PDA fae

Tag: anxiety

  • Update on previous post

    My last post discussed ways to tackle rumination. I’ve recently been prescribed a med to help me sleep, that also works on anxiety. This made it clear just how anxious I am. It also made me realise I’m not really depressed, it’s just the anxiety feels awful (I’m experiencing enjoyment for one thing).

    One of the suggested coping tools was creating a soothing mantra. I wasn’t sure this would be for me at the time of writing the last post.

    Last night though, I found myself contemplating the idea of change, and whether that could be positive. I really struggle with this. I feel that the evidence suggests that life never changes for the better.

    However, I ended up thinking “that type of change is plausible”, which I couldn’t fight against. Not possible, not inevitable, not likely. Just plausible, which of course it must be.

    So I tried repeating it to myself. I experienced that as very soothing, and it prevented the anxious thoughts from starting. This was despite forgetting to take the sleep medication. I was surprised, and very pleased, with this effect.

    I got about 16 hours sleep yesterday, so I’m awake at nearly 4am because I didn’t feel tired. For once, not because I’m too anxious.

  • How I cope with “thought looping” (rumination)

    I spend a lot of time, particularly when trying to fall asleep, thinking much the same thoughts over again. Always negative, about the past or future. A common one is “everyone hates you.” I also find myself thinking “I’m not right for anyone”, “I’m too much and yet not enough”, and generally beating myself up. There’s also future related thoughts, anxious in nature. I worry that I’ll always be alone. That I’ll never gain a life I find meaningful. That my disability will prevent me having anything I want in life.

    The title of this post says “how I cope” and maybe that’s a little optimistic. I actually really struggle with these thoughts and have done for a long time. For many years, I ruminated about trauma I had been through, which was horrible.

    So maybe this should be an explanation of ways I, and maybe you, can cope?

    I already journal, and sometimes that just becomes a written form of rumination for me. I find myself covering the same ground day after day. I sometimes try to find a more positive outlook when journalling and this can have a positive effect – but I definitely don’t experience journalling as allowing me to stop holding onto thoughts. This can work well for some people though.

    An idea I’m intrigued by is verbalising, maybe even writing down, the opposite scenario to your anxious worries. Then spending time imagining that instead. I often imagine how more negative scenarios would play out, to help me feel I could cope, but this probably just helps convince me they’ll happen. Imagining the opposite sounds like a better way to do things, I reckon.

    Playing a lengthy meditation can help soothe my mind whilst I’m waiting to fall asleep. For the duration, it takes my mind away from those loops by redirecting me to the audio and my breath. It’s not a complete cure, but it is a good way to get some respite.

    Something else that’s suggested is using a mantra. I’m not sure this would work for me, because it already feels demanding to keep that kind of thing up. That, and very out of character for me. Perhaps I should give it more of a try, but I don’t think this is for me.

    Those are the suggestions I think could work whilst trying to fall asleep. There’s also exercise, and distractions and other more active strategies for the day time. Obviously, these aren’t an option when you’re in bed.

    Where I sourced my suggestions

    attncenter and ADDitudemag

  • Struggles and self care

    Recently I’ve been struggling a little. Not so much with mood, more with anxiety, chronic understimulation (and comparative overstimulation), insomnia, and resulting distress. I am worried that the insomnia in particular will eventually affect my mood. Me and my psychiatrist do have a planned med to add in if my mood does wobble. He’s not a fan of polypharmacy, so is choosing to keep to just lamotrigine for now.

    Why just lamotrigine? Clopixol injections became way too much for me. Partially because I found it more demanding than tablets, partially because travel is making me increasingly anxious. Mainly though, because I have a lot of medical trauma and injections were causing me increasing distress.

    The anxiety is caused largely by my loneliness. I guess I forgot to mention that earlier. I feel, though it’s likely not true, that I struggle more than the average autistic person with making and sustaining connections. This is based on seeing most Autistic people talk about their romantic partner, their handful of close friends, and suchlike. I have none of those. I’ve also met a handful of people recently, and just can not form a bond with them. Maybe it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other (literally, equally our faults). It’s hard not to feel, though, that it’s solely because of everything listed in my autism report that concluded with “another reason El will struggle to make and keep friends”.

    This anxiety centres on the worries that:

    • nothing about this will ever change
    • is it because there is something inherently wrong with me
    • how will I ever enjoy life or find meaning

    Finally, the chronic understimulation of spending all my time alone when I am at home. Additionally, much of my time outside the house is spent alone, aside from around 4 hours at the local community hub. I have a pet theory that this severe understimulation is leading to an intolerance to any level of increased stimulation that occurs, whilst also in itself deteriorating my situation. I am not sure though, certainly I don’t expect there to be any research out there that would confirm that this is a phenomenon.

    So the end result of this is that last night I ended up experiencing a lot of distress. I had spent my sunday in a new way: getting a taxi ride to spend time in the local costa and entertain myself around people. A taxi because there is no bus provision here on Sundays. Very expensive, and not just because of the taxis.

    Overstimulation in comparison to my norm, for one. Also seeing a lot of people in groups, heightened my loneliness. I then tried reaching out to the few internet connections I had, but struggled with feeling to negative. Mainly because people responded in a way that suggested that. I texted a helpline, which vaguely helped.

    In the end, at 10pm I called my mum and she helped me co-regulate. This made the rest of my night awake – yes, the full night till 6am – manageable. Still awful though. I had been awake since 3:30pm the previous day, and had burnt through my ‘try this now to pass time’ capacity. So I spent numerous hours doing nothing but feeling crappy.

    I can see that now as taking much needed low demand time. Not quite “demand free” because my emotions felt demanding. However, it also meant I managed to “sit with” my emotions. I can recognise both of these as self-caring responses. Eventually I felt able to start to do little things to pass the time, and became sleepy at 6am.

    My self-care has continued today. I spent some time with family, and as planned, my mum is here with me now sleeping over the night. I have taken some demand free time. I have tried to move my tiktok feed to a more positive one. I also spent about half an hour simply sitting and playing with my collection of stim toys. I often forget how important stimming is to ADHD and autistic nervous systems. I’ve also spent time journalling.

    So tonight is a lot more bearable, even if I am still awake at the wrong time.

  • Brainspotting…

    …works wonders!

    I’ve been working with an Autistic/ADHD/Dyspraxic/Dyslexic therapist recently, who has a PDA kid on trauma therapy. The modality she uses with PDAers is brainspotting, which is a variant on EMDR. Personally I think it could be called ESDR or EFDR, eye stillness/fixation de-sensitisation and reprocessing therapy. It works on bilateral stimulation, focusing on bodily sensation and rating it (which makes it a somatic therapy) – I tend to picture my bodily sensations as colours – and eye fixations. During this, you think about or visualise either a positive resource, or your trauma, either increasing or decreasing the feeling respectively.

    Tbis therapy (along with lamotrigine) has helped my life hugely. I have a lot more faith in the universe, and feel more comfortable with spirituality. I will post more about this shortly. I feel able to experience enjoyment, and trust in myself. I feel better able to self-advocate, have better self esteem, and better internal communication.

    I won’t say ‘I recommend this’, all I can say is how much this has helped me. It’s really starting to turn my life around. I finally feel like there was a point to surviving.

  • Everything sucks a little right now.

    I’ve been experiencing a lot of very low mood recently. A lot of anhedonia – loss of pleasure in activities, and a lot of feeling like a failure of a person. A failure for not graduating from university, for never having lasted in a job, for not being able to drive, for not being in a long term relationship with a family and my own home. For not being a settled 30 something.

    We’re trialling me on lamotrigine. It’s been known to cause me severe constipation the previous two times I’ve tried it, and it can cause a lethal skin rash, so this may not go well. I have to really hope it does though, because it’s basically the only safe mood lifting drug I can try, i.e. it won’t cause me to experience mania. Don’t worry, it’s possible to intervene if a rash does start to develop.

    It makes me really nervous. We all respond differently to medications and lamotrigine may just not work for me at all. If it doesn’t, I’m really out of options and just have to tolerate the life destroying effects of the near constant low mood I experience (I believe one psychiatrist felt I had dysthymia alongside bipolar). I don’t know how I’d cope with that, and it’s going to be a long slow journey to find out, because due to the rash, lamotrigine has to be increased very slowly.

  • Worries

    Something I worry about a lot is that my supported accommodation won’t be able to help me because I’m a PDAer.

    They always reassure me that there’s time, that it’s just making slow and steady progress and I’ll get there.

    I know that I’ll always be avoidant. It doesn’t feel like housework will ever not feel demanding. I can’t envisage not coping by avoiding the quiet obligations of life.

    I don’t know where the balance lies with being PDA. What does ‘healthy’ look like in PDA? Would it be healthier to refuse to comply when people place demands on me more often? Would that help me to cope with this type of demand better? Is healthy a matter of finding the coping strategies that work for me personally, and then being able to do things?

    Learning I’m PDA in my 30s feels like being left in the middle of a forest without a map. It’s totally uncharted territory for me – I have demand anxiety, I used to dissociate from now and now I’ve allowed myself to actually feel it, and it’s really There. Sometimes I feel like I made life harder for myself by listening to myself on this, and that it was a mistake to realise that I have demand anxiety.

    Maybe it’s gonna get easier, but at the moment I’m very swamped by the DA about adulting and I just can not.