PDA fae

Tag: pathological demand avoidance

  • A short history of friendship..

    .. as a PDAer.

    Which is to say, lengthy periods with no friends, or very few friends.

    Primary school was a no friend time, except for abusive friends. I nearly made one friend near the end, but trauma caused by the abusive friends caused me to push her away self-protectively. I made a friend who attended my school via dance classes, so she was more a dance friend – she was several years below me, in classic early Autistic childhood friendship.

    Outside of that, I was ostracised and bullied by the entire school of 70 kids (I grew up in a very small village). It was awful, and there’s not much more to be said about that.

    In secondary school, the kids who lived in the town were much more bearable. I made friendships of varying closeness – though none were truly close. I didn’t really see any of them outside of school, except for one. I had people to spend time with in breaks, sit with in class, and that was the extent of most of my highschool friendships.

    College is where friendship started really working for me. A girl approached me at the french taster session for upcoming sixth formers, and then when college started, I talked to her again. I dared to ask if I could come join her group of friends, she agreed and I suddenly had a group of friends! That made college a really fun place to be, with several of us dealing with mental health neurodivergences (and I suspect neurodevelopmental differences as well).

    Unfortunately, I lost all of that group of friends over the course of two separate break ups, that ended up being acrimonious. Trauma, poor mental health, poor childhood modelling of relationships played into that.

    At uni I was back to having very few, not very close friendships for the entire time. Making friends in a massive but impersonal university was impossible for Autistic me. I might have been able to make proper friends from the LGBT society, but never quite managed to. Networking is not a skill that comes naturally to me.

    After uni I had another brief period of no friends. At the end of that period I had housemates for company – but they were not friends. Friends would have called an ambulance for me when I was manic.

    Now I have a very small handful of friends, mainly at my supported housing scheme. I’m very selective about how gets to become and remain a friend, even if it means having fewer or no friends. I deserve friendships that truly meet my needs, and aren’t abusive – and some friendships have ended recently because of this.

  • The power of daydreaming

    I used to daydream all the time as a young teen, usually on car journeys. I’d sometimes get back indoors and head to my bedroom to continue them as well. Since being a late teenager however, I’ve found sustaining daydreams much harder, and for years I stopped.

    Recently I’ve been starting to daydream again. Today I made an active decision to spend a couple of hours indulging in a fantasy plotline in my head, just as I used to do when I was younger.

    It was lovely. I forgot the world around me completely and all it’s stresses, to the point where it took a little while to re-orientate to the real world initially. A couple of hours later from then though, and I’m noticing a massive improvement to my mood, and demand capacity.

    I had been feeling very stressed and upset recently, spending a lot of time dozing to avoid the world. That can be quite dissociative in it’s own right, hours will pass that feel like minutes.

    However, purposefully engaging in a fantasy storyline felt a lot better for me. It felt like taking time out from the world in a structured, purposeful, creative way, rather than a despondant, avoidant way.

    I rather get the feeling I should put work in to reconnect with this aspect of my PDA nature, and that it might just do me some good.

  • Emotional restoration

    As we know, when it comes to managing demand capacity it’s important to keep an eye on our emotional cup (and if this is new to you, Tomlin Wilding explains here).

    I do best if I make time for things that actively restore my emotional wellbeing. Hobbies are very good for this, the sense of achievement provides a good emotional boost. As does the soothing repetitive nature of many crafts. I’ve also been trying to make time for reading recently, something I used to adore and partake of nearly constantly.

    Equally, meditative practices are beneficial for me. I’ve started listening to meditations as I fall asleep in the past few days. Having a soothing voice to listen to makes the transition to sleep easier, and it’s a very easy time of day to slot a practice in. I’ve previously found loving kindness meditation to be enjoyable, and a positive experience, so I’d be open to using those again if the PDA flow takes me there.

    Staying in the PDA flow as much as possible is another important practice. Not fighting myself, or pushing through, but doing things when they feel ‘right’ and I feel ready. That means not forcing myself to exercise, only doing short bursts of hobbies – or ignoring them when I need to, and finding my own rhythm for the non-negotiable aspects of life. It can be hard for me to intuit where my flow actually is, after years of living outside of it and ignoring it. It might help to use mindful observation to listen to what my mind and body are telling me about what is ‘right’ in the moment, this is something I may work on. Equally, avoiding things that actively make me feel bad is important. A big one in the last six months is realising that tiktok makes me feel absolutely awful mentally. It’s overwhelming, it’s unsatisfying.. not a good use of my time.

    Being in contact with people is also important to me, I get lonely very easily. Additionally, I definitely benefit from having a good amount of anticipation and excitement in my life. These are things I discussed with my therapist who introduced transactional analysis concepts of ‘contact, recognition, incident, sex, stimulation, and structure hungers’. I seem to have a very high drive for incident, and contact, but find structure easily becomes constrictive and depressing. Framing things in a sense of psychological needs, or hungers, provided a very useful way of thinking about the pervasive sense of ‘boredom’ I’d been feeling – my needs weren’t being met, rather than life is unfulfilling.

    Lastly, I want to note the event I made time for tonight, for the first time in a while: an online breathwork event hosted by https://healingjusticeldn.org/. I find it a lovely, soothing space that leaves me feeling fully connected to the here and now and my body. This is probably one of the most emotionally restorative things I could do, and attending is always a pleasure.

    I want to emphasise that I’m talking here about what helps me. It’s ok if your experience differs, none of these things sound appealing, or emotional restoration looks very different for you. I have no wish to imply any sense of demand or expectation on any PDAers out there – borrow what you will from my experience, or ignore it entirely, it’s ok!

  • PDA + trauma = ?

    When I started this blog, I wanted to share the perspective of a PDAer living with complex trauma. One of the key ways that affects my PDA presentation is that I only barely meet the criteria of using ‘socially skilled avoidance’. Because it never worked. It was never safe to try. Or people would push me so hard, I’d rocket up the triangle shown by the PDA society here.

    I’ve mentioned before here that I learnt to fawn for control, everywhere. It’s hard to know where the balance lies when it comes to healing the trauma response, unmasking, and being healthy. My therapist emphasises choice – choosing to engage or avoid, freely, rather than reacting out of trauma or PDA related nervous system activation. This feels to me to related to a drive for autonomy, which always makes a lot of sense to me. I think it would take a life with a lot of autonomy to be able to respond from choice, rather than PDA.

    I don’t know if with time I’ll start to discover and learn the more socially skilled avoidance approaches. It still seems to me that faced with those, most people apply force, even to a fellow adult. NTs are big on compliance, for sure.

    I suspect that I will remain a PDAer that uses outright refusal as a simple way to set boundaries.

  • PDAer frustrations

    Note: In the following post, I am speaking only for myself, and to my own experiences. AuDHDers may have their own experiences of AuDHD, ADHDers may again have experiences that differ from what I describe below. This is valid.

    As an adult PDAer in mental health and trauma recovery, attempting to learn the life skills that allow for functioning:

    Sometimes I really really wish I “just” had ADHD. Or even AuDHD. But not this PDA stuff.

    Not because I think ADHD/AuDHD is challenge free, or easy, or whatever.

    But because the strategies/approaches/tools/whatever you want to call them, to address the challenges that things like poor executive function, or time blindness, or even Autistic inertia cause are:

    • a lot easier to find out in the world, pre-created for you
    • a lot easier to think of for myself
    • would be a lot easier to apply without PDA, because there’s a way in which the expectation to apply the tools is a demand even as whilst it’s a desired thing
    • generally seem more reliably effective than PDA tools.

    For example, breaking down tidying into “5 things: rubbish, dishes, laundry, things with a home and things without a home” always answers the struggle of looking at a messy room and knowing what to do with it. It won’t solve any other issue (task initiation, demands, inertia etc), but that tool is a complete solve to that specific ADHD problem for me.

    Or, visual timers solve issues with estimating how long something will take, knowing how I have left to do something or how long I have to do a task for.

    Whereas managing demands, and demand capacity, is an ebb and a flow of things that works sometimes. And fail spectacularly at other times.

    If my emotion cup is empty enough. If my bodily needs are met well enough. If I’ve been able to avoid something for long enough that the sense of pressure and expectation has decreased – because I *haven’t* had to do it, I’ve been not doing it! If I have enough tools to change up how I approach tasks, to provide novelty often enough. If my mental heath is stable enough. If I am experiencing enough autonomy. Etc etc.

    I might have the demand capacity to do the thing.

    There’s no one tool for ‘having demand capacity’. It’s a whole life approach, to have that capacity just enough of the time. PDA can be very disabling, because life is inherently demanding of adults. (In children, life lacks autonomy, and this is often a bigger problem).

    And on top of that, ADHD and AuDHD are a lot easier for outside people to understand than PDA. They’re an awful lot more logical than demand anxiety is. (Or the pathological need to avoid demands, because PDAers do not agree on what underlies the avoidance – for me it seems to be demand anxiety.) That makes it hard for other people to know how to help, or worse still, feel interested in learning what helps. And worse than that, attempting to help without understanding PDA, in my experience, involves being demanding!

    So being a PDAer is… frustrating, at times, and more so than the other aspects of my neurodevelopmental differences. (It’s not more frustrating than my bipolar, which I count as one of my neurodivergences. That one is just a problem, and one I would absolutely choose not to experience.)

  • A new tool

    I’m forever on the hunt for tools to use to make everyday tasks feel more manageable (it’s important to me to learn to become more functional than I have been for a long time).

    A new one that I’ve found is https://llamalife.co/. It’s very visual, which is great for the time-blind ADHD brain. It can help you stay on task with alerts during a task, and encourages focus on one task at a time.

    At the moment, it might simply be helping because it’s novel. Luckily there’s an entirely free version to use, so I’m happy to experiment and find out if it’s just that or if it’s useful beyond being a new toy.

    I do like ticking off tasks, it’s part of why body doubling pomodoros work for me as well. It gives a sense of achievement as you see things become completed.

    I don’t think this tool does much to reduce demands, and could actually increase them through it’s task list. I’d imagine many PDAers would set up a task, and then start work on something completely different (but that still gets things done, and might be a PDA friendly way to use tools like this).

  • Current hobbies

    My main hobby at the moment is knitting. I’m currently working on knitting blanket squares to sew together into a larger blanket. I find I work on it in fits and starts, sometimes I’ll get quite a lot done, other times I avoid for days or weeks at a time.

    I’m planning on trying to knit a temperature blanket for my dad for his 70th birthday, which will require some sustained work to not fall too far behind. Thankfully there are online weather records, so you can go back in time and catch up.

    I want to learn to crochet and add that to my hobbies. To that end, I picked up a little bumblebee crochet set from The Works today, but so far it’s proving rather difficult. I’m finding it a lot more tricky than I did when I started knitting. I think I’d benefit from having someone to learn from in person, like how I learnt knitting from my mum initially. Videos are good, but sometimes it’d help having someone see what you’re doing and telling you if you’re getting it right or not.

    I’m quite impressed with how well I’ve stuck to working on a knitting project over the past year. The past two Christmasses I’ve created two knitted Christmas decorations. That represents quite a bit of dedicated effort, for me. I find it helps if people don’t suggest ‘why not do some knitting?’ or ask ‘have you knitted at all recently?’ and to not place any expectations on myself. When it’s right, I work on my projects, when it’s not, I don’t.

  • 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.

  • Neurodiversity Acceptance Month

    As shown here: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=674917597975147&set=pcb.675005351299705, the topic of week one is ‘Autism Advocacy’.

    I suppose by writing this blog, my aim is to contribute towards the wealth of autism advocacy available on social media. In particular, I wanted to add to the adult PDAer voice, as most of the PDA work online is by parents for parents. That’s an important perspective, but late diagnosed PDAers need resources too, and we deserve for our voices to be heard.

    Autism advocacy was so important for me learning about my own neurotypes. I was manically hyperfixating on all things neurodivergent for around 6 months before ending up in hospital, which I think contributed to experiencing burn out at the same time and losing my speech for around a month and a half.

    Something I found difficult was that April was early on in my journey, and that month reminded me all the ways my Autistic traits have lead to oppression and trauma. Even just the counter-responses by Autistic advocates in that month was unpleasant. So I’m trying to work to make April a more pleasant experience now, and engage in these blogging events to share a rounded Autistic experience, without directly engaging in the stuff that fights back against Autism Speaks etc.

    Outside of that aspect of Autism advocacy though, I’m so glad for the #actuallyautistic communties on the web, and the people discussing ADHD. I’d never have understood the nature of these neurotypes well enough to realise it was my experience without it. It also helped me feel like there were people out there that understood me, all of me for the first time (particularly meeting fellow PDAers).

    I think it’s actually a really impressive lived experience body of knowledge that is being created, and it deserves to be valued as much as research studies – that are often dehumanising, and from the Allistic perspective, rather than our own. It’s important that we listen to Autistic people about our own lives, what works for us, and what we find traumatising. Autistic adults are best placed to say what will help Autistic children, having lived through that experience.

  • High demand capacity

    I’m having a rare day of low demand anxiety/high demand capacity. Seems slightly odd after the demand that I fix the ways I didn’t meet standards in a room inspection within three days – it has to be said yesterday that made me extremely anxious and tanked my mood.

    I guess a good 17 hour sleep was exactly what I needed in that state, after being awake for 28 hours (fairly common for me). It seems to have restored things, and I can make sense of why the things need to be done, so that helps with the demand anxiety. It also helped that when I wrote out the tasks involved, it was less than I had estimated. Also, a local autism charity offered support to get the more difficult tasks done, after I called them for support in the anxious, dysphoric state.

    What’s been really awesome though, is that I’ve had capacity for hobbies. So far today I’ve knitted a little, played a solo TTRPG called Ironsworn, and played a board game with a friend and staff at the supported housing. After writing this post, I’m going to pick back up a book I haven’t touched in over a month.

    Days like this are rare, and very treasured when they occur.