After a major case of writer’s block, my New Year’s Resolution this year was to post here on my blog on a regular basis, or at the very least a semi regular basis. However, when January 1st came around, a crippling amount of “what if” thoughts arrived with it. What to write about first? Should I do another catch up post? Or just carry on as if I hadn’t had a break for almost a year? Something I struggle quite badly with is PDA. No, not personal displays of affection, but a condition called Pathological Demand Avoidance. This condition goes hand in hand with Autism. The National Autistic Society describes it as “a profile that describes those whose main characteristic is to avoid everyday demands and expectations to an extreme extent.”
Essentially, the basics of day to day life is so overwhelming for me, that I find it almost impossible to get anything done, because the hardest part is starting. An easy to explain example of this in regards to my own life, is doing the washing up. For all of my life up until the autism diagnosis, I didn’t understand why something that in theory is incredibly easy, is so difficult for me. We didn’t have a dishwasher until I was well into my 20’s, so as I child I grew up having to wash up by hand. This is an absolute sensory hell for me. The constant temperature changes of plunging your hands into and back out hot water, the sensation of having incredibly soapy water on your hands, making them feel slimy. Well, that;s how my brain processes the sensation. Then there’s the fact the water gets dirty and there could be bits of food bumping into your hands, if you’re scrubbing a cooking pan. As I got older, none of these sensations got easier to handle, and it became the job I hated the most, and even though I now have a dishwasher, there is still a mental block in my mind. Now that I live alone, I constantly walk on the knife edge of anxiety. Because this chore is so hard for me, I end up ignoring all the dirty dishes, instead using every plate, bowl, cup and piece of cutlery I own, telling myself “I’ll load the dishwasher later”, “I’ll do it in 5 minutes” etc, but those times never come until there is no crockery or cutlery left. At that point I HAVE to do it, but because there is a mountain of things waiting to be washed, I get overwhelmed by the sheer amount, and therefore at risk of having a meltdown. Yes, as much as I hate to admit it, I have had many meltdowns in my 35 years of life because of having to do the dishes. Each and every time this happens, as I am playing crockery tetris trying to fit everything into the dishwasher in a way it will all get cleaned, I promise myself that this won’t happen again, but it always does.
Another example is showering. Quite often I want to go places and do things, but again this very simple daily life task overwhelms me to the point where not only do I not get showered and dressed, I end up not getting anything else done that day because I haven’t showered and got dressed. It is a visious, never ending cycle!! The reasons this task is so difficult for me is much the same as with the washing up. The temperature changes of getting in and out of the hot water, and the sensation of slippery skin. That sensation is not a plesant one for me. It actually makes my skin crawl. The bizarre thing is, once I’m actually in the shower or bath, I actually really like it. I like the heat, the loosening of tight muscles, it’s the knowing that I have to turn the hot water off and step out into what feels like a freezing cold room afterwards that makes this so challenging for me. I know logically that the air temperature isn’t actually freezing cold, but my body processes even minor temperature fluctuations as if they were large jumps. Over the years I have come up ways of helping, and I manage to shower most days now or at least every other day, but I do still have days where I just can’t do it. Because I live my life with routines, when I have one of these days where I can’t have either a bath or shower, instead of just having a wash and getting on with the day, my brain processes it as no shower means I can’t do anything that I’d normally do after the shower, because I haven’t had the shower. I hope these 2 examples give’s a basic overview of how challenging PDA is for me.
As far as the writer’s block goes, despite having decided that my New Year’s Resolution to post regularly, because I didn’t post on January 1st it had a rolling snowball effect, which is why it has taken me 4.5 months to build up to breaking that snowball’s journey. I hope from here on out, now I’ve made this post, I’ll be able to carry out my plans to post more regularly.
The Broken Butterfly 