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).
I think this is probably a vent so I’ll start with saying I hope you find something that works for you, comrade.
If you wanted a response to what you shared: I don’t think “low demand” means refusing demands as much as reducing the number of demands because choices have been made in advance and are consistently applied.
Wallowing in mess is actually high demand because you are constantly faced with it and the desire to do something about it, but it’s too overwhelming to start. A low demand approach might look something like deciding what parts actually need to be fixed and what parts are external and unhelpful. For example I read about someone who doesn’t fold their clean laundry. This sounds like torture to me because I need to know where things are, but for them it let them use the energy on other things that might have a higher priority. Years ago I let go of the idea of cooking every day which was a societal expectation. I still cooked all my own meals largely from basic ingredients (thus just as healthy as cooking everyday) but did it all at once instead of having to decide what to make each day, do the prep and cleanup each day, etc.