10 Signs you have Pathological Demand Avoidance

Do you feel like you hate being told what to do? I know nobody loves it but do you hate it? Does it affect you? Does it upset you? Do you feel like this hatred of being told what to do is kind of one of the most defining things about you? Is your life somewhat ruled by trying to avoid being told what to do? Were you called bossy as a child particularly around people who you were comfortable with? Were you unable to handle being told no as a child and maybe still as an adult a little bit? Have you sometimes felt like you're too social to be autistic or you don't quite fit the stereotype? If you say yes to all these things and you are autistic or you suspect you might be autistic or you haven't thought about whether you could be autistic or not but you're a detail-focused perfectionist who has a weird sensory experience, you get stuck into doing things that they're passionate about and just cannot pull themselves away, hate transitioning, hate being interrupted and you also have struggled with social stuff then you could be autistic and you could have something called pathological demand avoidance, sometimes called pathological demand avoidance syndrome. I apologize, it is a terrible name. At some point I'm going to make a whole video ranting about how much I hate this name because otherwise this whole video will become a rant about how much I hate this name but like pathological, did we have to, did we have to put that in there because it might be accurate to some extent if you look at the definition but like everyone just thinks of pathological liar, it's negative. Although when I was first looking into and I stumbled across pathological demand avoidance the moment I heard that name I was like yeah that kind of resonates so I will admit that. However then I heard that some PDAs prefer to say pervasive drive for autonomy or persistent drive for autonomy and that fit more, that feels more in tune with like the internal experience of what it's like for the individual rather than you know what people might see on the outside. So PDA, which is a dumb acronym because it's already an acronym for something else it's secondhand but you know it's fine we won't talk about that I said we weren't going to complain about the name. It's widely recognized as a profile of autism. PDA is often described as an anxiety-driven need to remain in control. I also think a good way to think about it is extreme performance anxiety that can extend to pretty basic everyday tasks. It's like a claustrophobia kind of feeling that comes from expectation and the more you feel as expected of you the worse it is and they can be self-imposed expectations as well so yeah it's a it's a fun ride. When I say anxiety-driven need to remain in control it's important to understand what anxiety actually is because I don't think I really knew and luckily I found this amazing video by Purple Ella. I thought I was depressed or I had something called dysthymia which is like you live with low-level depression every day because I would feel this sense of heaviness, this sense of impending doom, this feeling like I didn't want to get out of bed because the weight of the day was just so heavy and I was like depression. I knew I kind of did have almost like panic attack sort of little episodes that would happen sometimes in very high stress situations. I don't know I just it wasn't really when I heard people talking about I have anxiety I didn't feel like I wanted to say yeah me too which seems a bit ironic now but there you go like sometimes we feel very self-aware and we're just we're just not. Some research suggests that an underpinning factor of this demand avoidance might be intolerance of uncertainty which we know is a thing autistic people don't really like. If you're super afraid that something's gonna go wrong maybe you'd rather just not do anything and this makes me wonder if it's maybe also linked to perfectionism and wanting to get every little thing right and because we're detail focused because we're autistic it can be a little bit over the top sometimes and maybe the weight of all that of wanting to know that you're getting every little thing right all the time just can be so paralyzing and make you just not want to do anything or want to procrastinate and delay. For me personally perfectionism pops up a lot throughout my life as something that I've had to kind of battle with and it was just the thing that came up in my diagnostic appointment again and again oh yeah that links back to perfectionism perfectionism perfectionism and it is something that I have heard from other PDAs as well. I'm gonna give you 10 traits of PDA but before I do that it's important to remember that it is a spectrum itself it's a spectrum within a spectrum everyone is different and some people will have a more externalized presentation and some people will internalize their PDA more. It's similar to ADHD how some people will be very disruptive as children in classrooms and they're much more likely to be diagnosed because they cause chaos and then you have next to them the little girl who like daydreams and stares out of the window and fidgets constantly with her hair and so she doesn't get diagnosed until much later in life because yes demand avoidance can be masked and there's this amazing graphic from Sally Cat PDA sums up masking as a PDA in employment perfectly this is how it feels from the inside. So here are the traits they're quite negative they're quite deficit-based as usual when you look into any of these things obviously we're not all bad like all these traits have to kind of be present from childhood it's a neurodevelopmental condition but remember they can kind of ramp up as you get older because demands are obviously going to increase as you got more stuff to do. Number one surprisingly shockingly demand avoidance but what does that actually mean and what does that actually look like and what does that actually feel like? In order for it to be PDA demands have to be avoided simply because they are demands so it can't just be because it's something that you don't like to do because of course everybody procrastinates things that they don't want to do to some extent however you will also avoid things that you don't want to do because those are still demands and sometimes they can feel even worse because they're even more of a threat to your autonomy than something that you actually do want to do but it's kind of a defining feature of PDA that you will also avoid things that you love to do that in theory should be a great opportunity or a great experience to you just simply because there's that expectation and that pressure there. There'll probably be some level particularly as a child of avoiding everyday demands so this might be like brushing your teeth or making your bed or brushing your hair getting dressed for school that kind of thing. I was probably about seven years old and I realized that even when I had a day off school which was like the biggest demand in my life I was still always gonna have to brush my teeth there was always gonna be expectations and requirements as long as you are alive and that feeling really sad to me and I've asked other people if they had similar thoughts and they say no. It's important to remember here that PDAers don't just not do anything ever I feel like some people read the criteria and they see avoid demands to an extreme extent and they imagine someone who's just sat there like I don't know that would be like extreme inertia you just just never move like no we do do stuff and it's like you maybe have a different tolerance day to day kind of like the spoon theory of disability if you've heard of that where you start the day with a certain number of spoons and then you shower and that might be you spending one spoon and then you make breakfast and there's another spoon it's like that so you might on one day be able to handle 10 demands and then the 10th demand is going to be where things hit the fan which I will get onto later on. Again Sally Cat PDA has this great graphic and there's a video which I'll link in the description where she talks to how demands aren't all created equal basically some demands are going to take less of a toll on us than others strangely maybe ironically we can be quite driven people and I think we can be quite harsh with ourselves impose demands sometimes and expect a lot of ourselves this might be to kind of counteract feelings of laziness that we've had throughout our lives because we know that we don't want to do stuff stuff that other people see as basic and that we need to do and that we're told by other people you need to do that so we get like a little bit of a shouty voice in our heads like no you must do that and we become very very demanding of ourselves in a way I think it can bring a sense of relief as well momentary fleeting sense of relief to get something ticked off and done it's like oh because it's a fight or flight response you feel like the expectation is a danger and once you've done it it's like a brief sense of like ah but then the next thing will start coming for you and then you'll be on the run from the lion again you know demands can be implicit so saying something kind of indirect to a PDA child like oh wouldn't it be nice if you cleaned your room like very loudly and obviously in front of them it's not gonna work unless it is said genuinely without any sort of expectation and gifts can also be demands because it's like you will like this I think you will like this I don't mind gifts I prefer it if people ask me first I prefer to tell people what to get for me you know it's that drive for autonomy thing again you can also avoid positive things that you've been looking forward to so for example when I was younger I was very into video editing and I was editing on our old pc and it was doing the blue screen of death all the time and I really wanted a mac so I was saving up for this mac and I'd been saving and saving for ages and it was clearly going to take me a really long time to get there so my parents were like we'll loan you the money you can get the mac now and then you just slowly pay us back so that you can start editing on it and then I got this mac and I left it and didn't open it for weeks maybe even a month or something you could kind of say that was like just an autistic need for sameness but then again there's the whole thing of PDA is trying to avoid uncertainty maybe oh I don't know if I want to go there I don't know if I want to open that can of worms yet even though the can of worms was the computer that I really really wanted I'm just there using this computer that's crashing all the time praise can be a demand as well because you kind of get a feeling or at least I do like oh I've done a good thing people are going to expect me to do more of this can I recreate it and it's a little bit ominous but I do really appreciate nice comments in my videos so don't stop don't don't stop leaving me positive comments please being told you can't do something is also a demand it like reverse it suddenly makes you really want to do that thing but like in a kind of like panicked I must do that now because I've been told I can't and this can be really stupid small things like for example I went to return something to the supermarket they told me we can't give you cash we have to give you a gift card and I just felt like just like horrible inside and it put me in a bad mood for a couple of hours afterwards and I had to like smile and be like that's okay that's fine I do not even care that it was a gift card I used the shop all the time it makes no difference whether it was a gift card or actual money it doesn't matter these demands give you anxiety which will then make you at least some of the time avoid doing these things depending on whether you're masking or internalizing so if you're in a social situation like I said at the shop you might be able to smile and be like that's fine but it kind of builds in the background it affects your mental health and maybe then later on in the day when you're in a safe situation once they come home they have an outburst a meltdown in PDA often your meltdowns can be triggered by this feeling of being out of control but it's kind of important to see these as anxiety attacks if you're kind of supporting somebody with PDA rather than an outburst of anger with like malicious intent or a tantrum or something like that is actually them in a state of panic number two a very key feature of being PDA is that you might use social strategies to avoid demands what does that actually look like it means we can be relatively good communicators perhaps more so than you would expect for an autistic person and we can negotiate and talk our way out of having to do things sometimes and that can also be inside in your own head you can be very convincing about why you need to sabotage something and tear things down and burn bridges because like obviously look at all of these reasons why I can't do this thing when the reality of it is or at least a large part of it may be that the expectation is just becoming too much for you I would go to my dad's house every second weekend my mom was very very easygoing which was ideal she's just an artist and she's just I don't know a bit of a free spirit she's a great person it wasn't like my home life was absolute not a chaos she was very caring and looked after me very well but she gave me a lot of freedom and respect I would say as my own person even though I was a child which is like every PDA is dream however at my dad's house it was a little bit more strict at home I hated peas obviously I have a lot of sensory stuff with being autistic and I was allowed to just eat five peas at home dinner why was I even given peas at this point was it worth it I don't think so how many calories is five peas can somebody tell me in the comments is it minus calories like what the hell is the point in that I don't know if she was maybe thinking maybe if I just have five one day I might build up my tolerance I'd just be like hey today I can pee at my dad's I had a big fat portion of peas and they were like you need to eat those peas and so I was like full on like business negotiation like can I eat this many you said like at home I get to only eat five peas sometimes when those strategies don't work PDAs can start using other things like threats um which is what I did in that situation and I was like I'm gonna go home if you make me eat more than five peas I'm gonna walk home and it was like a 40 minute drive away from my mom's house anyway that story gets mentioned every time I see my dad I don't know what happened in the end I don't know how many peas I ate you see even now when I'm thinking back to I'm like I bet I kind of got my own way you could also use like social strategies to kind of try and delay the demand that kind of links into procrastinating obviously that's not necessarily a social strategy but you can find yourself as a PDA putting things off for a while and maybe you can recognize in yourself that that kind of is linked to anxiety like the idea of doing it just feels like just off and you're like no I'm just gonna I'm just gonna do this other thing over here and sometimes you can actually find yourself doing other demands that you perceive as like less oppressive I suppose I can be cleaning my house and I'm like oh I don't really feel like dusting this I'll just go and clean out this massive cupboard in another room instead and it's like the kind of thing that a normal neurotypical person would procrastinate for years and I'm there like let's organize the cupboard you may use distraction in a social way to try and avoid demands sometimes children can be quite disruptive in a classroom setting to kind of prevent the lesson from going forwards I never would have done that I just seemed like a quiet shy little girl who didn't know how to friend there were little glimmers here and there in school where it kind of popped out a little bit again at times where my tolerance for demands was maybe a little bit lower but mostly it was all under the surface you also might make excuses children might say things like my legs don't work and children may also use role play as well so they might I know I've heard things like I'm a dog and dogs don't have to make their bed and stuff like that when these social strategies have failed the switch to panic mode can seem very very quick so a child may suddenly shout no or something like that they may just completely shut down and just not physically be able to get up and do it and just become paralyzed that's like the freeze response they may have a meltdown which is kind of like the fight response they may run away which is the flight response and some individuals may self-harm as well when they're in kind of a meltdown slash panic mode because they just feel so out of control it feels like everything's just spiraling around you and nothing is ever gonna be okay again and there's nothing you can do about it and your life is over number three pdas can appear more social but lack depth in understanding when I read that I'm like you lack depth and understanding like what do you mean by that so this is kind of where the whole like atypical autism thing comes in like your struggles with social situations can be less obvious and you may be more likely to mask as well so this is a quote from the pda society and it's specifically in the context of if you were a professional assessing somebody for pda and kind of what you might want to look out for they may appear superficially socially very able however with time some emotional social communication difficulties become more apparent and it often becomes clear that sociability cannot be maintained mannerisms and gestures may appear over-exaggerated or copied I feel attacked particularly when you're thinking about children we can often be quite good with words ourselves but then that kind of covers up how we struggle to process the words of other people so I remember asking my mom like did I used to respond to you as a child did I ever just completely ignore you and she was like no I don't think you did and I got my home video and do I ever respond to a single thing that she says to me I'm not sure which is just such a contrast to my son because he would just always respond straight away and I was speaking to my dad the other day and he said there were lots of times where I thought you were just being rude because I would ask you something and you just wouldn't say anything back like maybe you're just very transfixed in what you're doing and you're not able to process that question or it takes a while for you to process that question and by the time you do the person's already moved on and given up on you or the question is a demand and you're just just rather carry on doing what I'm doing I'm just gonna pretend that you didn't say anything the PDA society also says that PDA children often see themselves as adults so we have like a disregard a lack of respect for hierarchy I suppose and authority we kind of feel like everybody should be treated equally this was certainly true for me I would sometimes you know like autistic people we can have that strong sense of justice and I would certainly feel that about the way adults would sometimes treat children and kind of like speak about children as if they weren't in the room and then PDAs can kind of seek to equalize situations where there is kind of a power imbalance I mean it can be good sometimes I'm not afraid to like advocate for myself when I'm seeing a doctor or something like that it's not like I'm disrespectful to them yeah it's like we can appear very polite on a surface level but like inside we've got this like rebellious like anarchist sort of streak there PDAs seem to be quite good at masking autism which I have a few videos about basically covering up the fact that you're autistic and copying other people's mannerisms and trying really hard to look like everybody else which can be exhausting PDAs can seem very charming or even extroverted I have been referred to as an extrovert several times in my life I am the most introverted person ever and every time and it's been a massive shock and I don't really know why and then there are also people who've said oh my gosh you're so shy it's so cute so like I get like both sides of it I don't know how to feel nobody really knows what box to put me in I suppose I can be quite confident if I'm in a situation where I feel very in control I know what I'm doing I'm given freedom there was a time where I was on some awful painful I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to go on a school trip but I went on the school trip for a few nights in year seven which is never something I'd usually do it was hell I hated it but the best part was when for some reason I was chosen as a team leader for some little activity we had to do in a classroom and I was like yes I'm the leader because I never got chosen for things like that because people always thought I was so shy and quiet and I was having a great time delegating to everyone which is a very PDA thing that you quite enjoy to do that because you feel like they're I'm in control of the situation you know like I can ask them to do that and then you can do that and it just it's a nice calming relaxing feeling to be in that role and I don't know I just came out of myself and the teacher was like oh you're not really that shy after all and this kind of links into the fact that PDA children can be quite controlling in their play with other children this is not manipulative it's not malicious in some way it's an attempt to manage their own anxiety it's kind of almost like how cleaning your house can be kind of soothing like if your house is in chaos and everything's all over the place like oh it can particularly as an autistic person make you feel very unsettled and overwhelmed but when that house is clean and everything is in order it's like ah like a steep breath it's kind of like I don't know like you're tidying up the play almost like okay you do this role I think you should do that you'd be good at that and okay maybe if you could do that and then like if people go no I'm not going to do that it's like oh it's a way to kind of keep our world in order and prevent chaos and uncertainty potentially. Number four you may have had a language delay my parents probably wouldn't have said I had any sort of language delay and like nothing was diagnosed when I was a child but as I say I often don't reply to my mum it could be that PDAs just don't feel like speaking and then they have like this sudden catch-up that happens very quickly and this could be because we like to use social strategies to avoid demands and we realize that it's actually beneficial for us to use our language skills and speak to people because then it can maybe help us to preserve our autonomy. Number five mood swings and impulsivity so there does tend to be quite a lot of crossover between ADHD and someone who's just autistic and ADHD and PDA as well I'm not too sure where all these things end and another begins and it's all a little bit confusing. I personally do have an ADHD diagnosis and I know many other PDAs do as well but yeah impulsivity and problems with emotional regulation are a thing with ADHD so the reason why it seems like you have mood swings is because you can switch very quickly into that panic mode into that fight or flight or it seems very quick from the outside for you there has been a build-up slowly over time I mean it can be difficult to recognize that that build-up is happening and sometimes even for the person it can feel like a very quick switch because I think we get used to disregarding our own discomfort because if you have PDA getting out of bed in the morning is heavy it's difficult to do so all day you're fighting against that so how do you know when it's too much it can seem a little bit like oh you were fine and now you're not fine like what's going on there to someone on the outside during meltdowns there can be impulsivity because your logic is just kind of suspended your body is like just pumping out adrenaline they might be more contained in adulthood but still present children are more likely to have bigger more explosive meltdowns and teenagers as well meltdown doesn't have to be like anger it can be crying and shaking on the floor and kind of rocking back and forth and hyperventilating it's just your brain just gets completely overwhelmed and just cannot cope anymore it's like our tolerance for stress is just pretty low which is hard because we live in a pretty stressful society where everyone kind of struggles with the amount of stress we have so like how are we actually supposed to cope I don't know it's very very hard to find appropriate accommodations for that number six the pda society think we can have obsessive behavior which is often focused on other people oh that kind of makes me cringe it's like yeah okay that's kind of true but then you'd have to see all autistic special interests as obsessions too which it kind of does it says that you know pda is often can have very intense interest and these can be atypical interest I don't know an obsession with people just sounds like a stalker that's all I get into my mind is stalking no it's just like like you have special interests as an autistic person you sometimes have special people you maybe don't have as much room in your brain for lots of different friendships the way other people do so you have a few and you really really cherish those I don't really see anything wrong with that as long as you are kind and respectful to those people and understand that they are their own people and they may also want some autonomy in their life sometimes I might be obsessed by a friend or sibling so they might want to spend loads of time with them really really attached to them can maybe be a little bit clingy it's often said about autistic women that they may have interests that are more social in nature and this can also be true for pdas I mean I do have an interest I'd say in people in general throughout my life an interest in psychology you can also get an interest in a specific celebrity as well I don't know if I've ever had a special interest in a celebrity maybe Taylor Swift a little bit I remember a few years ago I read Kazuo Ishiguro for the first time and then I had to read every single book that he'd ever written because I can get really stuck on one particular writer's voice and then I find it really hard to pivot and read someone else's books and then because I just really loved his stuff I wanted to watch interviews with him learn more about what he was like as a person and I found that he was really intelligent and I really enjoyed listening to what he had to say yeah I mean I suppose I can go down a bit of a rabbit hole of enjoying listening to one person's voice I just try and find everything they've done and listen to all of it but I don't have a special interest in him but like I suppose for a little while I had a bit of a hyper fixation number seven you may be comfortable in role play or pretend this is apparently not essential this was a pretty big feature in my life some pdas may pretend to be another person may pretend to be an animal I didn't but I've always been a person who's quite enjoyed doing creative things and had quite a vivid imagination my play was very weird as a child it wasn't like typical play but it wasn't typical autistic play either I don't think as far as I know I don't have any video or photo of it I don't think I lined things up my play was mostly me like flapping my hands and kind of like rocking back and forth in like front of a doll's house or something say and I'd have set up a scene of dolls and then I would imagine what they were doing and what they were saying to each other and it would be really vivid for me and then I'd like maybe move them into the next room and then carry on and so I would barely touch my toys and they would stay in quite a nice condition because of that which I like so it says on the pda society that play can appear imaginative but tends to be based on things they've seen like such as on tv I take issue with that a little bit because I mean there's a book called still like an artist isn't this a whole thing that everything's a remix there are new new ideas everything is based on something that's just kind of linked to the stereotype that autistic people can't be creative at all I think maybe because I've always seen myself as quite an imaginative person I just kind of take offense to that a little bit I'm like I suppose so but like all children play house and they might play shops you know it's all based on things that they've seen like what is this pinnacle amazing creativity neurotypical imagination my mom is an artist she's amazing she's definitely very very creative but she uses reference photos for all of her sculpting she doesn't pull things out of her bum at nursery I didn't play with other children I used to flap my hands and walk around the playground in a circle and I would imagine the children that I could see in stories like I'd watch them and I'd be like okay that person is called this and I'd come up with a name for them because I didn't actually know because I'd never spoken to them and I'd imagine what their career would be one day or something like that and that was how I got myself through the the play times number eight you may find yourself more able to do something as a pda if there is novelty involved which again kind of may be links to this adhd component made a decision I'm gonna do this this is exciting I'm taking control I'm on a path and then as soon as you know you've been doing it for a few days it's routine you're like but maybe I want to do something else over there and then there's like panic and claustrophobia that kind of sets in and you're less able to tolerate it this can be for jobs for sure like I strangely quite enjoy the process of applying for a job going through an interview and masking your way through an interview and then starting the job for about the first five minutes and then I'm like so you feel like an initial sense of empowerment because you've made a decision but then you kind of get engulfed by the expectation number nine you may have had issues with employment or school avoidance I think jobs are kind of worse than school even though school is bad for pdas and many pdas will completely just avoid school and you will not be able to get them I would go through phases where my attendance would be not great I was late almost every day I would fake illnesses to come home it was a struggle I hated it luckily my mom sometimes could see that I did not have the capacity to go and would let me kind of have a rest day but sometimes she would feel really desperate and like she just didn't know how to get me to go back and it would be like sometimes the more days I took off the less I could cope with the expectation of needing to go back and then I would just postpone postpone postpone and eventually I would force myself to go back but with jobs I think it can feel even worse because you're being paid and that feels threatening in a way like I will give you this money but only if every single day between this time and this time you come here and you do this and it just feels claustrophobic in school you can kind of you know just zone out if you want to and put in minimal effort and you don't always have to be putting yourself forward and you know be super enthusiastic whereas in work you're kind of expected to network and look like you want to be there and you know it's a little bit more effort that has to be put into how you come across depending on what job you do it's quite a common thing that PDA is a like a completely different person at school to how they are at home like you might hear that your child is super well behaved but then once they get home they can be a little bit explosive and it could be the same for an adult at work as well you might hold it all in at work be like super friendly everyone thinks you're you know super sociable maybe you're even extroverted and then you get home and you're like shut down like can't handle things anymore can't socialize you have nothing left to give to your family which is sad masking doesn't mean that you've found a way to overcome it it doesn't mean the demand avoidance or the anxiety has gone away and you're not even pushing it down it's just there you're just pretending that it's not there to anyone around you trying to make sure you look like you're okay when you feel distressed number 10 your parents may have been kind of judged by other parents by teachers they may have been told that they're giving you too much freedom that their parenting is too unconventional they just need to give you a little bit more discipline and that'll sort you right out kind of thing obviously this one depends on you having parents you kind of understood your support needs and understood that freedom was important to your mental health in some cases parents may so that's fun all right so you might be pda now what what do you need to do should you get a diagnosis well you can't really get a diagnosis of pda well you can but you might not want to but like yeah what is all that if you're already diagnosed with asd autism spectrum disorder it's as i said the spectrum within the spectrum it's widely recognized as a profile of autism so you've kind of already diagnosed you're on the spectrum this is on the spectrum it's all spectrum me at this time it's not a standalone diagnostic label before i got my diagnosis i did actually message the place where i was diagnosed and i asked them about pda and this is what they said if the clinician observes traits of pda throughout the assessment they may word the diagnosis as autism spectrum disorder with a demand avoidant profile for example the clinician will discuss with the family the pros and cons of this wording as part of the diagnosis for example possible implications on employment so yeah i mean i think this comes back to the whole thing that the name stinks like hello please let me work for your company i have pathological demand avoidance like again thanks for the name much appreciated there's nothing about anxiety in it it doesn't tell you what it is it makes you sound like a bit of an idiot who doesn't want to do anything you know or a little bit antisocial which i don't know maybe we are i don't think with that diagnosis aside how do you cope how do you live i mean that's a whole other topic that i can cover in future videos but briefly i mean the typical accommodations for autism like having a kind of rigid routine that'll make them feel safe that will not work for a pda you know like the color-coded visual timetable no doesn't work how do i manage to get stuff done i give myself as much freedom as possible i work for myself so my demands are largely self-imposed i give myself a to-do list at the start of the day i write it i pretty much never look at it but just the act of writing it kind of reminds me of what i have to do and then i do everything and completely the wrong order i remember as a teenager many times printing out a schedule for myself and being like right you are now going to do this and there for every morning you're going to sit at your desk and you're going to write your novel for two hours and it was really intense i was quite an intense person but i just felt awful i just felt awful i realized very quickly that was not going to work for my mental health i felt super guilty and chaotic and disorganized for that but like whatever i live in like organized chaos a few other things that might help if someone could help me in just like a tiny way like say i'm doing an essay on my computer or something and i might say to my husband can you bring me my charger i'm perfect capable of getting the charger myself obviously that is a demand but also just him getting the charger it's like it's not you know me alone against the world look there's someone who cares and he's offering his support kind of making people aware of how much those little bits of support can help you think about how you can increase the freedom and flexibility in your life that's always gonna help reducing demands is great like i had a stressful week and i had hospital appointment that you know it's not urgent but it you know it would have been good to do it like at that time but i rescheduled it because i was like no i don't want to do that this week i also sometimes find that doing thing if there's a deadline sort of demand doing it early can make you feel super in control like haha you said this had to be done for this day but look i did it two weeks early what it can feel a little bit rebellious in a strange way it's a little bit like that with the to-do list like i know i said i was gonna do invoices in the morning but look i did two hours of video editing what you know like you can kind of trick yourself a little bit with that also like mindfulness and meditation that can be at another demand in your schedule that you might not need and might kind of conflict with the whole reducing demands thing but i think because our nervous systems are so overactive it can be helpful i quite like body scan kind of meditations i think that can be quite nice and relaxing but like do i meditate every day i can't remember the last time you know i think also just trying to manage your own perfectionism as well because my pattern through life at the moment which i'm hopefully going to be able to counteract now i have a diagnosis has been put a whole lot of pressure on myself impose loads and loads of demands be super perfectionist until i get to a point where i'm completely burnt out and i never want to do that thing again and i just tear down and sabotage everything i've done and then start afresh and then start going over the top on something else you know autonomy is important to everybody and freedom is important to everybody it improves everybody's quality of life for sure but for pdas it's just that next level i've been talking a lot about autistic masking if you don't really know what that is i have a video here which i'll leave linked which is all about how autistic masking actually feels from the inside bye