But I don’t want to
I am totally exhausted at the moment. I don’t really know why. I could blame it on my husband who was looking for socks very loudly this morning or I could blame it on not falling asleep until ten last night only to be woken at eleven because my daughter had a nightmare. I could blame it on the lack of caffeine at the moment or just simply chock it up to being an adult.
I have to leave for work in ten minutes and even though it isn’t a full day of work, it’s still work, where I have to drive for long periods of time. This requires that I get an adequate amount of sleep, yet that almost never happens anymore. I used to go to bed at 8pm like clockwork (my daughter’s father had dubbed me a time nazi because I have to schedule my entire life), however being a mom and wife also means that I have a job at home as well and often includes waking up to a door slamming if there are no socks readily available and he is also in a hurry. I don’t believe that it was intentional when the door slammed, however it was definitely a wakeup call.
I did stay up later than everyone else to get laundry done. However, due to my minimal executive functioning skills, I apparently forgot to start the dryer last night. Which lead to the morning angst of my husband and my having to wake up at 5:00 am when I didn’t get back to sleep until after midnight.
I have a specific aversion to conformity. It is not as if I want to hate conformity, yet it is still there. It’s that rebel side of myself that has always been in the back of my mind, yelling at anyone who is making me feel as if I HAVE to do something. When I was a child, it was everyone telling me that I have to wear dresses or love the color pink. There were times when I was told that I had to go outside and play with the other kids and I would walk outside, sit under a tree and watch them instead of playing.
The issue isn’t that I am lazy or hate doing certain tasks. Believe me, I love doing certain things, however when it is asked or demanded of me, there is this feeling inside me that immediately wants to talk back and I have come so far in tamping this down. I will be 37 this week and I still want to stomp my feet at times….
The problem is Pathological Demand Avoidance or PDA. It’s the response of fight, flight or freeze when confronted with demands that challenge independence, which leads to a heightened emotional response. It's a tendency to avoid demands even when the person wants to do them any other time.
For years, I just thought that I was a non-conformist, basically flipping off society’s standards for what people must and must not do every day. Now that I know what it is, I do my best to schedule things into my day to ensure I feel as if it is my choice to get it done as opposed to allowing someone to get a chance to ask me… and though it doesn’t always work, it does help a LOT.
Because I drive for a living, I get so aggravated when anyone asks me to leave the house unless it’s a preplanned outing. This is especially true when I was out of the house three other times that day and the person was aware that I was out. It isn’t as if the task couldn’t have been asked of me while I was already out of the house. Quite frankly, I like to be at home and once there, I don’t want to have to leave again unless it’s a known and scheduled part of my day.
I have found it hard to manage at times, especially if the tasks included are labor intensive, yet things like laundry (as long as the washer isn’t on the fritz) and other everyday tasks, are manageable.
Now, my daughter on the other hand, has this in spades at the moment and it is absolutely complicated. I have been trying to keep her on a specific schedule to ensure that she isn’t avoiding the things that she needs to do like showering and brushing her teeth. Lately she has been avoiding sleep like the plague and that is part of the reason that I have been awake most of the night on several occasions recently. I told her she needs to eat breakfast, and she told me no. Then within two minutes of me just walking away, she is telling me that I have to make her breakfast…. Thankfully, I am aware that my child needs to eat, and I have worked through the absolute refusals of my own childhood and instead, tamp down that inner voice that is yelling at me for doing something at another’s request.
My daughter has come to immediate tears having simply been asked to take care of her bowl from the table. She is nine, so it is not something that isn’t expected of someone her age. Summers tend to be the hardest times for her because school is no longer in session, and she can’t rely on that as a way to distinguish what she should be doing at any given time.
Let me know if you have experienced any of this. I love different finding new and inventive ways to address the needs of others, whether it’s my family or another.
