š When Creation Feels Like Quicksand: Living and Longing with PDA
Iām an AuDHD artist who wants to create freely. But living with PDA means even the things I love can feel impossible to do.
I want to be an artist.
I am an artist.
But itās really fucking hard to do artāto make thingsāwhen I feel like my nervous system is being attacked from the moment I wake up until the moment I fall asleep. And even while Iām sleeping.
Itās hard to explain what it is. I donāt even know if I have the right words for it, because sometimes the words feel like another trap. I live with Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), autism, ADHD, PMDD, and a whole history of being misunderstood. I want to createāI ache to createābut the second that ache even flirts with the idea of a āshouldā or a āto-do,ā my brain slams on the brakes. Sometimes it feels like a silent war is happening inside me. Iām flooded. Frozen. And the longer I sit in it, the more I hate myself for not being able to just do the damn thing I want to do.
Like, itās not even that hard. Just get up. Just do it. Do. The. Thing.
Art becomes a battlefield instead of a refuge.
Motivation becomes a minefield instead of a spark.
The world around me doesnāt help. I live in a city where everything is loud: cars, electricity, people, pressure. I feel like Iām being electrocuted all the time. And the only thing that calms my body enough to breathe is weed. But then weed dulls my focus, and I spiral again. I numb out on my phone. I binge shows. I donāt create. I just exist. And I hate that. But itās also the only thing that makes it bearable.
I think part of the reason I freeze is because Iāve been taught that my creativity isā¦ funny. Laughable. Silly. Condescended to. People didnāt take me seriously when I did make things. Or worse, they praised me in a way that felt fake. Like patting a dogās head. āGood girl, youāre so talented.ā Like it was cute. Like I wasnāt really saying something.
So now even when I try, I hear those old voices. I feel the ridicule. I feel the abandonment. And itās not just creative expression that gets choked. Itās everything. Communication. Connection. Trust.
Art becomes a battlefield instead of a refuge.
Motivation becomes a minefield instead of a spark.
I donāt trust the medical system to help me manage PMDD or the hormonal cyclone I live in every month. I donāt trust that doctors will treat me like a person. I donāt trust that people will listen when I speak plainly. I donāt trust that language will hold what Iām actually trying to say.
I feel like Iām drowning in invisible mud and screaming in a language no one else hears.
People talk like expression is a doorway you just walk through.
But for me, itās more like trying to find the door in a house that keeps rearranging itself. They move through life like language is light and weightless. For me, itās a stone I carry uphill every day.
And I want to. God, I want to. But the demand itself, even when itās my own, feels unbearable. The moment it becomes a task, my body short-circuits. And I hate that itās like this. I hate that I have to fight through layers of trauma, sensory overload, executive dysfunction, internalized ableism, and hormonal hell just to try and do the things that make me feel alive.
I donāt trust that language will hold what Iām actually trying to say.
Even thisāthis piece youāre readingāIām only getting it out through voice notes, transcription, and AI editing. And somehow, even accommodating myself feels like something I should feel ashamed of. Like Iām cheating. Like Iām not a real writer or artist because I canāt sit at a desk for hours with perfect grammar and clean drafts. But you know what? Fuck that.
This is my voice.
This is how it comes out.
And itās valid.
I want to be able to connect with people. I want to be loved and seen and met with softness. I want my creativity to nourish me instead of shame me. I want to wake up and not immediately feel under siege. I want to build relationships that feel like fertile ground, not landmines. I want to make art that doesnāt have to be perfect or palatable or productive.
And some days, I want to do nothing. Not because I donāt care. But because Iāve already climbed a thousand internal mountains just to wake up in the morning.
So if youāre reading this and you relate: I see you. You are not broken. You are not lazy. You are not failing. You are living with a nervous system thatās working overtime in a world that rarely makes room for difference, for sensitivity, for pain that canāt be neatly explained.
And if you're one of the lucky ones who gets to support someone like me? Please, for the love of everything: listen. Slow down. Donāt make it about productivity. Let love look like patience. Let connection look like meeting someone exactly where they are.
Weāre trying. Iām trying.
Even when it looks like silence.
Even when it looks like smoke.
We are still here.
Still artists.
Still worthy.
I see you. You are not broken. You are not lazy. You are not failing. You are living with a nervous system thatās working overtime in a world that rarely makes room for difference, for sensitivity, for pain that canāt be neatly explained.
š¤ Have you ever felt this way? Are you a creative person living with PDA or chronic overwhelm? Feel free to share in the comments or hit reply. Iād love to hear from someone who gets it.
We tell ourselves stories in order to live.āØBut what happens when the story itself becomes the thing we cannot hold?
You say: I want to be an artist. You say: I am an artist. And already the conflict begins,not with the world, but with language, with the way a sentence becomes a noose, a mirror, a dare. A should. A to-do. We know, instinctively, that art is not about "should." We know that the moment we try to trap it, it slips. It flees. It freezes. It recoils. Art has never responded well to being cornered.
And neither have you.
You are describing, not weakness, but a heightened sensitivity to the electric fence of existence. To the alarms weāve all been taught to ignore. You are not numb,you are overly lit. Bright with it. You feel everything. The lights, the voices, the voltage of a city. You live in a state of perpetual alert, of hypertextual overwhelm. Of course itās hard to make art in a war zone. And the war zone is your own body. Your own brain. And yes, the world outside too.
Youāve learned to expect that your expression will be mocked, misread, diminished. That the things you offer will be called cute, silly, brave,words that function less as praise than as dismissal. A pat on the head. The artistic equivalent of being told to smile.
You say: People didnāt take me seriously when I made things. I hear that. We have built an entire culture on the burial of voices like yours. And then we punish you for the silence.
There is something corrosive in this insistence that if we really wanted to make art, we would. That if we really were artists, we would ājust do the thing.ā But art is not a performance of discipline. It is not a test of willpower. It is not a treadmill to be mounted every morning at 7:00 a.m. sharp. Art is, quite often, the residue of surviving. The aftermath of all the things we had no words for. The signal through the static.
And yes, sometimes the signal is scrambled.
You say youāre only getting this out through voice notes, transcription, AI editing. That it feels like cheating. As if there were a right way to say the truth. As if every writer in history didnāt already use what tools they had: wine, typewriters, dictation, amphetamines, ghostwriters, lovers, lies. What matters is that you are saying it. What matters is that it exists.
You want love to look like softness. You want connection to be ground, not glass. You want to be held without having to audition for it. That is not weakness. That is clarity.
There is a line you write that caught me in the throat:āØThe moment it becomes a task, my body short-circuits.
Yes. I know this. I know it in a way thatās difficult to admit. That the desire to create can curdle under the fluorescent buzz of obligation. That sometimes the most radical act is to want without doing. To say: I am even when I donāt.
So letās rewrite the story.
Letās say you are not failing. You are not frozen. You are not broken or behind. You are a person with an exquisite antenna, picking up frequencies most people ignore. That sensitivity is not the thing in your way,it is the thing you do. The thing that makes you an artist.
Even the silence is a signal.āØEven the stillness is a statement.
And to the world that demands we justify our pace, our process, our very presence
I say this:āØWe donāt owe you a clean draft.āØWe donāt owe you a desk at 9:00 a.m.āØWe donāt owe you legibility.
We are still here.āØStill artists.āØStill worthy.