Self-accommodation or self-sabotage? Navigating deadlines, demand avoidance and spoonie shame
Episode 5
🦄 AuDHD Magic is a celebration of Autistic and ADHD magic, mysticism, and sensitivity, hosted by Stephanie Elizabeth!
In this episode of AuDHD Magic, I’m taking you behind the scenes into my creative process as a chronically ill AuDHD creator with a looooong history of procrastination. Tune in for the scoop on:
Why this episode is late and I don’t feel bad about it
The price I paid for performing ease and keeping up with grind culture
How I’m navigating demand avoidance and self-imposed deadlines as a solopreneur
The truth about my writer’s block and what the real problem was
Discerning the difference between self-care and self-sabotage
Unshaming rest and flex time as a chronically ill spoonie
Listen now:
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and more.
Read the text version:
Hey, welcome back to episode five of AuDHD Magic. Today, I’m giving you a peek behind the scenes into my creative process as a chronically ill AuDHD creator with a long, long history of procrastination. I’m getting into why I recently found myself asking, Is this self-accommodation or self-sabotage?
To tell you the truth, this wasn’t the episode I thought I was going to be making, but this is what’s alive for me right now, so I’m going with it.
I was scheduled to have this episode out last week as part of my every other Friday publication schedule, but I hit a snag in my process: writer’s block.
I couldn’t decide on where to focus, so I started with something, but I just didn’t feel enthused about it. That zing of creative energy? It wasn’t there. What had been a joyful creative pursuit with this podcast suddenly felt hard and obligatory.
It brought up all the feelings from times when I felt blocked and frustrated as a writer over the years. There were the hours of dread while I procrastinated (because you can never truly enjoy whatever you’re doing when you know you’re procrastinating). I remembered the feverish race to write my college papers just hours before they were due. Later in my solopreneur life, it was overnight stints hunched over my laptop at an angle that strained my neck and shoulders, all with the excruciating feeling of overwhelm and pressure urging me on.
This was my routine for years, but it was only when those hours at the laptop eventually started turning into weeks of painful muscle spasms and sleepless nights that I finally got that I needed to take better care of my body. Because it had previously been an afterthought in my heady AuDHD nervous system.
So the first step was learning to notice when I’m in pain and make adjustments. Sounds simple, right? But I had to become fussy with my physical comfort, because if my body isn’t comfortable now, it’s really gonna hurt later. And as you can imagine, that brought up all the people pleasing shit, because I am no longer suppressing my needs to perform easy breezy.
These days, I’m still willing to put in the time required to do writing projects, but I’m no longer willing to do that at the expense of my health. Because as a chronically ill, neurodivergent person in my 40s, I have to honor my body’s limitations and fluctuations, or I am met with pain as a searing reminder of my needs and my boundaries.
Since I’m a Mercury-ruled person, the current Mercury Retrograde has got my wires crossed, so that’s part of it. But I’ve also been dealing with a lot of problem solving lately, while pondering big, huge life decisions. So as my self-imposed deadline approached last week for the podcast, I saw reality that I wasn’t going to make it without another punishing late night marathon.
I asked myself and my guides: What does it look like to be consistent when I’m not feeling it and my spoons are all over the place?
The question bubbled up in my head: Isn’t this just self-sabotage and procrastination? It was a sly hint from my inner critic that maybe I’m really just a lazy brat. But no! That’s just the voice of internalized capitalism and ableism trying to shame me for falling short of what are impossible standards for most people.
Ultimately, I chose to relax my deadline and reschedule it, allowing myself to rest and have downtime, because laziness doesn’t exist. And the snag that I was dealing with? It wasn’t just writer’s block; it was also migraine attacks and a recurrence of my old friend, the muscle spasm that came on suddenly after a moment of poor posture and a failure to express my needs. The joys of hypermobility. 😑
So my creative block and my demand avoidance were both signs of exhaustion and low spoons from going too hard. It wasn’t a personal failing.
I also remembered that my ancestors have been sending me rest-oriented messages and card pulls for the last few weeks. They literally sent me one that has a person crawled up, laying down.
So I decided, and I remembered, that it’s not about pushing through for a rigid deadline. That’s not what consistency is for me, as a spoonie. It’s actually just about remaining devoted to the goal and the project and working on it as a priority when I have the spoons; when I’m well rested, when I’m fed, when my emotional self is tended to.
So that’s what I did. I came back day after day and kept working on this podcast for the amount of time that I could. And I let myself also do other things on those days. But the thing is, I still wasn’t really getting anywhere. I thought that maybe just taking one night off was going to be enough. But no, it was still a grind! It was still not fun.
And so eventually I just gave up and said, You know what? I’m just gonna give myself the rest of the week off, and try again next week. And then a funny thing happened: Last night, shortly after I decided to just give up, the whole thing came to me in a flash–what I’m sharing with you now. It was because I took care of myself and also because I took the pressure off.
In conclusion, this podcast is late and nothing has gone terribly wrong.
This is not a self-sabotage fail. It’s a self-accommodation win that takes care of me. It keeps me in my integrity and allows me to keep showing up and creating, long past any arbitrary deadline.
If you have been shaming yourself, if you’ve been pressuring yourself, if there’s something that you’re trying to push through and you know that your body needs a break? Please give yourself a break, if at all possible!
That’s all. I’m keeping it short and sweet today. I want to thank you for reading and spending this time here. Until next time, remember to take care and stay magical! 🦄
Further reading:
I recommend engaging with these creators and resources that have influenced my thinking on this topic!
Ellen Samuels: “Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time.” Disability Studies Quarterly (2017)
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