Sub-pathological
Feb. 23rd, 2021 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormSomeone close to me was considering that they might be autistic and didn't want to go into more detail, so I hopped on a facebook group where autistic people supported each other, chatted, and educated each other about autism and listened awhile to try to better understand what that meant. I've definitely gained a better understanding of what that means.
I also found something else.
Resists and avoids the ordinary demands of life.
I've never been able to do things just because I was supposed to do them. I always need to take apart the thing and determine-- do I, specifically, need to do this thing or is it just being prescribed to be because it's the thing people in general are supposed to do? What's the goal of this thing, what does it add to my life or to the world? Are there other, better ways to achieve this goal?
And when I feel forced sometimes I just-- can't. The most obvious example for me is with food: I need to eat but because I need to eat I cannot. In a contest of will with yourself, everyone loses.
There are plenty of things that other people do and that I do. Plenty of ordinary things, even: I brush my teeth because I don't like the alternatives. I feed my cats because I want them to be healthy and alive. I have a job, even a 9-5 job nowadays, because I want my house and farm. I eat sorta-regular meals because I enjoy food or because I need energy to think or do farm chores. I go to bed fairly early most nights because I like being awake enough to function the next day. But everything I do has been thought through, has been followed to the root, and then has been traced back into a personal reason to do those things, and those reasons are constructed so that I don't feel forced.
If I can't find a reason that suits me, I don't do a thing. Monogamy, typical friendship cycles, performing straightness or gender: sure, those are the low-hanging fruit. But there's a lot more which I only catch glimpses of: folks who eat things because they think they're supposed to, folks who perform grooming rituals or even date people or have kids because that's what they are supposed to do, folks who enter a career without having really carefully considered options, folks who don't select friends but instead fall into spending time with random groups of people. And on a smaller level: folks who don't have reasons for what they order at a restaurant, for how they choose to greet other people, for when they leave for an appointment, for-- so much.
I've spent a lot of my life asking people casually why they choose to do this thing or that thing and I never really understood why the question confused them. In relationship I've approached a fundamental mystery from many directions: how do so many people let their partners make so many life decisions for them, large and small, without giving up their agency.
Autonomy, agency: these are synonyms for control. There are always going to be things I cannot control: the world is bigger than I am. But there are so many parts of my life that I can control and I do that rather than cede my decisionmaking and thus my life energy to what's usual, what's normal, to the ordinary demands of life.
Uses social strategies as part of avoidance, for example, distracting, giving excuses
Society is a contract. Everyone bends themselves a little bit for the benefit of all. Social strategies are strategies which work within that contract, which acknowledge it, which allow one to still accrue the benefits. Benefits of society are not all material: medicine, housing technology, and food. We also gain companionship, friendship, techniques to work through discomfort, systems to resolve disagreements, the joy of working together on a common goal. I am so wholeheartedly in support of people coming together into a society that I cannot even begin to communicate the edges of it.
And at the same time, I don't choose to do every thing which society prescribes for me.
There's tension there. It means I ride the edge of that social contract in a lot of ways: I don't quite to everything I'm supposed to. That's not a big deal once. Over time the dissonance adds up for folks, though. So: there are parts of myself I keep private, there are parts of myself I keep out of focus, I try to be very clear as to what I can and can't do so as not to create unfounded expectations. And those expectations are unfounded because I'm not fully participating in the social contract, at least, not as fully as others.
It might be easier to just do the meaningless things, but I can't. And so I give as hard as I can to society where I can, where I find meaning, and where I don't I try to let people down easy whether that's through explaining, deflecting, or (much less now) good old DARVO.
Appears sociable, but lacks some understanding
My first report card was one of those written ones you get when you're too young to be assigned letter grades. It said: "Greenie is an excellent student and gets her work done quickly. However, she's done so quickly that when she goes to socialize with other students afterwards she disturbs their work".
"Appears" sociable indeed. I like people. I enjoy them in my heart, I enjoy their companionship, and I think their decisions and motivations are super interesting. I'm endlessly fascinated by what they'll do.
But, yes. I really cannot understand it. There is so much self to be had out of life, so many choices to be made, so much to dive into and come out more rooted into your own soul. And... folks choose not to do it. They're less afraid of dying without ever knowing who they are than of trying something different to see what happens. And this tangle goes so deep.
Experiences excessive mood swings and impulsivity
History is written by the victor. Diagnoses are written by dominant society. The word "excessive" is like the word "pathological": it depends on a baseline.
The name Greenstorm came to me in part because of my intensity. My feelings can be very big, and it's been half a lifetime so far figuring out how to live with that. Accepting those feelings as a fitting response to a situation has been half that work; divorcing the feelings from any particular prescribed behaviours has been the other half.
I always assumed acceptance was such hard work because my society is terrible at feelings and I wasn't taught them. Honestly? Feelings that drive me into the life I want and that will not let me compromise my own happiness? Those are obviously excessive. If everyone had them our current society would fall right apart.
If it fell apart into something better would those feelings still be excessive?
On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to keep my sense of self when my emotions were at their most intense. It would be nice for the person I am when I'm angry and scared to also be the person I am when I'm happy or preoccupied. It would be nice to be able to go into a situation with high emotion and be able to grope my way through it, rather than withdraw or need to follow a very practiced pre-existing script. I don't jab at or undermine the people I love when I'm in high emotion much anymore, but that doesn't mean I can stay present.
Appears comfortable in roleplay and pretence
Maybe this one's where I lack understanding.
It feels like everyone else is comfortable in pretence, even to themselves?
Though I did convince everyone I was a unicorn in a human body from another planet when I was in grade 1.
And I did spend all those years buried in text-only online roleplay for sixteen hours a day or so.
Displays obsessive behaviour that is often focused on other people
I'd like to lay this next to a description of NRE and see how it fares.
But yeah, I find people fascinating. Individual people, specific people, are this unlikely beautiful constellation of traits and feelings and decisions and stories and I like to learn a person deeply. I like to know how they think, why they do what they do, how they feel about that. It can take a significant amount of my attention when I'm learning a person like that. It takes months or years; some people are both lovely and interesting enough that I can't imagine an end to it.
And no one can say I'm not obsessive about the farm and managed ecosystems. Years in school, relocating so so far and here I am.
And this is maybe the core of where I lack understanding: people will give up their whole life for something like a nuclear family, monogamous or monogamish with kids. It consumes them for decades, constrains all their decisions. People who make those decisions deliberately, how is that not obsessive behaviour? People who make those decisions passively, enforce them on other people, but whose eyes light up at any mention of living another way, how are those people not comfortable with pretense? How do people who get married at 20 and say, literally, "till death do us part" not get slapped with a label of impulsivity?
But that's all beside the point.
People with this profile can appear excessively controlling and dominating, especially when they feel anxious. However, they can also be confident and engaging when they feel secure and in control.
I often feel like there's a fundamental mismatch with my idea of where my fist ends and someone's face begins, to borrow a saying. And other people often experience this as controlling and dominating. Often it outright is, especially if I can't control myself out of a situation.
It's been hard to write about this because, well, associating with anything called "pathological demand avoidance" is kind of gross and out of step with my internal experience.
But there is no question that hearing people's experience of PDA feels like reaching a home I didn't know existed. It feels like maybe there's a little subset of the human experience that might include me after all.
So I'm doing reading and listening as time and emotion allow. I'm reading about strategies that I already use and ones that might help me in the future. I'm trying to reconcile "yes, this is who I am" and "I actually really like myself" with "pathological". I'm reading lines like "the term PDA may be a useful term to flag up a range of co-occurring difficulties for many people, with or without an autism diagnosis".
It's a beginning, I guess.
I also found something else.
Resists and avoids the ordinary demands of life.
I've never been able to do things just because I was supposed to do them. I always need to take apart the thing and determine-- do I, specifically, need to do this thing or is it just being prescribed to be because it's the thing people in general are supposed to do? What's the goal of this thing, what does it add to my life or to the world? Are there other, better ways to achieve this goal?
And when I feel forced sometimes I just-- can't. The most obvious example for me is with food: I need to eat but because I need to eat I cannot. In a contest of will with yourself, everyone loses.
There are plenty of things that other people do and that I do. Plenty of ordinary things, even: I brush my teeth because I don't like the alternatives. I feed my cats because I want them to be healthy and alive. I have a job, even a 9-5 job nowadays, because I want my house and farm. I eat sorta-regular meals because I enjoy food or because I need energy to think or do farm chores. I go to bed fairly early most nights because I like being awake enough to function the next day. But everything I do has been thought through, has been followed to the root, and then has been traced back into a personal reason to do those things, and those reasons are constructed so that I don't feel forced.
If I can't find a reason that suits me, I don't do a thing. Monogamy, typical friendship cycles, performing straightness or gender: sure, those are the low-hanging fruit. But there's a lot more which I only catch glimpses of: folks who eat things because they think they're supposed to, folks who perform grooming rituals or even date people or have kids because that's what they are supposed to do, folks who enter a career without having really carefully considered options, folks who don't select friends but instead fall into spending time with random groups of people. And on a smaller level: folks who don't have reasons for what they order at a restaurant, for how they choose to greet other people, for when they leave for an appointment, for-- so much.
I've spent a lot of my life asking people casually why they choose to do this thing or that thing and I never really understood why the question confused them. In relationship I've approached a fundamental mystery from many directions: how do so many people let their partners make so many life decisions for them, large and small, without giving up their agency.
Autonomy, agency: these are synonyms for control. There are always going to be things I cannot control: the world is bigger than I am. But there are so many parts of my life that I can control and I do that rather than cede my decisionmaking and thus my life energy to what's usual, what's normal, to the ordinary demands of life.
Uses social strategies as part of avoidance, for example, distracting, giving excuses
Society is a contract. Everyone bends themselves a little bit for the benefit of all. Social strategies are strategies which work within that contract, which acknowledge it, which allow one to still accrue the benefits. Benefits of society are not all material: medicine, housing technology, and food. We also gain companionship, friendship, techniques to work through discomfort, systems to resolve disagreements, the joy of working together on a common goal. I am so wholeheartedly in support of people coming together into a society that I cannot even begin to communicate the edges of it.
And at the same time, I don't choose to do every thing which society prescribes for me.
There's tension there. It means I ride the edge of that social contract in a lot of ways: I don't quite to everything I'm supposed to. That's not a big deal once. Over time the dissonance adds up for folks, though. So: there are parts of myself I keep private, there are parts of myself I keep out of focus, I try to be very clear as to what I can and can't do so as not to create unfounded expectations. And those expectations are unfounded because I'm not fully participating in the social contract, at least, not as fully as others.
It might be easier to just do the meaningless things, but I can't. And so I give as hard as I can to society where I can, where I find meaning, and where I don't I try to let people down easy whether that's through explaining, deflecting, or (much less now) good old DARVO.
Appears sociable, but lacks some understanding
My first report card was one of those written ones you get when you're too young to be assigned letter grades. It said: "Greenie is an excellent student and gets her work done quickly. However, she's done so quickly that when she goes to socialize with other students afterwards she disturbs their work".
"Appears" sociable indeed. I like people. I enjoy them in my heart, I enjoy their companionship, and I think their decisions and motivations are super interesting. I'm endlessly fascinated by what they'll do.
But, yes. I really cannot understand it. There is so much self to be had out of life, so many choices to be made, so much to dive into and come out more rooted into your own soul. And... folks choose not to do it. They're less afraid of dying without ever knowing who they are than of trying something different to see what happens. And this tangle goes so deep.
Experiences excessive mood swings and impulsivity
History is written by the victor. Diagnoses are written by dominant society. The word "excessive" is like the word "pathological": it depends on a baseline.
The name Greenstorm came to me in part because of my intensity. My feelings can be very big, and it's been half a lifetime so far figuring out how to live with that. Accepting those feelings as a fitting response to a situation has been half that work; divorcing the feelings from any particular prescribed behaviours has been the other half.
I always assumed acceptance was such hard work because my society is terrible at feelings and I wasn't taught them. Honestly? Feelings that drive me into the life I want and that will not let me compromise my own happiness? Those are obviously excessive. If everyone had them our current society would fall right apart.
If it fell apart into something better would those feelings still be excessive?
On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to keep my sense of self when my emotions were at their most intense. It would be nice for the person I am when I'm angry and scared to also be the person I am when I'm happy or preoccupied. It would be nice to be able to go into a situation with high emotion and be able to grope my way through it, rather than withdraw or need to follow a very practiced pre-existing script. I don't jab at or undermine the people I love when I'm in high emotion much anymore, but that doesn't mean I can stay present.
Appears comfortable in roleplay and pretence
Maybe this one's where I lack understanding.
It feels like everyone else is comfortable in pretence, even to themselves?
Though I did convince everyone I was a unicorn in a human body from another planet when I was in grade 1.
And I did spend all those years buried in text-only online roleplay for sixteen hours a day or so.
Displays obsessive behaviour that is often focused on other people
I'd like to lay this next to a description of NRE and see how it fares.
But yeah, I find people fascinating. Individual people, specific people, are this unlikely beautiful constellation of traits and feelings and decisions and stories and I like to learn a person deeply. I like to know how they think, why they do what they do, how they feel about that. It can take a significant amount of my attention when I'm learning a person like that. It takes months or years; some people are both lovely and interesting enough that I can't imagine an end to it.
And no one can say I'm not obsessive about the farm and managed ecosystems. Years in school, relocating so so far and here I am.
And this is maybe the core of where I lack understanding: people will give up their whole life for something like a nuclear family, monogamous or monogamish with kids. It consumes them for decades, constrains all their decisions. People who make those decisions deliberately, how is that not obsessive behaviour? People who make those decisions passively, enforce them on other people, but whose eyes light up at any mention of living another way, how are those people not comfortable with pretense? How do people who get married at 20 and say, literally, "till death do us part" not get slapped with a label of impulsivity?
But that's all beside the point.
People with this profile can appear excessively controlling and dominating, especially when they feel anxious. However, they can also be confident and engaging when they feel secure and in control.
I often feel like there's a fundamental mismatch with my idea of where my fist ends and someone's face begins, to borrow a saying. And other people often experience this as controlling and dominating. Often it outright is, especially if I can't control myself out of a situation.
It's been hard to write about this because, well, associating with anything called "pathological demand avoidance" is kind of gross and out of step with my internal experience.
But there is no question that hearing people's experience of PDA feels like reaching a home I didn't know existed. It feels like maybe there's a little subset of the human experience that might include me after all.
So I'm doing reading and listening as time and emotion allow. I'm reading about strategies that I already use and ones that might help me in the future. I'm trying to reconcile "yes, this is who I am" and "I actually really like myself" with "pathological". I'm reading lines like "the term PDA may be a useful term to flag up a range of co-occurring difficulties for many people, with or without an autism diagnosis".
It's a beginning, I guess.
