PDA fae

Tag: demand anxiety

  • 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!

  • Low demand lifestyle?

    Am I living a low demand lifestyle? What defines low demand, and how would I tell?

    I’m not claiming I have answers to those, but it is something I want to think about – how many demands are there in my life.

    Living in “move on” supported housing creates demands, because you have to meet expectations to be considered ready to move on. Thus that prevents me from living a truly low demand life. I do have a lot more autonomy here than I had at the rehab ward though, which is good.

    There’s also demands on me because, well. My reason for needed supported housing is more along the lines of autistic skill loss/learning to cope with demand avoidance/executive function issues, than it is mental health issues related. So the support I am offered does not meet my needs, which leaves me to work out how to regain skills on my own.

    I am learning ways to approach doing things that lessens the sense of demand. Whether that’s having an algorithm as to how to tidy or clean (to remove microdemands), avoiding things until it sinks in I don’t have to do them, and other techniques I’ve mentioned on this blog before.

    I think once I am living independently I will actually be able to have a much more low demand lifestyle. I will not have anyone setting expectations on me, and can just work to my own desires – and work on not seeing expectations on myself. I will hopefully by that point be a lot more skilled at regaining skills, and coping with traits of my neurodivergence.

    So right now, I don’t quite have as low demand a lifestyle as I might benefit from, which is hard when I’m meant to be in a supportive environment. I’d suggest PDAers looking into getting this kind of support: refuse “rehab wards” for mental health if you are offered one, and be very very selective about which supported housing you accept, even if it means waiting for longer on an ATU.

  • Not the way to do it

    Once again, a crafting session at my supported housing involve staff being demanding. I wish they’d understand the more pressure they put me under, the more I’m going to NOT do the thing!

    They don’t seem to understand that PDA applies to any and all demands, and just because something is ‘fun’ doesn’t mean you can’t make it into a demand that will be avoided. In this instance, it turned out I’d made something slightly incorrectly, and I said I couldn’t be bothered to correct it, which lead to,”that’s not the attitude!” and “you should finish what you started!”, followed by a resident chiming in with “don’t be so lazy”.

    Not the way to get any PDAer to do, well, anything. If there’s a correct response it’d be closer to something like “that’s fair, only do what you feel like doing”. I really don’t get why they can’t take that approach, it’s not difficult, and it makes me feel like they think PDA is a load of rubbish that needs a firm hand to enforce taking part.

    I don’t appreciate it. I’m forever reminded that everyone has something they’ll feel absolutely fine forcing other people to do, or attempting to force. As a child, those moments weren’t safe, as an adult… you can’t physically make me, and as I did today, I’m likely to simply leave the situation rather than continue to be in your presence. It’s not something I have to tolerate anymore.

  • My demand cup, three months on

    Last time I posted about this, it was still feeling pretty small, and easily filled. I think with time, I’m slowly managing to increase the capacity of my demand cup back to the kind of volume it had pre-hospitalisation. Definitely having more autonomy over my life is helping with that. Wards are awful places for me as an ADHD PDAer… dreadfully understimulating, and total loss of autonomy. They’re necessary when I’m deep in psychosis and have no capacity (in the legal sense) and/or insight, but I hope that in future I will be discharged from them much quicker if I ever need them again. This is the advantage of supported housing, because you’re part of the community and have all the freedoms that come with that, just with some extra support.

    My emotional cup is pretty stable, which also helps. I’m not losing capacity in my demand cup because of overflowing emotion from that cup. I’ve also been taking a little demand free time recently, and it definitely helps me recuperate. The novelty of coping techniques worked well, it’s unsure yet if they only worked because they were novel or if they are long term ways to help myself cope with demands.

    When I was hypomanic, I was learning to tune into my demand anxiety for the first time – pausing to notice, how does this expectation, or requirement, make me actually feel, before undertaking the task. I believe I had learnt to dissociate from this demand anxiety, faced with the unsafety of listening to it and attempting to avoid. I learnt that demands very much do incude demand anxiety, and I had been attempting to learn how to balance this with achieving tasks, for example, I usually found I had more demand capacity in the mornings. Unfortunately, circumstances during this time meant that nearly all the communal household tasks in a shared house ended up falling on me, which overloaded me and likely contributed to my mental health crisis. That disrupted my process of learning to understand how to work with my usual demand capacity and anxiety, and rerouted me into working to regain demand capacity for the past 8.5 months. That might perhaps be a useful exercise to mindfully do again, so I can notice when my demand anxiety is higher and why. See if mornings are still an easier time to achieve tasks, and what if any other discoveries I might make.

    Something that needs work is:

    “PDAers need safe people around them, which means people who fundamentally understand that they are not giving everyone a hard time, they are not just lazy or trying to get out of helping or working, they are struggling and need even more love and support. One person is a necessity but having more than this is the only way a PDAer can really thrive.”

    (Tomlin Wilding)

    I find that as PDA is so little known, there’s very few people who get it at all. Ultimately that can feel like, because no one gets PDA, no one gets ‘me’, and that feels very lonely. Staff at my supported living are definitely a long way from understanding this, in group activities there’s often an air of ‘you’re not getting out of it, join in!’ It’s my hope that training from the PDA society might help them move to a place where they do get this, which would be a massive benefit.

  • PDA, at it’s simplest

    Things I should be doing: a. specific physio exercises. b. general, low impact, workouts

    Things I therefore can not do: a. specific physio exercises. b. general, low impact, workouts

  • Let me join in, in my own time

    This is something I wish everyone understood about me: that in group activities, please just let me sit and observe initially. Please don’t encourage, pressure, push or expect engagement. Usually, after a period of being allowed to do nothing but observe, the lack of expectation means I’ll get curious/bored and start to engage. It allows me the freedom of engaging on my own terms.

    An example of this working successfully happened on the ward in an OT session. Annie, the OT, had brought polymer clay for people to be creative with. My first response to this type of activity is always self-doubt, feeling whatever I create will be shit. I was so glad when she allowed me to just sit and watch.. which lead to feeling curious, and finding a simple design I thought was both cute and acheiveable. I still have my little polymer clay owl, and it’s special to me.

    Tonight was an example of the opposite to this. My supported housing is holding Christmas crafting sessions in the evenings on Thursdays and Fridays this month. Tonight was devoted to decorating the office space. Unfortunately, my friend and the support worker were very expressive in their expectation that I contribute rather than observe. Immediate demand anxiety ensued. It’s now some time later, and I’m left with low demand capacity even now. It’s interesting to note, having questioned in earlier posts, that I did feel the demand anxiety in response to external demands. I responded with half resistance, half fawning, and the knowledge that I need to communicate my need to be allowed to observe until I’m ready to staff. I’m really hoping that when I receive my report from Dr Gloria Dura Vila’s team, that it will really help them to understand PDA better.

  • 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.