I’m already aware of the executive dysfunction that I, and other neurospicy people like myself suffer from, but recently I’ve been reading about demand avoidance after a conversation with my neurospicy partner. He said he hates asking me to turn my brightness down on my phone when I’m reading at night because he’ll always get a bit of a reactionary .. reaction. Basically, I get sassy as hell. I don’t know why I do it, I totally understand why he would ask me to do so - I ask him the same all the time, but it makes me bristle. I adore this man; he is my world, I go to massive lengths on a daily basis to make sure he is OK on so many different levels throughout our shared lives together, but even thinking about it now makes my shoulders arch.
It doesn’t just stop at the phone brightness, it extends to a lot of things. If I ask him to take the bins out when he’s just about to, or if he wants me to go and fetch something I’ve borrowed of his; so much so that we now try and face it with humour to ease the passing of the sass. “I’M DOIIIINNGGG ITTTTT” huffed and screeched in the most whiney, Kevin the teenager style voices we can manage. The humour helps because despite the fact that it absolutely the way we feel, we can acknowledge just how ridiculous it is.
Demand avoidance is a human trait, Pathological Demand Avoidance is something much more all encompassing and is part of the Autism spectrum. I don’t know whether I have PDA, but I am beginning to realise just how much I struggle when certain things are expected of me. It doesn’t just stop at being asked to do things by other people, there are many other things which it extends to; being on time, following rules, making decisions, transitions, leaving the house, showering, getting out of bed in the morning. These all serve to make my life difficult.
Then next up are barriers. My house is generally minimalist and tidy, some might say unusually so for someone who has ADHD, but I have to have it this way. I barely function anyway, without it being like this I would be feral. When I spent a week away housesitting for my inlaws in January I realised just how much I need my systems to achieve some of the most basic daily tasks like, skincare and getting dressed without having a bit of a meltdown. I don’t find it so much of a problem when I’m travelling because generally wherever I’m staying is, not necessarily sterile, but it certainly doesn’t have anybody else’s entire life in it. I don’t quite know how or why, but I ended up pretty much just keeping all my stuff on the landing - probably because there wasn’t anything else there. At home everything I need is in a logical (for me…) place. Vitamins and meds by the coffee machine, the way my wardrobe is organised, where the dogs stuff is and it all has to go back in to the same place otherwise.. I’m fucked.
The one barrier I can’t seem to break down though is my work space. I work in the shed at the bottom of the garden, in the summer it’s a relatively easy place to be; all the doors are open, it’s warm and light and the garden is a nice place to walk to through to get to it. During the winter? It’s difficult as shit. We have a few problems with the power up there at moment, which can’t be fixed until I’ve sorted out the back bathroom, so there is a complicated swathe of extension cords coming through windows and in the kitchen. It has to be sorted every day and not only that because it’s cold as hell up there I have to make sure I do it at least an hour before I’m ready to start so that it heats up. Then I have to walk through the garden which is quite literally a garden of depressing distraction during the winter. I hate the way it looks but I know it’s a never ending battle to keep it looking OK when I have to fight the elements. It’s the reason I’m moving to a place with the smallest amount of outdoor space possible ( and all being well a workspace inside the perimeters of the house!)
My latest barrier is my laptop. It’s old in terms of tech and the programs that I want to use now take up too much space and memory so ..nothing happens fast. Today I spent three hours fighting with Creative Cloud, whilst trying to remote access my partners Windows PC to try and upload and edit some .HEIC photos I’d taken on my phone. File conversions, backing and forthing, updating, syncing, crying, trying a million different ways and nothing worked. Luckily all I needed to do in the end was adjust some levels on the images and add a watermark. I was determined to achieve this at least once so I could list something - and my sad old MacBook Air just about acquiesced…after which I laid down on the floor underneath the table and had a bit of a cry.
Now you might be thinking, er, what the hell, these things are just so banal how on earth can you consider them ‘barriers,’ and people have literally laughed at me when I try and explain it. But I have finally come to realise that quite frankly I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks (or at least I’m trying very hard to have that attitude.) I have to stop minimising myself, I have to stop saying things like, ‘it should be easy’ when I know 1000% it isn’t. How will I ever be able to navigate my own way through this existence if I’m trying to live up to other peoples expectations and standards.
But also, it is quite frankly an absolute wonder that I get literally anything done.