2y ago

How to deal with demands other than by isolating?

I've had severe demand avoidance my whole life. If people interrupt me or keep trying to get my attention without considerable breaks, I get quite overwhelmed. I mean that I can easily go into a complete meltdown if someone continues to interrupt me after I've asked them to please stop, even if their interruption is seemingly helpful and selfless.

I seriously broke up with a girl that loved the hell out of me because she just couldn't stop interrupting me when I was engaged in something. I completely blocked another friend I had for ~17 years after going on an international trip with him because after asking him repeatedly to please stop blurting out every single idea he has, to save them until I seem like I want to hear it. Nope, he just couldn't do that. It is just completely unbearable for me, and after leaving the trip on my own earlier than planned, I blocked all opportunities for him to contact me. I would be happy to never hear from or of him ever again. That's how much I cannot tolerate demands.

Aside from that, the best part of my day is when I go to bed to lie down for the night. It is my safe place where I know no one will interrupt me because everyone is asleep. This happens even if I live alone.

Unfortunately, the way this plays out is that I end up isolating myself and have pretty bad sleep issues since I basically stay in bed awake for hours at night. It's like my body wakes up once I hit the bed, which is terrible for sleep hygiene. Last night, I went to best at midnight and didn't fall asleep until 5am, so I'm exhausted-tired today.

I'm working with a therapist to develop a social circle that is healthier for me, so that's on the horizon...hopefully. When I review my life, my favorite relationships are ones where I just co-exist with someone in the same space without much direct verbal interaction. I enjoy touch and sharing, but not if they talk a lot. And if they do talk a lot, I prefer if they keep the talking consolidated rather than spreading it out throughout the day. I can tolerate 2 hour conversations wayyy better than 6 hours of talking for 5 mins repeatedly.

Any other suggestions on how to manage this?

28 comments

- Great gods! Project much? This degree of assholery from a blahaj user is surprising.
  
  Tbh it came off to me more like "tough-love" than asshole... I think there's some valid points said here. Some people need the blunt approach for advice.
  I don't really see what your comment adds to this discussion.
- Lmao I didn't expect a blahaj user to be such an asshole
- Do you know what type of community this is? While I don't suffer to the same degree as OP I need some time to wind down every day. Being interrupted in that time is a stressful experience for me and negates the benefits of at least half an hour of relaxation. I am married and I do have friends and they respect my clearly communicated boundaries just as I respect theirs.
People grabbing my attention takes energy from me, and it takes me effort to get back into my thoughts. I can tolerate a lot of it on good days, but at some point my reaction is just resentment and anger. What you describe feels pretty similar?
For me it resulted in basically me being reclusive, and one pretty harsh breakup. My partner at the time would get anxious if she wasn't constantly noticed was what it felt like. Like, blurting out thoughts, out loud from the other room if needed. And asking me to drop what I was doing to come do some token task of showing attention, like moving a small chair or holding a spoon. Some people just function like that, and they are happy with other people who are like them. It drove us both to depression.
I found happiness with picking pretty much like-minded friends, and a life partner who is pretty much allergic to small talk. We talk a lot, but it is different.
If what we have is similar enough, that's the best advice I can give: Seek out other "quiet" people. Don't try adjusting yourself to be with chattybatters, and don't try to make them change.
I'm kinda frowning at the thought that you requiring time to yourself and taking care of yourself is avoiding demands. If my therapist told me that I'd rip him a new one. Thankfully he doesn't and actually encourages me to remove myself from unhealthy situations.
My social battery isn't endless. My processing ability isn't endless. I recharge both by spending time alone in my thoughts and hopefully getting into a flow state with whatever I'm doing.
I'm lucky enough that I have a job where that happens - I'm partially able to offset the social and mental cost of a job by simply working. But other than that I allow myself to not be productive.
My awesome therapist once prescribed me to get bored. Sit on the couch, stare out the window and try not to do anything. My brain needs that time to process everything happening during the day. Scrolling the web, comics, news that interest me? Also helping to process and get lost in a flow state.
Once I started allowing myself that, I fell asleep much better, because the input throughout the day gets processed througout the day and not at night. If you always keep busy, try to always be productive, the whole input waiting to be processed builds up like water behind a dam. Once you lay down, the dam breaks and you can't stop. It's not a bad habit to break. It's just a necessity for your brain to do.
If you're anything like me, the only thing you're doing "wrong" is not creating little islands of boredom and flow. If people refuse to accept that, they are the problem. They are crossing boundaries without a second thought. They may think they are helpful but they are not. To me it sounds like you are having your best interest in mind and acting on it despite this weird feeling of "but they love me, I should be grateful".
Love is about a lot of things, and respect is a big one. If boundaries are ignored, these people are acting toxic. I know this feels unhelpful, because you want human connection, but imho these people most likely took more out of you than they gave you. Maybe your friend has his own issues that make him not able to shut up, but it can't be you who pays the price. Maybe that girl thought you need someone to take care of you and who knows better than you and guide you through life, and that's why she nagged.
Long story short: no matter the intention, not everyone who cares about you will be actually helpful. Not everything is your fault. Keep doing you, identify your needs, communicate them (it sounds like you already did that, which is huge) and then enforce them.
From what you mentioned, I actually think you're doing great. Took me years of therapy to get to that point.
- Yep! I'm going to bring it up to her next week 👍
Meta note: It’s become obvious that RkWgorza is a troll. They’ve admitted that they’re not trained in anything, despite claiming to treat clients for disabilities, presumably mental disabilities. If true, they are practicing unlicensed medicine and guilty of several felonies. In any event, it’s evident that they’re just here to spew nonsense and to bully this community.
Until they are banned, it may be best to avoid feeding the troll. Block them and move on.
Since you're already getting therapy, I have just one idea that's far out but might be cool:
Learn sign language. Deaf people don't speak, and while they can interrupt and demand attention similar to the way hearing people do, it seems like your main problem is sensitivity to sound.
- Dude. I'm doing this. That is such a fucking brilliant idea.
  
  No! this is a terrible idea. OP (and you) should learn ASL for the sake of learning ASL, not out of some misguided idea that Deaf people will trigger Demand Avoidance less often.
- Ugh, stop commenting here, you've already shown you have no idea how to help autistic people and you're running your mouth about shit you don't understand.
  Don't come at me with this bullshit about you working in disability care, either. The world is full of shit disability workers; it's not the flex you think it is.
  You're not even part of this community, you just stumbled across it. Kindly fuck off.
What I try to do is take care of myself as much as possible, sleep, exercise, etc. so that I can handle the demands. It’s hard and to some extent I think it just always is, my kids have interrupted me plenty as I try and write this. One thing that has helped is having a board where I can stick a yellow or red magnet on when I’m having trouble. I also sometimes use text to let my wife know I’m ok/not mad at her when I don’t want to talk. Your mileage may vary of course. I have a hard time when Im tired but have a pretty good reserve at the beginning of the day.
Sounds pretty familiar. Relationships take energy for everyone but for some it's a bigger burden than others.
It seems that you are taking the appropriate steps in seeking different friends. Do you understand the mechanism of this sensitivity? For instance, say a deaf person were to interact with you via sign language, would it make any difference? Are you bothered by electronic messages, how do you manage a barrage of texts?
- Thanks! I'm trying 🤷‍♂️
  Those are great questions!
  Regarding the mechanism, I'm writing out my real-time thought process to hopefully get me some insight. I'm trying to understand myself better since I've accepted my autistic traits early this year and started learning about it. Until then, I would convince myself that I was too sensitive/too much and needed to figure a way around that, which led to unhealthy coping strategies that eventually failed anyway. They just delayed the inevitable.
  The sensitivity seems to fall under a limited amount of mental energy that I can to dedicate to others. I really need time to let my mind be free in order to recharge. That's not to say that all social interaction is exhausting. Far from it. I also need the ability to help others in order to feel happy with myself. I think I need to figure out my healthy balance and implement it.
  As far as sign language, I don't know it, so I'm assuming it would be more taxing at first. However, once I become fluent, I could see it being less taxing than verbal communication just because it is so audibly quiet. Loud noises seem to be more intense for me than other people.
  A barrage of text would depend on my mental resources and the topic. If I'm out of social energy for the day, then I might just ignore them. However, this adds to their energy consumption when I do address them because I will feel guilty for ignoring them. If the topic is something I am interested in or helping someone, then I tend to be excited to engage.
  While thinking this through, I thought of what is quite exhausting for me. That is when people are unnecessarily antagonistic. So baiting, contrarianism, dismissiveness, manipulation, outright deception, etc. I have a very low tolerance for that.
  
  I'm also new to this game. It's been a strange few years and it still feels like barely scratching the surface. I remember complaining about the noise and bustle in the open office on multiple occasions, only to be met with blank stares. At some point I realised that the common denominator was my perception, that was a turning point. Since then I treat a quiet workspace as an inviolable requirement and it's made a huge difference to productivity. I have limited capacity for social interaction and small talk but since accepting that is the way I am, it's not a problem. I don't care if my unread email piles up, if people want to talk they will find me. It used to be a source of anxiety but now I just let people know they won't get a quick response and people are fine with it.
  Meditation has been a game changer, huge difference for anxiety and general happiness. I think we can be happy if we find our way and our people. Part of that is letting go of the things that hold us back.
I had a big problem with sleep hygiene as well since I often would turn in early at night to rest when I lived with others in order to be in a quiet space where I will likely not be disturbed until morning. I found that I had to set some rules for myself if I wasn't feeling tired enough to fall asleep. My rules were: 1) do not go under the covers, 2) since i hate wearing socks to sleep I made sure to keep them on until I was ready to get under the covers, 3) make sure I feel relaxed. I often have to have a hot shower before bed to raise my body temperature before I get into bed because the feeling of my body temp dropping makes me sleepy.
As for the tolerance issue, I would say that there's a lot of factors in finding success for it. Someone else in the comments said that you have to change. I think maybe there's some skills for you to work on, but fundamentally I don't believe you need to change. I think that I can sense a feeling that your friend and former girlfriend didn't seem to respect what you were requesting of them. I can understand how that can be a tough subject to tackle, especially when you're actively overwhelmed. With the people I care about, I have discussed with them that there will be times where I can't really speak or be spoken to and that I'll give them a signal/codeword so they understand when I am in that state. I bring some earplugs with my everywhere to help against overstimulation since I am particularly sensitive to sounds. Most people seem to respect when I request some quiet. I often will discuss with them after the overwhelming feelings pass about why I got overwhelmed, if I know why, so that if it was something that they did that we can talk about how to avoid that going forward. Though I do believe that this makes me hard to be around as it makes others feel like they walk on eggshells around me, at times.
I believe that there's a few things that you should talk over with your therapist about. The first thing that I found helped me a lot was getting better at recognising my limits. I know it night not be the case for you, but for me I really struggled to recognise getting overwhelmed until it was too late and I was melting down. This skill is necessary for the second thing to consider. The second thing to talk about would be gaining some more effective communication skills. Of course, it takes two to have a conversation, but doing your best to convey your thoughts, feelings, and intentions is important.
Let me know what you think. I hope something in my comment helps!
- All of that helped, thank you! 😀
  I can relate to the sleep hygiene part a lot. I like those ideas to still be able to use the bed for relax time, while still reserving some signals for my body to know when it's time to sleep. Btw, I also shower right before bed, but that's because I can't fall asleep if my thighs feel dirty in the sheets lol. It's like a rough-sticky feeling that's activating.
  Thanks for addressing the other comment. After a lifetime of people telling me that I'm the problem and need to change to meet their expectations while withholding the autism info from me, it didn't seem to match my experiences and situation, so I didn't take much from it.
  I have been working on sensation sensitivity and started taking noise cancelling earphones around at the advice of my therapist. They have saved me a lot of stress at times. I like your compassionate and considerate description of your situation. It helps me learn to be that way too. I noted down the discussion points to discuss with my therapist because I think they're great ideas that match the benefits I've received from autism therapy (really, more like autism self -awareness and -accommodation discussions). She's already used to me coming in with my notes 😅
  
  I'm glad that I could help! I also dislike feeling unclean when I get into bed and it prevents me from being able to sleep, too. For me, I need to be sure my pit, face, and feet feel clean lol.
  The only other advice I can offer is to be patient with yourself as you go on your journey. It's definitely easier said than done as I know I can get frustrated with myself when I seem to be going backwards at times. Sometimes, circumstances are not kind and sometimes it can feel like no progress is being made, but that's ok. It's good to take things at a pace that works for you to ensure that you don't get overwhelmed. It's sorta like me when I go to the gym; if I workout too hard, I won't want to go again because it was too much. Taking things at a slower pace and lower intensity while still challenging myself is ideal to keep up the good habit and I believe that it applies to good habits for mental health as well.
  I'm glad that you have a therapist that sounds understanding and helpful. It can make a big difference having people in our lives that understand us. If there's anything else you need or wish to talk about, I will be available when I can :)

28 comments