This is me yesterday when I realized I have a neurologist appointment the next morning at 9 am, an hour away, and it is going to be pouring all day long. You can literally see the joy in my eyes. I cancelled my last appointment because we were all sick. I called back once and tried to reschedule, but they were on lunch break, so I thought to myself, "nah, nothing has changed. I'll just wait for the next appointment." Well, here I am. Four months later. Still, nothing has changed, but I do realize that I will have to be on this trigeminal neuralgia medication until the day I die, so I cannot completely ghost the neurologist.
I 100% have pathological demand avoidance. PDA. I hate one form of PDA, I have another form of the other. I saw this term for the first time a couple months ago, and very similarly to when I read about rejection sensitivity disorder, I was blown away at how much I matched these symptoms, especially when I tried to answer some of the questions from the mindset of me as a child. As an adult it's not so bad because I am generally in control of what I do, but as a child, wow, this was me.
Sometimes I think about the night I ran into Peppy at that concert. I really did not want to go. I remember sitting on my bed, looking in the mirror and thinking about how I just wanted to cancel on my friends for no other reason than just because. But something forced me to go and told me that I couldn't bail that night.
And what causes this uncontrollable avoidance for, well, almost everything? No one really knows, but many sources believe the root is major anxiety in not being able to control unknown variables as a child, and this often overlaps with children on the spectrum. Based on my own childhood, this is very easy to understand for me. I didn't have control over much of anything in my life, so I imagine that I was often in a heightened state of anxiety when it came to extra expectations added to a small child. Especially an introverted child forced into extroverted situations. Being stuck in multiple situations as a very young child where I was the center of attention and would have this flailing fits beforehand of how I was going to die if I had to perform, or if I had to put on one more itchy dress. And then you know, you'd get spanked for not being in line and embarrassing your parents, so you'd just shut down that part of yourself and learn to dissociate on command.
But you know, I love my parents, and this isn't some weird Stockholm Syndrome. I know they had some very traumatizing parenting techniques, my mom especially. But look into boomer psychology. There's a reason most of that generation is the way they are. There's a reason many of my friends had similar experiences growing up. All of our generations have been molded in a certain way. Sometimes I look back at the things that happened to that generation while they were growing up, and things begin to click into place. I'm not blaming anyone for anything, because I believe mercy and compassion should go to everyone, but dang is it not super cool to figure out roots of issues to problems you've had your whole life. It is almost like just understanding why helps free you. Maybe that's just me. I find it all very fascinating.
Maybe as an adult this is why I'd rather just pass on many social things. I cannot control the variables of other people, and being around other people and their energy drains me more quickly than others. So I am most content in my regular routine where I have more control over the variables of my life. Maybe this is also why I have such a hard time making decisions. We have started rolling a dice. I laughed when Peppy brought up the idea, but he has so many of the same inner childhood trauma issues that I do, sometimes it does feel like we need someone else making the simple decisions for us.
And also, wow, are we really screwing up children from the beginning without even realizing it. This takes my brain to the theory of how they are destroying us as soon as we are a fetus. Pump mom full of chemicals, have ultrasounds done, hit us the moment we are born before a parent even gets to hold us, and then rip us away from our mother's arms to inject us with poison, and then feed us with ounces of ground up roaches multiple times a day until we can eat solids. Ah, as soon as the egg is fertilized you start dying.
All of this was really just to say that I don't want to go to the doctor this morning. I did find a $50 giftcard for TJ Maxx that I had forgotten about (perk of short term memory loss! Whoo hoo!) so I think I might go to the TJ Maxx right down the road from the neurologist as a treat to myself. It is about time that all the winter stuff should be going on clearance. And then I can forget all about what I bought and get a little dopamine hit next year when I find it in my closet!
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