PDA fae

Tag: supported living

  • Still stuck in an ATU

    It’s tough being in an ATU. There are so many restrictions, even for inpatients just waiting for housing who could be otherwise discharged.

    Bedtimes. Medtimes. Meal times. Must wear shoes times. Must be signed out- can’t use a bloody door! Being checked on at night when trying to sleep.

    It’s enough to drive a PDAer bloody mad! Luckily the staff at the ATU I’m on have been very open to learning about PDA which is super helpful. Perhaps fortunately, my supported housing has had it’s funding withdrawn by the council, so it is closing and I am once again technically homeless.

    We now have a protracted process of working out my needs and what will best meet them. Luckily this time I actually have the autism diagnosis and won’t just be limited to mental health supported housing. I also have a good CPN, who I hope I will be allowed to keep whilst in the community – though some of the local autism supported housing would be outside of his local area. It’s a frustrating system.

  • Pretty big success

    For whatever reason, I’ve had a lot more demand capacity recently. Might be something to do with not having work at the moment (transport became untenably expensive), so I have a lot of spare time to get bored in. I’ve been trialling new strategies to help, and they’re making a real difference.

    The first thing that helped was setting a timer for five minutes and giving myself permission to stop after those five minutes if I wanted to. That was a long enough period of time that I could make a real difference in one small area of the flat. It’s a great strategy if I’ve got a middling amount of demand capacity.

    What I didn’t expect to be so effective was roleplaying being a carer. I pretended I was looking at someone else’s flat. Someone else in need of help. Looked, and thought ‘what would help you, pretend person, if I handled it today?’ Then whatever I felt I wanted dealt with was the pretend person’s ‘request’ and that just got me over the hump of demand avoidance. If I’m doing it because ‘I’m helping someone else’ in my head, it’s more like ‘Elliott the Carer’ is tackling the demand, and the threat response lowers.

    So today when I had my support session, especially given that I’d started preparing dinner beforehand, my keyworker was astounded. It was so nice that she was proud of me, but seemed to understand that there may be backwards steps after this rather than a new sustained way of being. I don’t think I’ve reached the stage yet where I will definitely sustain this way of functioning over time. I think it’s a lot more likely that I will have a good time, then a bad, in cycles.

    I think the ‘answer’ will be learning my own ebb and flow. Learning when I just can not, and allowing myself to avoid, learning how to get enough recuperation to rebuild demand capacity, and learning strategies that allow me to make progress when I’m doing a little better in terms of my demand cup.