PDA fae

Tag: adhd

  • Not everything applies

    Whenever people talk about their experiences of their neurodivergence, there’s always something that doesn’t quite resonate with me. Most autistics speak of socialising overload, but for me I get lonely very easily and can find it very difficult to be alone. That often makes me feel like a ‘weird autistic’, sometimes it makes me worry that somehow I tricked my assessor.

    With ADHD I don’t relate to gaining a sudden, new obsession with a topic or hobby, only to lose it a short time later. I suspect this might be because of my PDA making any hobby feel demanding, and possibly the effect of past trauma – I don’t experience ‘interest’ the way I did when I was younger anymore. When I was little I had intense interests in space and dinosaurs, to the point of doing things like self-teaching myself evolution at the age of 8. Over my teen years and 20s, I lost that experience, struggling to find interest in anything and definitely not maintaining any hobbies. It’s not a lie to say that I started to live entirely online, engaging mostly in forums. That might partly explain why I find alone time so difficult, as I struggle to have anything meaningful to fill that time.

    Another experience I struggle to relate to is aiming to carry out one task, only to realise that another needed doing, going to another location .. and finding another task. In general, I’m not sure I relate to many of the inattentive symptoms, though I am still waiting on my report to find out what type of ADHD I have. I suspect it will be hyperactive/impulsive.

    I suppose it’s worth remembering that we don’t need to relate to every single possible trait or aspect before we can claim a neurodivergent identity for ourselves. For example, I’m clearly bipolar, but do not tend to go on big spending sprees when manic.

  • Keeping house while drowning

    If you’re on tiktok, you might have come across K.C. Davis’s account, DomesticBlisters. You might even be aware of her book, ‘How to Keep House While Drowning’. Or this might be the first time you’re hearing of them.

    I’d known of them for a while, but wasn’t sure if they’d be helpful when it comes to PDA style issues with keeping house. I was persuaded to get the book when my therapist endorsed KC’s methods. KC has ADHD, and post-partum depression, and her advice feels to me as thought it’s very, very useful for those reasons to be struggling to keep house. It focuses on self-compassion and seeing care tasks (usually known as chores) as morally neutral, rather than something that defines you as good or bad. Great perspective when you’re struggling with low self-esteem, low motivation and low mood. She also has a lot of simple, clear explanations that help with poor executive functioning, e.g. her five things tidying method. This breaks a messy room into five categories: trash, laundry, dishes, things that have a place and things that do not have a place. She advises dealing with each category in turn in order to resolve a messy room. This is a brilliant antidote to the ADHD experience of looking at a messy room and seeing nowhere to begin, something I have frequently experienced.

    I do wish there was a book on keeping house for PDAers. Perhaps it would be the ‘small book of housekeeping demands’ and we’d all avoid even reading it? I feel I’d find it useful to have a resource which included strategies tailored to the PDA experience. It’s tempting to consider a goal of working towards creating that resource, as I find myself wanting to work in adult ND peer support and this would constitute a form of it.

    That sets me to thinking what would be included in such a book. I think Harry Thompson’s concept of table tops and table legs would have to be part of it. I’m not sure a PDAer would manage care tasks on a regular basis if they didn’t form a table leg towards a driving, autonomous PDA current. They are, after all, the very definition of a demand. Something you really should do, something you have to do in life. Something a PDAer is going to therefore avoid like the plague, because having to threatens our personal sense of control.

    I suppose something else I’d put a strong focus on would be outsourcing the care tasks. I would try and encourage people to be self-compassionate about needing to live in supported living, needing a carer or a house-keeper. PDAers need support in life (we all do), and perhaps drafting someone in better suited to meet those demands is the best solution. It might even be so for me, after I move out of supported living, though I’m not sure yet if I’d be allocated the funding for a carer after living here. Maybe over time that will have to be explored, because it would probably be deeply useful for me to have access to that support long term.

    Rest is something I would strongly emphasise. To be fair, KC already includes this in her book, which is good. Everyone needs and deserves rest. PDAers often have a strong need for downtime to recuperate after meeting demands, or to prepare for meeting demands. In particular, demand free time is useful. I would also talk about Tomlin Wilding’s concept of the demand cup, and the corresponding emotion cup. I would want to find some methods in which we can look after the state of both, in order to free up some demand capacity for keeping house.

    But alongside the goal of creating demand capacity for keeping house, I would echo KCs ethos that our space exists to serve us, not us our space. As a PDAer, we’re not going to want to focus all our demand capacity on housekeeping in order to keep up standards (unless, that’s where our PDA current lies, I suppose.) I would place my focus on how we can keep our space functional enough, and how we can accept ourselves and offer ourselves compassion when we just do not have the demand capacity to cope, That’s my favourite thing about KC’s approach: we’re worthy of love, support, and compassion where we are now. We don’t need to meet societal standards of tidy, hygienic, clean, perfect to be worthy. Care tasks are neutral.

  • Hobbies

    I’d love to have a little set of hobbies I regularly return to. Unfortunately I find sustaining engagement in hobbies really, really difficult. I suppose because I want to engage in them, that very desire causes them to become demands – I want to engage in them, and to fill that want, I need to engage with them. Additionally at times, it may be a ‘want to want’, something I want to be in my PDA flow, but actually isn’t. At least, at the moment. Possibly also ADHD may be involved in these difficulties.

    Something I manage to do on a semi-regular basis is knit. Last Christmas I knitted a wreath with the help of my mum, largely over the course of Christmas eve and day. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of demand capacity at the time and was living in a very PDA unfriendly mental health rehab ward, so meeting the demands involved led to me running out of capacity entirely and being discharged back to an acute ward. Or perhaps, not so unfortunately, as that lead to me moving to the supported accommodation which is a much better fit for me.

    At the moment, I’m trying to work on knitting squares to eventually be knitted into a blanket. It’s a very slow going process. I’m focusing on allowing it to be an imperfect project, accepting the mistakes I make as I go. I’m currently on my second ball of wool, having started in around July.

    I’d like to spend time learning to draw, relearning maths and french, and possibly learn some basic BSL. I enjoy embroidery, thought it takes a lot of concentration and I tend to completely balls up eventually. Baking is another pastime that I’ve enjoyed in the past and would like to get back to. I like board games, but don’t have much space to keep many more than I already have (and playing the same ones gets old after a time). There’s a TTRPG called Ironsworn that can be played individually that I want to play through some time. I have a mirrorless camera and get a lot of enjoyment from photography, but rarely know what I could use as a subject for that art. I used to read endlessly, but now struggle to commit to reading, and I’d like to engage in writing more poetry.

    So, we can see that I’m not short of ideas for hobbies. I’m just short on follow through and sustaining them.