My mom was my Favorite Person as a kid, and as a PDA adult it is really hard to figure out the lines of what was experienced by me as actual neglect, and what is just what I needed as a PDA person, because she basically NEVER approached me, and if I could have, I would have opted to be with her nearly every moment of the day, except when I wanted to do something that she obviously wasn’t going to participate in(anything that she didn’t personally initiate, PDA-style).
In this way, my Favorite Caregiver relationship experience was actually less complex and turbulent within itself than most people’s, because I was being neglected by my FP, and so there wasn’t any reason for me to try to distance from her, because she wasn’t usually letting me get close enough to truly regulate into the state that I now understand is what I am like when regulated, and so I would just be fluttering between “not in crisis-crisis,” and “in crisis-crisis,” and I needed to be with her as often as I could just to stay out of crisis-crisis.
She is a SAH mom who I strongly suspect 😅 is autistic/adhd/pda as well, and basically could not very often do anything except write, before computers were common, or play World of Warcraft once they were.
My demanding and aggressive and abusive-in-various-ways stepdad would become pissed off that she wasn’t watching what he’s watching on tv if he was home, and would basically interact with her more and more aggressively until you could see by her body language, even when she is still locked-in to her special interest, her body is getting insistent enough toward her internal blockade against body sensations that she would leave her locked-in special interest state and become aware of her body existing, and “awaken into” whatever degree of in-her-space/abuse he had progressed into, and would react in immediate PDA rage and self-protection, although this reaction for her is complex.
Her setup to be able to continue to be able to play World of Warcraft basically at all times, as her special interest, where he can still see at all times that that’s what she’s doing, so he doesn’t lose his shit about not knowing what she’s doing, and without him becoming angry because she isn’t watching what he’s watching, was to have a corner desk, screen on desk, a recliner that always has its foot up(which holds her mouse and keyboard) that goes into the footwell of the desk, right next to the tv, so that she could see the tv if she looked to the side, but her chair back is slightly angled against the viewpoint of the rest of the room, so he couldn’t see whether she’s paying attention as well as playing unless he actually got up to go look, which he could do unobtrusively enough that he would think she wouldn’t know he was doing it, but you become hyper-attuned to people’s patterns of movement and behavior when you’re in this type of environment for anyone, but especially when you are PDA and have no sense of self-preservation once you have let yourself become consciously aware of a demand, so both the recognition of danger and your response needs to be subconscious to try to survive as painlessly as possible.
Anyway, my mom would nearly always subconsciously know when he was in an abusive frame of mind and look over at the tv often enough to track what was happening enough to be able to answer if he asked her what was happening, and be able to arrange herself to be looking as though mostly focused on the tv rather than the game without looking guilty or hurried when he would get up to check.
Because of her chair/special interest area/avoid aggravating the abuse setup, there was nothing keeping me from being perched on the corner of the tv stand, out of the way of blocking my stepdad’s view if he was there, but within her viewpoint of interaction, so that if she had an impulse to say something, she could say it to me.
And that’s basically what I did at all times I wasn’t actively engaged with something else.
Because of the dynamics at play, I didn’t experience the common attempts seen in PDA kids to emotionally distance from that constant need for connection to my mom, because in an abusive environment, the consequences for going into crisis, even though mine would only be internally expressed, or sudden crying, but never, ever, screaming or anything like that that might have gotten me injured—
—were more severe a limitation to my ability to retain my autonomy than remaining in connection, because he constantly monitored all of us for signs of being consciously aware of being in danger, and would react with aggression. So the only way to avoid most of the danger, while not triggering your PDA into showing feelings that would get you hurt, is to remove your conscious awareness of the danger while still doing all of the self-preservation behaviors.
As I got into my pre-teens, I became her favorite person as well, but my attention WAS always focused on her, and so hers was always focused away from me, because my attention was both a safe accepting relationship and a demand that I know she could feel, and felt stress from not being able to escape, but rarely out and out demanded be turned away from her, which I basically couldn’t handle, and she knew that.
But she could often only regulate out of crisis with me, and vice versa, but she also couldn’t pay attention to me, because that would have been meeting my demand for attention 😀.