PDA fae

Tag: pathological demand avoidance

  • 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.

  • A small success

    I’ve been struggling with maintaining my flat for a while now. I experience it as a big ‘ought to’ and I also find that I rebound with avoidance on this sort of task after complying with externally induced demands from other people.

    Telling myself that it’s ok, I don’t need to tidy doesn’t work. Clearly, I do need to tidy, so it feels like I’m lying to myself. I end up spiralling back into ‘I do need to tidy’ which becomes ‘I need to tidy everything’ which leads to ‘I can’t tidy’.

    What seems to work a little better is telling myself all I have to do is tidy one single item a day. Just one thing, put away or thrown away. Then I’m not lying to myself. I’m slowly addressing the problem in a way that I find manageable – I can handle the demand to tidy one thing that I have choice over.

    A couple of times now not having to tidy any more has lead to feeling able and willing to tidy just a little more. Not everything, but more than just one thing. I think this might have been a hack I was looking for.

  • PlumFae intro

    Hello. Welcome to this little corner of the internet, a blog about life with Pathological Demand Avoidance (or alternatively, Pervasive Drive for Autonomy). PDA is a profile on the autism spectrum. We avoid the ‘everyday demands of life’, and it’s entirely possible this entire blog will become a demand for me, but we’ll see.

    For as long as this isn’t too demanding, I’ll be covering my journey as a PDAer, including my trauma and the reasons I resorted to fawning as my primary strategy, dealing with bipolar type 1, my recovery from both, and my queerness. As I discover things that help, I’ll share them as suggestions you can consider if you wish.

    Because of the sensitive nature of my content, I will be remaining anonymous. You may refer to me as PlumFae.