OU is very useful for this, because you can leave something you avoided unchecked, so I know to return when I feel able.
    4. Set a flexible study calendar
      • I find it best to put loads of potential sessions into a schedule, and then use flexibility with them.
    5. Study at the Open University
      • Lower social demands. Eased me into studying in the first module. Flexibility on when and where to study – no requirement to attend lectures in person. Not even a requirement to attend tutorials unless I think it’ll help. I also get to study the Open Degree, where I can freely choose my modules (Undergrad and Masters available.)
    6. Following my passions
      • For me this ties into the Open Degree. I don’t have to force myself to study any modules that aren’t truly interesting to me. This could also look like studying your dream subject.
    7. Pomodoro
      • This is a technique of studying for X amount of time, and then a break. Usually it’s 25 minutes, can be 50. Could be much less if that’s what I need.
    8. Twitch study with me streams
      • I love these. You get a little community to chat with on breaks, gentle study music playing to keep you focused, and the sight of someone actively studying as you go. Very helpful with ADHD-blocks.
    9. I believe the OU will have some study with me sessions as well, and they have an Study With Me discord.

    These little ideas help keep me on track most of the time. And writing this has me feeling more inspired to Study!

  • Maths in words

    I want to share my method I found during my stats class at Cardiff University that seems to work for me when it comes to learning maths procedures.

    It involves focusing on learning the procedure in words. Focusing on the concepts, expressed verbally. Writing these out as a questionnaire was a great way for my mum to help me revise for my stats exam, and I managed to get a first!

    To use an example from my current studies:

    How do you convert a time expressed in years to one expressed in seconds?

    Multiply the time in years, as in expressed in standard form, by the amount of seconds in a year, as expressed in standard form. This gives the amount of seconds in each year in your original total.

    I don’t want to practice using the formulas – including the numerals leads to errors. I was always told I was ‘overcomplicating things’. However, it’s more that I simply can not use formulas unless I actually grasp the underlying concept – and so long as I revise the concept of the procedure, I don’t seem to even need to practice the formula to use it!

    I hope this might be of use for someone else out there (and please correct me if I’ve gotten the concept wrong in the example given, I’ve typed it out from memory from only having begun to work with it).

  • The demand of wanting to

    As mentioned on pdafae on instagram, I really want to read my Baye’s Theorem book. During the course of my psychosis, I started developing a special interest in perception. I think through the muddling nature of illness, I was reflecting on my past studies and realising that perception was the area I find most fascinating in psychology.

    It’s lasted since I’ve regained touch with reality. A patient was kind enough to purchase me my uni’s perception textbook to cheer me up, and I’ve read most of – that too has become slightly a demand to finish. Baye’s theorem is very relevant to perception, particularly autism and perception as I’ve mentioned before.

    It would do me good to engage in a special interest, but because it is a special interest that I’m really interested by, my PDA is responding to that with a lot of avoidance. I suppose there’s a big sense of “should” and “want”, and I need to find a way to relieve that.

    Something that might work is to just allow myself to ignore it for long enough, because that tends to remind me that I don’t have to engage with something.

    Alternatively, I could try just reading small amounts? I think I need to find a way to be in my flow. I’m really eager to study the signals and perception module at the OU, and that might be because it’s possible it’ll be difficult for me to do so – whereas the books are readily available. Possibly therefore, putting them accessible but out of sight might also help, because it may be that seeing them regularly is increasing the demands.

  • Perception (and PDA?)

    I studied psychology at Cardiff University, and as part of that we covered perception. I achieved only a DipHE, due to my mental health, so I am not yet a psychologist. I am currrently studying the Open Degree at the Open University, in which I am hoping to re-study perception, and then go on to read a psychology conversion course, ideally at Cardiff.

    Looking back at my studies at Cardiff University, perception was my favourite area of psychology, followed by brain imaging. Concepts like conditioning are central to understand well, but I do not find them engaging – they are very dry to me, and rather dull.

    When it comes to the study of the sensory system however, it’s very difficult, but really intriguing. It’s so interesting to me how we make sense of the world around us, and the information coming into our brain from that world. Through our vision, taste, touch etc. Psychophysics is the study of these systems and the brain regions that process them.

    I’m intrigued as to how these differ in PDAers. The sensory system can be used to explain some of the differences in Autistic individuals – unfortunately usually in terms of deficits. I don’t believe any research like this has been done on our population, and I do wonder if there may be clues as to why we experience demand anxiety within these systems.

    In Autistics, a major difference is that we use “priors” differently. A prior is a concept from Bayesian probability, something humans are very bad at when undertaking it consciously, but may well use very easily intuitively within our sensory processing for example. We usually make use of prior likelihoods about the world to process what we are likely receiving input from – but Autistics weight this much less heavily, making less use of these – I will add a citation to this shortly, after accessing my iPad.

    This is used to explain some of the differences experienced in Autism. I shall need to re-read the paper before summarising that here, but I will attempt to do that shortly (if PDA allows!).

    I also wish to create infographics about perception – particularly the Bayesian Perception that differs – on my instagram.

  • “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.

  • My second chance.

    Metanoia pays off, it seems.

    That’s a word I’ve used here before: the idea of profound lasting positive change after a breakdown, esp. psychotic breakdown.

    I’ve just been approved for a student loan to return to university! I had worried due to previous study and overpayments I wouldn’t be, so things had been uncertain and stressful. It’s so good to have the certainty about what I will be doing come October 7th.

    It will be the Open Degree at the Open University, which in short refers to multidisciplinary study – lots of all the sciences for me, social and life/physical. Lots of modules on mental health, autism and ADHD, biology, sociology. It’s so exactly my area of interest – this is what I did my A levels in, bio, sociology and psych and I loved those.

    2021’s psychotic breakdown really did lead to massive change for me. I got the actual care I needed from it, and rescued from stagnation where I didn’t feel competent to try anything. I also didn’t know what my goal, or aim was. It had been clinical psychology, and I lost that. Lost interest in it as well.

    I didn’t have anything to replace it though, till I added the world of neurodevelopmental difference to my knowledge of neurodivergence (including mental ill health in that). Until I reframed everything as ‘neurodiversity’ and ‘examples of neurodivergence’ – that was a real paradigm shift. I also learnt how vital lived experience is and the power it holds, from working with my lived experience practictioner. But also from the wealth of lived experience shared on social media.

    That gave me a drive to pursue after I started recovering. A HCA on the first ward that year said logically SFE should provide funding, otherwise they make no return on their investment in me. That provided the spark to reconsider university study, the hope it might be possible.

    Sometimes living alone is lonely, but it provides me with the space I need to study without others around me. I have good meds, I have new diagnoses, I can get new accommodations. I understand myself better and what works for me. I have trauma therapy finally. The OU puts out so much needed and helpful guidance on how to study, and the level one modules are a gentle start. I get to study slowly.

    Things should be much better this time, so I am very, very excited for my second chance.

  • 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).