Leaving my therapist last session she told me I should look into what a “low demand lifestyle” was. My first thought was “f u, no???” and my second thought was “okay but how do I actually incorporate these things?”
I would be grateful to hear how folks of all support need levels have incorporated this concept into their lives.
In my particular situation I have a huge amount of autonomy in my life so most of my struggles are from self demands. It’s a lot easier for me to act on demands from others (so long as I agree they are good demands, things that make sense or that I don’t really care about but care about the person asking so I can do it without too much resistance).
Thank you! I’ve been so resistant to scheduling things because I thought that would be easier and more free but turns out freeballing executive function is not something I can do lol
That’s good to hear (~read), and a little difficult to confront as a possibility for me too… looming schedules create very disruptive (even health harming) stress for me. But maybe I should consider finding a way that works for me. Because as is currently, that’s also not really “working”.
I reflected on this quite a bit this morning (unrelated to this thread specifically) and I think it’s the attachment to outcomes and tasks that makes this super stressful to me.
I think a lot of the looming schedule stress can be quelled if I can remove all the thinking about the steps of the tasks and the tasks that need to be complete are given actually realistic times for completion (which means doing way, way less than I would normally because everything takes me so much longer now).
In the past I would wake up and go to the gym before work and would basically throw myself out of the door. I knew how long the gym would take (because I was either training for a race and had set durations of run/swim or set weigh routines) and would then go to work. After work I either had another workout or I would work on a volunteer commitment that had extremely specific steps and timeframes or get my stuff ready for the next day and spend time with my partner. It didn’t always go perfectly, but I was way less stressed about my schedule being packed than I am now. I think a lot of that was due to how dialed in and consistent everything was, so there was no real worry about missing a step or being late. This point of my life had some struggles, but not nearly as bad as right now where there is so much less structure so any attempt at structure feels like a cage.
Not sure this would work for you, but sharing because I think that I am realizing that what felt like something that should be super stressful really wasn’t - and probably because it was so low demand as everything was planned out.
Oh and it is glorious, and very satisfying, when inspiration strikes and something just gets done.
I suspect a large part of that is due to neuro-chemical balance, mediated by the right vitamins, minerals, herbs, aromatherapy, sound therapy, environmental conditions, mood priming, etc, etc, etc.
I’ve oddly fought against to much of this, “preferring” more novelty, knowing how much more sensitive to change I get the more consistent things get. Kinda like keeping myself robust to change, with the neuroplasticity generated from the hormesis from novelty and lots of little changes and variety. … Though that in itself is fairly inconsistently applied. Some things like that, some things more reliably consistent. I found this helped me find more peaceful confidence in my ability to handle whatever curve balls were thrown at me in life. ~ At least, until the big one. Then I didn’t seem to have much choice about falling into a routine, and that atrophying, making changes (or even appointments) much (MUCH) more difficult to cope with again. Been dealing with coming out of an atrophied body. It takes a long time of gentle practice to start to see progress throughout the long dragged-out start. And then it accelerates. Much the same happens in our neurophysiology as in our muscles.
And it’s a glorious thing to get there, past the tight claustrophobic/myopic feedback loops that make it seem worse than it is.