14 Signs You Actually Have Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA)

That sound is kind of how demands feel, it feels in me that like danger, like warning. I fit a profile of autism called pathological demand avoidance. I have a whole video talking about it here but when you hear the name pathological demand avoidance what does it make you think of? One of the reasons why I hate that name so much is because I feel like it describes what PDA might look like on the outside for somebody who has a very overt presentation of PDA who externalizes their PDA a lot. It's all about how somebody might behave, it's not about the internal experience of PDA-ers. When you hear pathological demand avoidance you might imagine somebody flipping over tables because they've been told to do something that they don't want to do. You might think of oppositional defiance disorder which is a common misdiagnosis for PDA. Particularly with the word pathological in there it doesn't really sound like someone you'd want to be around all that much and it doesn't sound like somebody that you have very much sympathy for or want to feel much kindness towards. It doesn't imply anything about the root cause of PDA which is anxiety. I feel like in the 1980s when the psychologist Elizabeth Newsom came up with the term PDA she must have been in a really bad mood. There must have been one kind of client or patient of hers who really drove her crazy that day. Without her the concept of PDA being a profile of autism wouldn't even exist so I am very grateful to her. But you know it's a different time now maybe we can move forwards. Today I'm going to talk about what does PDA feel like from the inside. I'm also going to draw on the experience of a few other PDA-ers as well. What does PDA feel like then? Well number one I did have a comment on a previous video about how can you tell if you have the PDA profile of autism or if you're just dealing with executive dysfunctions which is kind of like your ability to plan, organise and then see things through and execute tasks. And you know I'd say PDA does come with a significant amount of executive function difficulties but I think you can separate it from non-PDA executive dysfunction by asking yourself how certain situations would make you feel. If somebody needed to get past you in a supermarket and said to you, can I just squeeze past you there love would that be okay? How would that make you feel? If somebody noticed you had something in your teeth and said oh you've got something in your teeth there just just get that out. How would you feel if your partner who you love and feel like you would die for asks you to pass them their drink which is within reaching distance of you? How did those scenarios make you feel? For me those things feel irritating is probably the word that I would have used in the past. They make me feel like a kind of prickling under my skin. It's a similar feeling to if someone started blasting a lawnmower outside out of nowhere. If you're somebody who identifies with misophonia so you feel anger or irritation or anxiety just negative emotions when you hear certain sounds particularly kind of like mouth sounds like yawning and swallowing humming and whistling and things like that as well. If those get under your skin it's a very similar feeling. People asking me to do things no matter how simple they are how easy they would be for me to carry out no matter how much if I had made the decision to do it myself I would actually want to help them no matter how illogical it is it still makes me feel dysregulated and I always just thought I must be kind of a bad mooded person because it feels like irritation but I think we overlook how connected anger rage irritation are to anxiety. Your body is switching over into fight mode in that state. Your body thinks it's in Unfortunately sometimes that danger is someone telling you to pick a bit of spinach out of your teeth. Number two PDA can feel like depression. From a very young age I would say about seven years old I would have probably used the word depressed to describe myself and other people around me would sometimes have used that word but I could usually get out of bed even though it felt hard so I thought I'm probably just mildly depressed and then as I got older I discovered the word dysthymia which is like chronic long-lasting low-level depression and if you look at the symptoms of that you can see how a neurodivergent person might particularly a neurodivergent person who's putting themselves in situations that are not ideal for them on a daily basis might feel like this fit for them. I kind of just read the symptoms at the time and thought ah yeah that's probably me and then just shrugged and moved on and thanks to this incredible video by Purple Ella I've realized that that feeling the feelings I was having then were actually anxiety and it's so funny because we use the word anxiety so much on a daily basis we talk about anxiety disorders maybe more than any other sort of mental health issue but I don't know how many of us actually realize what anxiety is and what it actually feels like particularly those of us who live with it almost constantly because that's just normal then and PDAs are more likely to experience anxiety than other autistic people which is super fun. You could rename PDA to I think that would make a lot of sense because sometimes we don't avoid the demands when we avoid the demands the feeling on the inside is externalized more and might become more obvious to somebody trying to diagnose you but sometimes demands make us feel awful and take a toll on our mental health but we do them anyway because we feel like we have no choice and often there isn't a choice if you want to survive you have to put food in your body no matter how much you don't I was a very happy baby and I don't remember ever feeling too many unpleasant emotions before I started school and I think the reason why I had these this time year like symptoms was school school is very demanding it requires you to be somewhere from this time to this time and have your entire day dictated by somebody else and that obviously isn't great for a PDA no matter how well behaved they might be at school. I didn't get chosen for that thing but I knew I wouldn't because everyone at school thinks I'm shy I do act quite shy other people might see me as quiet and there is actually a little difference I pull myself in so that I do not get hurt in this vicious jungle called school and I think it just took a toll on me I spent a lot of my time at school in a kind of shut down state where I wasn't very expressive I didn't talk very much I shrunk into myself and was very meek and passive and kind of just let the day wash over me and internalize any negative feelings that I felt I would have imagined anxiety as like fireworks in your belly you know like I wouldn't have thought of anxiety as feeling heavy feeling slow feeling like you carry a little rain cloud around with you all the time and like life has kind of been drained of color feeling a sense of doom number three Rico PDA who has another great youtube channel and also a facebook page describes PDA as feeling like you are facing your phobias every day and if you've lived with PDA your whole life which if you're PDA you have you might not recognize this straight away because you're just used to kind of going about your day for me if I think about it yeah each task that I do in the day feels like something that I have to overcome getting out of bed is a huge obstacle that I have to get over it's like you have to take a deep breath and then brace yourself and go and push yourself into doing it it can feel like ripping a plaster off and that's kind of how you imagine you know facing a phobia like this feels awful to me but I'm gonna do it anyway and I'm gonna overcome and I'm gonna rise above this except from you having to do this and find this energy reserve inside yourself to do this about all of the steps you have to do in the morning to get out of the door you break them down into their tiny steps which we do mentally PDAs often like to list every single thing they have to do and break things into tiny fragments because they all feel like mountains we have to climb I hate getting ready I'm often quite irritable in the because I feel like I wake up with weight pressing on my chest and that weight is all of the things I am yet to do and I feel like in the evening time I am definitely lighter I wouldn't say light but I feel lighter because I have battled my way through the day and I have overcome all of the obstacles between me and feeling okay which are all the things that are required of me number four PDA can sometimes feel like relief beautiful peaceful big sigh big satisfying sigh relief when we manage to unload a task it's kind of ironic but PDAs can be quite demanding of other people in their life there are times where I will ask my husband to do something for me that I am completely capable of doing and I've noticed this about myself and always found it very confusing why on earth do I ask my husband to get me my computer charger when it would involve him moving to a different room why do I think that it's okay for me to ask that of somebody else and I have heard some PDAs say they hate asking things of anybody else because they empathize and know what it feels like for them but for me I do sometimes ask people for things it's just such a strong pleasant feeling of relief to have somebody do something for me even when it's something I'm capable of doing that I kind of crave that feeling that feeling of being supported oh look it's not just me against life me fighting it there are other people who are going to fight this danger with me and I am safe there's no better feeling than when somebody takes something out of our hands and says I'll do that for you or I'll help you with that we can do it together that feels like everything is going to be okay some PDAs may may disagree it might be like an imposition sometimes other ways that you can unload tasks sometimes are dropping out it can feel like the most incredible relief to just drop something and just be like I'm not doing this anymore so I should really be doing my A levels but I dropped out of college when I was in my AS year right before the exams I was doing really well getting all A's going on to get A stars and A2 and then just dropped out my pattern in life has been often to try very hard at something be at the top of doing something because I put so much pressure on myself and worked so hard to do it and then get to breaking point and then turn around and walk away like it's nothing and when you do drop things it can feel like you're just opening your arms wide in a field in the middle of nowhere spinning around just freedom but then sometimes you kind of wake up to the reality that now okay I've left that now what am I supposed to do and then that can make you feel kind of out of control and you can start spiraling in a different direction so it's not always gonna solve everything I also get the feeling of relief from actually doing tasks and feeling like I've completed them and I think there have been some parts of my life where I've been kind of addicted to that feeling that tiny little like oh deep breath sense like okay maybe everything's gonna be all right and then it's like oh get back on with the next thing quick and it feels like you're running away from something and PDA children can be quite passive in early childhood I certainly was I let my mom do a lot of things for me and I think that's why I was happier before I started school because I felt like I was very supported and very safe at home but strangely PDAs tend to grow up to be quite independent people because we crave freedom we crave doing things our own way I moved out when I was 19 and I love running my own business which might seem ironic because it sounds like a very high pressure demanding thing to do and certainly some aspects of it can be difficult to deal with but I just love the freedom where's my piece of paper that told me what the hell I'm doing there it is what's that oh that's a tax receipt let's go with tax receipt I can do whatever I want why is that line gonna get stuck in my head bye bye I really liked this quote from Rico PDA about independence I've always been an independent person I've had to manage my own life from a young age I don't like people helping me but at the same time I can expect people to do things for me such as the way of PDA yeah there are a lot of contradictions in PDA the more you get to know your PDA person the more you'll understand them number five at its worst PDA can feel like spiraling out of control like the earth is tilting on its axis and like things are never gonna be okay again our survival response really likes to be triggered it's very eager and very keen so it doesn't take a lot for us to feel like we're under threat in terms of fight PDA can feel like pure anger pure rage you may have grown up thinking of yourself as somebody who has anger issues which is is not a great feeling and this rage can completely suspend your logic you can become very impulsive and just act on adrenaline and not even be able to think straight it feels like the world is ending like nothing is ever gonna be okay again and as a result it can just feel like the consequences don't matter anymore because everything is over it's incredibly frustrating then when you come back from that state and obviously can be really upsetting for you and for the people around you as well and can have some pretty negative consequences but I have found myself that understanding that anger is actually anxiety it's a fight threat response my body feels like it's in danger can be helpful if you can restore a sense of safety for a PDA in a fight response you may be able to bring them back down to earth though it may just take time once that kind of adrenaline response has been set off it can take a while to come down from it and it can be quite easy to find yourself back in that response again because that adrenaline is already there in your system it's much easier for that state to be triggered again so someone with PDA might apologize it might all seem like it's okay and as the PDA you may really believe that you're okay but then you find yourself being triggered by one little small thing again or like feeling self-hatred could trigger it because you feel like you messed up so much earlier you may then actually end up messing up again because now you have anger at yourself and you feel like you're out of control and you can't control your own behavior and that is very scary I've dealt a lot with the flight response I can think of many stories from my life where switches are flicked in my brain and I've gone from being fine to being completely unable to cope and feeling like I need to run away I ran away from an English literature exam once I really struggle with that acute pressure of being in an exam situation my mom was dropping me off for the English exam and I was just in such a panic that I grabbed my stuff and just got out the car and started running in the opposite way and she had to kind of talk me down and say Meg you won't be able to live with yourself if you run away from doing this and in my head I was like I was scared of myself I was like am I really gonna run away from the exam would I do that is that you know something that I'm capable of and it really felt like I was and then I did actually go into the exam I got a question that I was actually super confident on answering and I'm not sure if maybe that contributed to why I then got into a panic because I felt like there was a lot of expectation for me to do a good job of it I'd already written the essay once and a teacher had given me a really good mark for it so I felt like yeah this is this I can do in exam situations I don't even know how to describe it it just feels kind of like the room is spinning sometimes not literally but that's kind of how it feels inside stomach twisting feeling kind of sick with anxiety I get this funny feeling of like I'm not really here am I really here is this moment real where I just can't believe this is actually happening this like intense stressful moment is actually going on in that moment it becomes really really weird to me and I have like kind of an existential crisis of am I really here what is happening anyway I think I was crying and shaking and I lifted my hand and they allowed me to go into a toilet cubicle they gave me a mint and I went in there and had a cry and then eventually I came back and they did give me some extra time at the end of the exam to make up for it which was really kind I'm not sure how much of that they were actually technically supposed to or allowed to do because I wasn't down for extra time I didn't have any diagnoses at the time of anything at all and I'm really really hoping that I don't get so stressed that I break down again like I did in my last English exam I hate theme parks and I tried to go with my partner once when we were first getting together and I went and sat down on a ride and then I completely had a panic and I just got off and ran off the ride the thing hadn't come down over me yet and the thing the harness I don't know what you call it the bars the the stuff that traps you there you can see maybe why I didn't like this as a PDA anyway so yeah I ran I have no regrets I think the ride actually ended up going upside down and my partner hadn't realized that the ride went upside down so um yeah I saved myself there good good on you Meg you run for your life Megan got on the ride and then ran away he just like sat down and then had a little panic moderate thrill sounds like my thing definitely number six I think one of the best words ever to describe what PDA feels like is claustrophobia I'd use the word claustrophobia to describe how I feel in a job situation before and then when I was looking into PDA the first time I always find it really really an emotional experience reading about PDA because it's just very very close to home and it feels like someone's stolen your diary and put it all over the internet it's really weird so if you have that feeling you're probably PDA and I saw somebody had used the word claustrophobia it may even have been in relation to employment and I was like oh my goodness this is so me I don't think any person on this earth likes to feel controlled or trapped I think there's a reason why prison is a punishment there's a reason why people seek out autonomy in job roles people want freedom they don't want to be micromanaged I think it's a normal survival response that every human has but I think in people with PDA it has triggered so much more easily so it's hard because if you say I don't like being told what to do at work everyone's gonna go oh neither do I I'll have stories about managers that they hated and things like that but they don't quite understand the extent and there's no way to measure that you know it's kind of like your word against theirs but I think if you just look at your life if you're a PDA versus someone who just says oh I don't like being told what to do but they've worked a full-time job since they were 18 and you look at your life which has maybe had more ups and downs and droppings out and more mental health crises and stuff like that you can see maybe like maybe this doesn't feel the same for both of us you know having a job to me completely feels like a threat it feels like being held at gunpoint I will pay you this much if you give me a whole entire year of your life between this time and this time I own you now you poor unfortunate soul to me the exchange the giving up of my freedom feels in no way worth it and if someone was to offer me more money it would probably make me want to run away even harder because then there's even more expectation even more pressure on you to perform the word freelance to me from a young age sounded like just the most beautiful word I kind of picture a butterfly when I hear that word I feel like if somebody told me tomorrow I have to go out and work a job and work for somebody else my whole life would fade to grey in the past I have been able to mask and get on with kind of job situations when I've had part-time jobs and little things but I would usually kind of need time away from the mask and you know being like yeah sure I can do that that's no problem I said go and have a little bit of a cry and a bit of a panic in a toilet cubicle and things like that and if I was working a full-time job that probably would be a staple of my day which would not be ideal I don't think for like peak mental health I feel like I'd lose all creativity and there wouldn't be very much of me left over strangely I do also suffer with like claustrophobia in a physical sense I didn't realize this but I hated going in lifts as a child so it should be obvious but I went for an MRI scan I lay down and they started rolling the machine back and I was like oh hell no and I was laughing with the guy I was like I didn't expect to have a reaction to this I don't know what's going on he was like oh loads of people do it's fine you can just go to your GP and get a tranquilizer and come back I was like no I'm gonna do it and I just made myself do it this was before I had a diagnosis maybe I would have been kinder to myself but I also hate taking medications because I have all sorts of weird reactions to things so I'm just like if I can avoid it I'd rather avoid some sort of side effect ruining my day but I just had to close my eyes not look at all at how close the ceiling was to my face and then just breathe very very consciously through the whole thing the whole half an hour of lying there and there were so many times where I felt like I was about to panic and you have to stay still when you're in an MRI I didn't want to start writhing around in panic but yeah I took very deep breaths and felt like I was swallowing all the time it was really awful so I don't know whether that's a common thing that other PDAs feel in the roller coaster scenario it's also you know being trapped I can't move I have no choice I have family members who are very similar to me who like doing things that I would probably find kind of claustrophobic sometimes like diving and things like that number seven I'd say PDA feels like a very strong fear of getting things wrong I feel a need to get things right all of the time making mistakes can be very upsetting for us for me it definitely triggers an existential crisis about like how useless I am and how there's no point in me doing everything and how I just want to tear down everything I've ever done I've always been called a perfectionist by other people last night I had a dream about oh that the maths exam that I did on Monday was just a mock and I got to redo the test and I knew every single question and it was just amazing it's so great and then I woke up I find making decisions very difficult and when I'm making decisions I feel like there is a right answer somewhere written in the universe and my thoughts just churn and churn about it I feel like if I think about it enough if I talk about it and go round and round about the same topic with people in my life enough I will eventually reach this right answer which is like a truth written in the universe there must be a right answer I think this is one of the reasons why PDAs hate being watched for me if someone they're looking at me my computer screen and what I'm doing and they comment on it or something or even if I just feel them watching little hairs on the back of my neck stand up that's what it feels like and like oh again like kind of prickling under my skin feeling and I'm just like no don't look I much prefer being like kind of hunched over a laptop and everything being kind of secret until I feel like it's just right you know I don't want anybody to see anything before I feel like I'm ready for people to see things I would get into trouble kind of in college and in English classes because I would sometimes have to do work on computers and it's something about computers you can't hunch over you know a screen is kind of feels like it's exposed to the world and she would be like you should probably do some work in the actual lesson and I would prefer to just kind of sit there in the lesson not do all that much and then do the work once I got home because then I felt more confident to do things strangely and I hate somebody watching me like if someone stays over at my house they'll watch me do my makeup the next day and sometimes people will say things like oh I love watching people do their makeup it's really soothing and I'm like oh it feels like this I don't know if any PDAs can relate to that sound is kind of how demands feel feel to me that like danger like warning some PDAs will literally rip up their work if you kind of praise them while they're in the middle of doing something or even praise them after they've done something because then there's an implied expectation that they're going to do something like that again in the future so praise can make you feel kind of similar to criticism sometimes still feel free as and this maybe links to number eight which is that for me PDA feels like a very low self-esteem I always feel like I strive for perfection to kind of try and counteract that and like I'm always trying to prove myself whether this comes from times where you have been doubted or maybe called things like lazy and people have misunderstood you and therefore you feel like you actually you need to prove yourself as a result I don't know because I was given a lot of encouragement as well growing up I came across teachers who were not great obviously and there were a lot of people who didn't understand me throughout my life and I did feel like I had a lot of weaknesses that were more obvious than other people maybe but I also feel like I wasn't made to feel like you know complete trash so I don't know about that maybe it is just something ingrained in us ironically you might not expect it for a PDA or when you hear the name I have always pushed myself very hard and I know many other PDAs who are very determined as well some of that was me counteracting the PDA I just felt like I'm inherently deep down a lazy person and so therefore I would scream at myself to get things done and then I would be praised for it you know I wasn't super popular at school it was one way that I could count on having some sort of external validation and for me even though I don't always like direct praise and my immediate thing can be to kind of shut it down and it can make me feel a bit you know kind of twitchy and not not great I'm but in general I do want people to approve of me I do want people to like me so I kept going and I kept pushing more and more and more and turning up the volume on how much I demanded of myself and I felt like I was dirt and like it didn't matter how I felt about anything and it didn't matter if things felt hard for me and just kind of bulldozed and fought my way through each day having very very little regard for my own mental or physical health and related to the praise thing the ripping up your work I never I don't know how other PDAs feel about this I never feel like happy or comfortable or content with my own accomplishments I don't feel like that they mean much to me number nine criticism or telling me I've done something wrong or that I should have done something differently the word should they are deeply upsetting to me they give me an instant like rush of dysphoria my stomach drops even very very small criticisms can feel like a huge slap in the face I think part of the like oh you've got something in your teeth you should remove that to me feels not just the demand that I should remove it but also a criticism I suppose most criticisms kind of have demands built into them of like you should do some things things differently but it's also the feeling of like oh my god I've messed up I'm never going to come back from this this is the end of the world because I suppose you feel like you tried your hardest and you put in so much effort and you still couldn't control your behavior perfectly to create the outcome that someone wanted so number 10 PDA and anxiety driven need to remain in control obviously control is a big part of it a need to be in control to steal bits of control wherever you can and there were many times where I felt like my life is spiraling around me and therefore I have latched onto something that I could control this is where you can start having kind of OCD like behaviors and I think there are many times in my life where I could have maybe been diagnosed with OCD if I had spoken to someone they probably wouldn't have thought autism at the time but they may very well have thought OCD there was a time where I was obsessed with washing my hands and basically after touching anything I had to wash my hands I got eczema I used to need the people around me in my life to also wash their hands particularly if they were touching my things this dark heavy feeling I got whenever I felt like my hands were unclean was very very intense and then once I'd washed them it would feel like very momentary relief and then it would come back again very soon after it eventually I did just kind of grow out of doing that but there are other things that have come up throughout my life such as forcing myself into a very strict and rigid routine that is like so counterintuitive but sometimes for a short while that could be a coping mechanism that would work for me trying to control myself because sometimes that feels like the only thing you can control and like kind of crack the whip at myself and be like no you need to do this at this time you have to and like fight against that instinct and this obviously links in very closely with she warned that autistic teenage girls seem to be particularly at risk of developing eating disorders and said that some adult PDA women have reported controlling their eating as a way of internalizing their demand avoidance rather than reacting externally with a meltdown once they have reached their teenage years very very small things can cause you to feel out of control for me a big one is losing something can very very quickly have you spiraling into feeling like everything is wrong and then also things going wrong with projects that you're working on things within your special interest for me that was always one of the major triggers aside from exhaustion from masking and things like that of meltdowns as a child when something went wrong with something i was working on on the computer i could get frustrated more so than sensory things although sensory things did cause me problems particularly sounds for me the lack of control thing was always the biggest most upsetting thing in my life number 11 pda might feel like the desire to equalize situations you might feel like in order to be okay you have to have the last word and have little ways of getting your own back so i used to paint my nails every day at school we had to wear uniform and we weren't really supposed to and that was kind of my little rebellion hey i wore this headband because it's beautiful to school and so all the teachers were fine no none of the teachers said anything and then one teacher comes out and goes megan you need to take off that headband that's not school uniform well yeah because i really thought you know this headband was part of the school uniform i mean look at it kind of an insult to my headband and so then i was like okay i'll go and take it off in a minute in the toilets where i can actually see because i'm not just gonna pull it off my head so then she just walks off and this other teacher comes she goes megan you should not wear that it's not school uniform like another teacher just told me i just said i'm going to take it off in the toilet and she goes no you take it off right now and i was like i need to see my hair because otherwise it's gonna look a mess and she was like i'll get a mirror now and you take it off so i just took it off on the spot and it was like because our fringe is growing out do they think i just put a headband in to make it look pretty kind of need the headband in and this is kind of the only one i've got and then i just marched out and went to the toilets and put it back on because you know that's what rebels do and had nail polish on as well but they didn't notice that i feel like i personally can be quite a prideful person and sometimes if my husband asks me to do something i will actually do it for him but he knows i might just have to swear at him first and it's like a jokey thing now i wouldn't have done it in the past before i realized that i'm a pda but now that i know maybe in the past i would just got irritable with him and just like why can't you do it yourself whereas now i'll be like that is you know kind of a reasonable request i would actually kind of like to help him i do love him i will but i might be a little bit grumpy while i do it and i'm just gonna have to say the f word first and it's not that deep it's fine i really dislike imbalances of authority it's you know a thing with autistic people in general that we have a strong sense of justice and i think this can be a really really wonderful thing about pda there are many times where despite being a shy person you most of the time you know kind of internalize my whole personality i would stand up for people i felt like a teacher had been unfair or something i would speak up for it and i'm glad of that i went vegan when i was 14 at a time when it was very very not socially acceptable to be vegan and there were basically no vegan foods in the supermarket because you know once i'd read a bit about veganism i was like yeah why should somebody have to die and lose their entire life something that is very valuable to them so that i can eat a sandwich that i don't even enjoy that much when i could just put something different on the sandwich that i could enjoy equally as much you know and i'm very proud of that it's like you're sometimes propelled by this force inside yourself to set things right and sometimes that can make you behave in a sort of petty immature way and sometimes that can make you do really wonderful things so yeah number 12 is a pda you may when you're very burnt out feel kind of cognitively impaired so when i was doing my exams at the end of high school i remember just feeling like i couldn't do anything like my brain wasn't working properly like it was just spinning and spiraling and just electricity running through it and it was like malfunctioning and i remember somebody asking me to write in their yearbook and i just felt like i didn't know how to form a sentence and i did and i'm sure what i wrote made sense but it felt like it wasn't gonna make any sense often in exams around this time i would start writing things and then cross them out because i just feel like this is nonsense this makes no sense but i think actually what i was writing was fine and i was just wasting time and then sometimes i would miss really big like high mark questions at the end of the exam because i'd been crossing out and rewriting basically the same thing again and again but i was in just such a state of panic that i just couldn't think rationally anymore number 13 as a pda you may feel momentary safety from doing the wrong thing so while trying to plan out this video i kept googling song lyrics or clips from the eras tour i was watching some 1975 interviews you may find that you procrastinate a lot and particularly the more pressure you feel on something or the more kind of energy it's going to take from you the more you can feel this need to procrastinate and then obviously you still have the guilt of what you have to do looming over you while you're doing those things and just feeling like oh i shouldn't be doing this i write a to-do list every day and i've said before i have to kind of do things in the wrong order in order to feel kind of a sense of control i've never been able to keep to a rigid routine i don't really have a set bedtime or a set wake-up time this was not my finest day it really wasn't i ended up waking up at about three in the end like properly finally i did wake up a couple of times before then but i went to bed at five in the morning again and eventually it caught up with me it took its time but eventually it caught up with me and i just couldn't get up i just like working better at night i just feel like i can get more done i just feel more inspired or whatever i don't even know and i always felt like that was childish and immature and like really disorganized but i get a lot of stuff done so i just now i'm at a point where i'm like i don't think it matters but sometimes you really do have to do something and that's where i end up procrastinating if i force myself to keep to a routine which i have tried to do many times in my life it makes me feel really heavy basically very similar to how what going to a job would feel to be honest i don't feel like the freedom of working for myself anymore and every day i pick out the clothes that my son's gonna wear the next day and i leave them out and or maybe have a few t-shirts to choose from and whichever one i pick my brain is like you made the wrong choice pick a different one pick a different one and i have the urge and sometimes i do i'm reaching out for one shirt sometimes last minute my hand will change and i'll be like no i'm gonna do that shirt instead and whichever option i pick feels kind of like the wrong answer and because there isn't a set right answer i don't think my brain likes that very much maybe it's to do with black and white and it kind of sends me into like a mini spiral i feel like a knot in my stomach even picking like which pair of underwear if there's a pile of underwear and i just take the one from the top of the pile i'm like yeah but was that the right pair of underwear i have to just kind of like take a breath and just be like nope these are the clothes i'm putting aside from him and just cry and ignore those thoughts but obviously that's really exhausting how many decisions do you make in a day and feeling like sometimes i have to subvert those decisions like oh i decided last night i think i'm gonna have this for breakfast today i'm gonna have this instead oh you know and kind of like this energy your brain is putting and needing to switch up just little minor things in your day rico pda i think describes this feeling quite well for me it's like being a poorly designed constantly malfunctioning robot every button i press has the opposite reaction to my intentions every day i wake up not knowing how i'm going to act and what will happen yeah i mean i can tell you roughly what i think is going to happen but no i do feel to some extent i am and i can never be predictable unless i want to hurt my mental health i have to kind of leave myself a bit of this freedom to make some wacky choices in my day i've always found that i think it's better for me to have multiple projects going at once because then i can bounce from one to the other if i'm just doing one thing and my life feels engulfed by that that one thing then it can become tricky but the problem is when you've got multiple projects going on at the same time you also then have more to do and life can become more demanding and more stressful so i always think i enjoy doing something the most when i feel like i don't have to do it and i'm doing it as an optional thing and it's just because i want to and doing things early for me can be quite a nice feeling like haha look i'm not supposed to be doing this yet because it's not true for ages finally i think pda can feel like pure bliss and euphoria when you're stimming and you're kind of in these rich imaginary worlds that you can create for yourself so as a child i used to flap my hands when i first went to nursery and walk around and i think it was my way of kind of dissociating and removing myself from a situation i found stressful and i didn't want to be there and i was away from my mum for the first time ever she had been my whole world and my safety and i would just flap my hands and tell stories and imagine the children in different scenarios and things like that that feeling when i when i flap my hands and now i still do it i still do it every day i flap objects one of the reasons again why i love working for myself because i will have the confidence to do that when i'm on my own or just around my partner even then i still sometimes feel a little bit of embarrassment about it because it was something that i was made to feel embarrassed about as i got older in school when i still did it by mistake sometimes but it gives me a feeling of lightness i don't know if other people get this feeling from stimming it feels like meditative like i'm an out-of-body experience of just like kind of pure joy and pure immersion in something and i'm so creative when i'm in that state and that's how i revised for exams i would sim and i would repeat facts again to myself and i would remember them all and it felt like i had access to this other level of being or something i don't know if that's all just to do with dopamine but i do know very easily how to access that state of euphoria and i can get there if i want to and i can come up with ideas i can be very creative it's like my happy place and it's one of my favorite things about being alive and probably is the happiest i ever am is when i'm in that state and also when i get into a deep flow state on my interest and to some extent that could be kind of like both times it's because it's kind of an out-of-body experience and i forget about the anxiety and the expectations because i'm engulfed in something else but at the same time it is just a really lovely feeling and other people don't have that same relationship even if they have hobbies and interests they don't feel as much of an intense need to be doing them all the time at the expense of other things in their life and to me that just suggests they must feel really good for me it's amazing how we can adapt to our abilities without knowing the reason behind them but it's even more amazing how much more we can cope when we understand them i don't think i ever ever could have understood myself as well as i do now if i hadn't been able to read stories from other pdas just the knowledge that it isn't laziness it isn't something i've done on purpose i'm not secretly deep down a horrible person who every day is just trying their best not to be a like walking disaster but the response i get to things is often an overreaction of my nervous system and knowing that that is a physiological thing and not something that i've caused and not something that i need to work on or change about myself it's just something i can accept and then learn to live with is such a relief and it's such a relief of pressure that i was putting on myself for so many years which is obviously great for a pda you know anything you can do to lift the weight is wonderful if you want some more videos about pda i have a pda playlist which i'll leave on screen i have a video where i do a pda test which has 50 questions which was created by sally cat and rico number six do you find it helpful if someone reminds you to do a task i wish i could and i also have a video where i go through signs that you might be pda as well so they're both there in the playlist thank you so much for watching and subscribe if you want to don't turn notifications on because notifications are the worst demand ever and they need to shut the hell up bye