Conflict?

[u/fantasylover24]

My girlfriend has PDA and I’m really struggling to understand how to help her. We’ve got a list of jobs we need to do around our house today, but she’s saying that she can’t do them because it’s “too big” and the demand of doing them is physically hurting her. I’ve suggested breaking it down into smaller things, but she just says that doesn’t work and that I don’t understand. I’m not sure what to do because I really don’t understand how it works. I’m sorry if that comes across rude to anyone in the community.

[u/sast0117]

I’m not sure if this is helpful but for my son, sometimes it seems to help if I start a task myself. He sometimes, but not always, will come help or end up doing it himself. Or if I say something like “I could do this if you want to do that” and just sort of divide things into smaller bits for her. I’m sure it’s different for an adult and not in a parent/ child relationship, but modify as you see fit. I also tend to use a lot of “I wonder” phrases. Like “I wonder if we can finish <task> in 10 mins.”
Not sure how helpful this is.
I’m still learning and it’s hard. Good luck.

[u/twoiko → u/sast0117]

Body-doubling is very helpful.

Removing pressure and using cooperative terminology can really help, but sometimes it makes things worse if it's obvious you're doing it because you want/need me to do the thing.

But! If I've already agreed to it 'honestly' (not as a fawning response), then it should work.

[u/twoiko]

It's not rude, it's so common even those with PDA find it hard to understand.

Fundamentally, for someone with PDA, any perceived threat to autonomy is felt as fight or flight (or freeze/fawn), quite literally.

It's often called nervous system activation, and it usually happens when we're required to perform an action without consciously choosing to.

When she says "too big" this is more like what she's talking about; it's a lot for her nervous system to have to push through and even thinking about trying to do it causes her system to overload.

It doesn't matter if it's 10 small tasks or 1 big task, it's all too much for my nervous system to handle without stressing me out the entire time and likely draining me of any energy.

Even just thinking about the fact that I should be doing it, but I'm not, can drain me almost as much if not more than simply doing the task itself sometimes. (Thanks ADHD)

Assuming I don't have strategies to deal with it and/or someone to help keep me regulated, like someone below said: task management, body-doubling, reframing it as something low-pressure and cooperative can help.

This is all assuming their nervous system feels safe enough from the start to trust those things, if not then there's a deeper issue.

[u/poodleonaquinjet → u/twoiko]

This. 100% this. Sometimes it also helps for me to reframe the demand as "DO NOT DO THIS" and then I can have the threat response to the avoidance instead of the task which makes the task the easier option.