How would you explain to someone who is neurotypical (a nice one who wants to understand) what body doubling is and why it's helpful and sometimes even necessary for overwhelming tasks?
I've had to describe this to my very lovely NT friend and my explanation sucked lol. Pls help.
@dyani@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd
A support role(consensual) that helps keeps you humming along your irl timeline to the goals or objectives.
The doubling offers up a secondary awareness supporting the collaborative effort.
This is mostly described as a non physical role or remote role, even if the BD is
manifest during parallel play session or during a irl relationship(friend/etc).
I hope this helps
Thanks to a few mentors from genz who helped me remember as well.
@dyani@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd
Body doubling often reduces the tediousness of something and provides additional stimulus to stave off mind-numbing boredom. I like to have conversations on the phone when I'm doing repetitive work or cleaning the house. The part of my brain that wants interesting activity gets to have a conversation, while the boring bits of me do the boring bit.
Body doubling is when you do something with someone else, without direct interaction. For example, both of you working on your laptops in the same room, but you're not talking to one another much, or directly helping one another, just aware what the other person is doing.
You might be doing different things (one person fixing something, one person cleaning something).
It helps because you're both creating a sense of "this is a place and time where things get done" but you don't have to spend any energy worrying about social interaction, whether you're saying the right thing, or your work being judged.
It helps with Autistic and ADHD inertia, when it can be really difficult to just start working, and to stay in the zone.
Another person just being there, doing things, makes it easier to start working too.
Yeah, it’s 🧐 context preference/needs etc. much overlap in context I agree. 😌 I think the biggest difference is how the dynamic plays out between individuals and how you can make it work for you in a healthy way!
Cheers 🥰
@Zumbador@dyani@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd seconded. Physical labor is almost secondary to the mental labor, executive function sometimes needs a jumpstart. Teamwork is that jumpstart. "Helping" is easier than doing it all solo, even if only for the executive function boost. Doing it together often is the difference between a task getting done at all.
@dyani This is a known thing in meditation circles too, that it's much easier to learn how to meditate when others are also meditating in the same space.
In psychology, it's called "rapport", where you can use your breathing to help another person calm themselves. Our nervous systems subconsciously pick up on these sorts of things from those around us.
Maybe that sort of explanation would help?
ohhh i forgot nervous systems in proximity do this! yes that could help. except this time with my friend it was remote via video chat at the last minute (was going to be in person)
Oh, interesting!
Body doubling doesn't work for me at all, so I have been wondering "how and why" it could work.
This context makes we wonder if e.g. a cat could work as the "second body".
Or maybe even a kind of mechanical toy (with enough autonomous behavior to be intuitively classified as "alive".)
body doubling did not used to work for me at all, due to my demand avoidance. It was too much of an expectation/demand with someone watching me do a task. It took going to therapy and uprooting my stressors to get rid of that and now I have less sensitivity to external demands! So i can make use of body doubling now!
my horrible relationship was a huge source of demand stressors!! and now that's dead, so i'm much more free! i can choose who i allow into my demand avoidance bubble, in a way.
but without therapy i wouldnt have been able to identify and dig up the things that bothered me, to be able to talk about them or do something to change them.
@dyani I'm so glad you've followed through and got to this point to be more free. Thank you for sharing this with us. It really is encouraging, at least for me!
@Zumbador@dyani@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd This more than anything I've ever read makes me feel "neurodivergent." I definitely experience this, both the inability to "self start" and the benefit of just having another living person in pheromone range.
@Zumbador@dyani@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd I tried this body double thing today for the first time. Took a bit of courage to book a session but as I don't need to interact during the session I felt safe-ish. It seemed to work and it did help keep me focused on the task. Will try it a few more times before I can really know if it works for me.
woohoo! i'm glad you got to experiment with it! i've considered hosting drop-in sessions with this group but my job is so sporadic i would hate to offer it then have to leave suddenly lol