r/PDAAutism

So when I use my words to communicate a sentence, and the persons response is literally just “what? What did you say?” I get so enraged. I used my words to communicate, it’s your turn to use your ears to listen. If you didn’t hear me, that’s fine, but I won’t be repeating myself. To say “what? Huh?” in order to demand I repeat myself is actually the rudest thing. but if I’m in a social situation and I just go quiet and do not repeat myself, I’m judged and treated horribly every time. Pretending not to hear somebody is a common form of neurotypical bullying and basically I just learned this today, anybody else? 😵😔

like, idk if it’s like hypocritical, but i just don’t like other people who have pda, despite me having it myself, what should i do about it

ive talked with few people with it, and I’ve disliked them all because they annoyed me even though i do the exact same things, i don’t really know how to explain it, so I’m not going to elaborate further, but how do i stop disliking other people with pda

and i also just dislike other autistic people in general, i just dislike others who are too blunt or talk about their interests constantly, or people who just make too many noises in too much of a short timespan, i also just don’t like talking to people in general, so if people do all the extra stuff i just dislike them more, and most the time, it’s other people with pda or ASD or whatever, too many words, i can’t be bothered to elaborate more, but like what should i do about this

My PDA husband just extended his two week work trip with one more week. He informed me this as a reply to a text I sent a week and a half after he left. We didn’t communicate in between because I needed a nervous system reset and he prefers not to talk to me when he’s gone.
I didn’t want to upset him so texted back ‘Okay’ to his extension, and then if he felt like it, he could call/text me when he had time (essentially trying to give the message I feel better, I’m good to communicate).
He didn’t contact me and I called him the next night. He didn’t answer right away, but called me back a few minutes later.
I could already tell he was irritated I had called. He becomes this cold, angry stranger that I’ve seen before once or twice when he’s in shutdown or just super overwhelmed.
He seems to seethe with threatening energy (without actually verbally threatening me) and no matter what I say (I was very nice and tried to ask how the country is, food is, apologized for disturbing him, but probably asked too many questions for his taste) he is like a sleeping dragon that was woken and is not happy about it. The phone call was very unpleasant for me despite maintaining friendly composure to the end, it didn’t last long. But I was pretty shaken by it.

It is incredibly difficult and frightening to be not witnessing a PDA shutdown, but a shutout. He says things are great for him there, he’s going to work no problem, hanging out with people there and going out to eat, etc, but he does NOT want to talk to me or even be reminded that I exist.

I’m guessing he will not make contact for the next week and no idea what to expect when he gets back (most likely he’ll be primed to see if I have anything but niceness and he’ll act as if nothing happened, this has happened in the past. If I try to talk he will blow up and leave immediately).

According to AI google, he’s in catastrophic burnout and if I just make no demands it will eventually pass. according to a specific site that has been very informative about his ASD/PDA this is not shutdown but shutout because he is perfectly able to function in all other aspects but with me.
I’m not sure which it is, but it’s brutal to be treated this way.
Isn’t it excessive to need weeks of no contact from your spouse? Is it truly just overwhelm that needs that much time?
And if it is, but essentially letting him force this on me, an I just not subscribing to this treatment permanently? Where I’m abandoned for weeks, maybe months at a time?

Sometimes, I feel like the only times I genuinely feel safe and happy are when there are no feelings of demand or expectation, but still things of interest to occupy me. I feel miserable that this is the case. I WANT responsibility. I want to feel needed and relied on and useful. I want to be able to do the things so many other people do. I want to be a part of something important. But a huge chunk of my brain says no.

I don't know if I'm a PDA-er. I don't even know if I'm really autistic, though it seems pretty likely and I'm technically diagnosed as such (albeit vaguely). Ever since I was a child I think I've struggled with feeling trapped by having to do things. Starting school was a nightmare, I would throw tantrums and refuse to go in in the morning, my parents tried various things to get me to go to school and I just hated that I was being forced to go. I'm not sure if I even disliked school itself, my overall memories of it are pretty good (though I do remember wandering around the playground on my own at playtime until I made a friend - who, ironically, turned out to be a bit of a tyrant). At some point I guess I got used to it, but I think I went back-and-forth with struggling to go into school, at different times. Then when I started secondary school it got much worse, I had all this anxiety about going in and I wasn't even sure why. I could only really guess that it was the feeling of unpredictability - but sometimes, this very unpredictability was what made school interesting and something I looked forward to! Whereas at other times I would feel dread going into school for weeks/months on end. And sometimes I'd feel different from minute to minute, like my brain was switching back-and-forth constantly between major stress and 'oh this is fine actually'. I was shy and found socialising difficult (not that I couldn't understand how to exactly, more like I just felt like I was looking in from outside and thinking, 'look at all these teenagers, being teenagers. Just following the teenager script. Don't they realise they're being unoriginal? I can't take them seriously, and I can't do the Teenage Thing. Why can't they just behave in a straightforward way?'). I was lucky enough to attend an alternative school (AKA a hippie school) with WAY less restrictions and expectations etc than state school. And I still struggled.

I've always been told I'm self-aware and empathic, since childhood. Sometimes I wonder if that's really the case or if I'm just REALLY good at performing it. Or a bit of both. I have OCD, chronic anxiety, dissociation, panic attacks. I never managed to do further formal education or employment after GCSEs, just a few individual courses here and there over the ten years since I left school. I've studied specific things I find interesting, on my own, without fear of pressure making me lose interest. I pretty much spent a year in my bedroom making miniature rooms/houses after leaving school. Sometimes I wish I could have done that forever.

Last year I started a once-a-week course in BSL, and I enjoyed the first few weeks. As time went on though, I felt more and more worn out and anxious by it. In the end I couldn't complete the course, I was having panic attacks in class and I just couldn't face going in any more. That seems to be the pattern I often experience with most kinds of ongoing course or commitment. It's exciting and interesting at first, I love doing it, I feel capable, and then over time my fear grows instead of waning. My brain also seems to reject the subject altogether sometimes and decide I have no interest in it anymore, even though I want to.

I have rarely, if ever, really found that getting used to something reduces my anxiety about it - it seems to work in reverse. About four years ago I had to give up taking buses altogether because the panic attacks were so frequent every time I got on the bus. I don't drive so this limited my life even more. And yet, eight or nine years ago, I was managing to get two different buses in order to go to a jewellery-making course once or twice a week. I have no idea how I did it, or what it was about that particular course that meant I was able to continue with it for so long. It seems almost totally arbitrary sometimes, what I can and can't do.

I rely heavily on fiction to keep me sane and to disappear into at regular intervals. Sometimes I imagine I am in one of my favourite fictional worlds while I'm going about my day (talking to another Starfleet Officer in the rec room while making a cup of tea, for example). I honestly wonder if without this ability to escape into imagination, my mental health would have been a lot worse. Though sometimes, the pain I feel knowing that this is the only world I can really exist in, and that those worlds are forever beyond my reach, is overwhelming. The only people I really want to know are in those worlds, most of the time. This world feels overwhelmingly blank, corporate, impersonal, tarmacked and sterilised, and don't get me started on my eco-anxiety. I feel alone, and that I don't really like myself most of the time. Daily living feels like so much work, and I end up dissociating (scrolling, sleeping, doing nothing) a lot of the time.

So why did I decide to adopt a dog...? I thought maybe what I needed was a focus, and something that would bring more joy to my life. Someone I'd be responsible for and who would (hopefully) feel like a supportive presence that could go with me places and generally be my friend. And for a while I felt like that was really gonna happen, but now after 10 weeks with him I'm feeling hopeless. I know 10 weeks is still a REALLY short time and that I need to give it longer, and I will. But I'm pretty worried about my level of stress at this point, not because he's a difficult dog (he's not, for the most part), he's very sweet. But simply because I have to look after him. I knew it was a risk when I decided to adopt him that I might struggle with the pressure, but I really really wanted to believe this might be the thing that I would want to do enough that I could get through the wall of anxiety that comes with demand and expectation. I decided that if it really didn't work out, as the rescue provides full backup (they work with you to find a new home for the dog in the event you can't keep them), the worst that could happen is that I would have basically fostered a dog for a few months and got him out of the horrible living conditions he was in. But I really hoped that was really unlikely and that the change would help me and him so much that it would work out OK. I felt like what the hell, I never take risks cos I'm always so afraid of making a wrong decision. Just do this one thing for yourself, it might be the best thing you ever do. And for a while, it felt like that was the case (well, right at the beginning I felt absolutely terrified by the unfamiliarity of having a dog in the house - after a couple of weeks or so I started to feel better). My OCD felt way less loud, I was getting outside every day to walk him which seemed to help my mental state, and overall I felt like this is gonna work.

And now, I feel the opposite. I just want to get away from him, while simultaneously feeling immensely guilty and sad. It's like the individual things in themselves aren't necessarily bad (walking, playing, etc) it's A. the fact they MUST be done every day and B. the incremental micro-stressors that accumulate so gradually that I only really realise way too late, when I'm already at breaking point. I feel mildly stressed every time we pass someone on a walk, especially if they have a dog, and the uncertainty around how that situation will go. The shame and embarrassment I feel due to my social awkwardness when I have to talk to someone, and feeling guilty when my dog shows frustration at being on the lead but his recall is still none-existent despite my attempts to interest him in training, so I can't let him off. All these things 'should' just be normal mildly-tricky aspects of everyday life, right? And yet I've always found these moments to add up to an overall feeling of I Can't Do This Life Thing. And that's something I've only properly realised since having my dog, that it's not really about one big thing, it's the constant stream of little things in any situation that burn me out. Even if objectively I'm having a good day.

I don't really know why I'm posting here other than to vent and to see if anyone relates. I feel really sad and alone, and guilty about my dog. I'm going to try to give it another few weeks before making any definite decisions. I might feel different later, but I guess given the pattern I seem to go through again and again, maybe that's not very likely. Once again my brain keeps going back-and-forth between 'I can't bear it' and 'what's all the fuss about?'. I feel more and more like PDA seems to describe what goes on in my brain, and that feels really hard to accept. Anyway, thanks for reading if you made it through this epic rant! <3

TW brief mention of suicidal ideation and past injuries.

I don't know if I've phrased this in a way that is understandable, so I'm giving examples. I have an aunt who does this constantly. Say, she thinks it's cold outside and wants me to put on a jacket before I leave. Instead of telling me this, she will instead say something like:

"You're gonna put on that jacket, right?"

In the most saccharine voice too. And it pisses me tf off.

"Are you gonna take those tight jeans off?" When she means I want you to change clothes.

"You're going to make the grocery list for me now, before lunch?" When she means make the grocery list now.

And it's so f-ing worse when she makes me repeat myself. Which happens often.

"You're gonna go inside?" "No." She walks around, picks things up. "Alright I'm heading in, you coming?" "No, I'm not." She nods, sighs, goes to the door, stops to fix whatever. "You don't wanna go inside eat something?" FOR GODS SAKE WOMAN. I WILL LITERALLY FLING MYSELF OFF THE WINDOW ONE MORE TIME AND WE KNOW IT WASNT PRETTY THE FIRST TIME AROUND

Sorry. Is there some sort of vent flair I should be using?

Ive been increasingly frustrated with advice for depression and executive dysfunction.

Because its like:
Break the task into small parts.
Now you got a million tiny parts.
Bring the laundry down stairs.
Put it in the dryer.
Fold your clean clothes.
Make your bed.
Clean the trash off the floor.
Sweep the floor.

Too many steps.
Oops now you're in a freeze state.

Or they say have a routine.
Which is basically a demand.

What helps me is to stop thinking about the task all together.
I know what steps I need to take to clean my room. Thinking about it puts me in a freeze state.
So therefore I just "clock in." And what I mean by that is that I just set a timer. The time doesnt actually matter but I usually shoot for 45 minutes to an hour and im just gonna "work."

I need to clean. Okay.
No thinking about it.
Just set the timer and go.
Its not a routine, its a choice.
And its not about a specific task completion.
If youre unsatisfied what youve done,
set another timer.
Block out 30 minutes later or tomorrow.