There Is Nothing Pathological About Demand Avoidance

Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) is the name given to a mindbody feature often observed in those who are Autistic and/or ADHD, first mentioned by Professor Elizabeth Newson in a paper published in 2003. It was introduced as part of a ‘family of pervasive developmental disorders’ in language that was not only ableist and pathologising, but downright pejorative.

The (UK) National Autistic society defines PDA as:

‘a profile that describes those whose main characteristic is to avoid everyday demands and expectations to an extreme extent.’

An alternative name for this experience, coined by Tomlin Wilding, is ‘Pervasive Desire for Autonomy.’ While this is a step away from the paradigm of deficit - it doesn’t contextualise it in our current reality. The naming of PDA is not simply ableist - it also equates worth with compliance. Using neutral language to describe this response to demands still fails to highlight that the system prescribing the demands is malevolent.

Who is defining ‘everyday demands and expectations’? Who gets to decide whether these things are right for us as individuals or helpful to the collective? How do ‘everyday demands and expectations’ change depending on how we have been racialised and genderised? And how many of these ‘everyday demands and expectations’ are in collusion with systems that are exploiting and harming us?

When we teach children to ‘do as I say’ we are teaching them to give up their personal agency because ‘someone else knows better’. At school they are expected to comply without question or face punishment. For Black children, particularly Black boys, perceived failure to comply can mean being pushed into the school to prison pipeline - this is compounded for Black children with undiagnosed ADHD. Childism is another issue at play here - psychologist Elizabeth Young-Bruehl coined this term to mean:

‘a prejudice against children on the ground of a belief that they are property and can (or even should) be controlled, enslaved, or removed to serve adult needs.’

At work we continue to be robbed of personal agency. We are not trusted to have good reasons for resistance, for wanting to take time to understand, or for wanting to decide for ourselves if something is right for us. Autonomy is valued in small doses when it can be utilised in the service of capitalism and the level granted to us will depend on how we have been racialised as well as all other identities that remove us by degrees from the construct of normal. If our need for autonomy exceeds that level - it is deemed pathological. Our survival depends on complying with the demands of employers, of the state, of those with power and wealth. The phrase ‘why didn’t they comply?’ is weaponised time and again when unarmed Black people are murdered by police. The message being that if you’re Black, failure to comply deserves to be met with murder. That people will believe and defend this is absolutely wild, and yet completely normalised in our white supremacist reality - which is upheld through removing personal agency and forcing compliance.

There is an assumption that without compliance training as children, people will default to being selfish. This is colonial propaganda. Compliance training doesn’t teach social morality - it teaches obedience. Social morality comes from critical thinking - and what is PDA if not acute attention to critical thinking? Our mindbodies need to understand a ‘demand’ fully and have time and space to consider whether that is the right course of action. The pace of life as we know it, the volume and variety of demands on us, and the relentless exhaustion and anxiety of existing in a colonial hellscape means we are rarely afforded these things before we have to act. As someone who spent a long time trying to comply in order to survive and be accepted, I am dealing with years of repressed pain and resultant health issues due to not respecting my mindbody needs when it comes to PDA. Now that I am practicing neuro-embodiment, I recognise that I am operating from my neuro-normal when I honour my PDA. To be more specific: when I trust it. My PDA is not a mistake or a problem, it is my navigation, my compass, my north star.

When my mindbody tells me ‘don’t do it’, there is a good reason. It might be that I don’t have enough information to make a decision about whether that thing is right for me. It might be that I don’t have the capacity or capability to do that thing without harming myself. It might be that the thing colludes with my oppression. It might be that the thing colludes with the oppression of others. It might be that doing the thing would be neuro-performative. Perhaps I experience a stronger ‘don’t do it’ response than non-PDAers, but that doesn’t mean ignoring that instinct isn’t harmful to them, nor that we should normalise compliance when it doesn’t serve us.

We need to be asking ourselves, who is served by compliance? What systems have compliance as central tenets? Why are we continuing to comply in these systems when we could redirect that energy to creating new ones that meet our needs with abundance?

Personal agency is freedom, and a community empowered by personal agency will realise they are free to change their reality.

This is why personal agency has been pathologised.

The real problem?

PDC - Pathological Desire for Compliance.

— AJ

Today’s Neuro-Embodiment Prompts:

Suggestions and questions to help you engage with mindbody decolonisation:

• If not already acquainted with it, get to know your own experience of demand avoidance/desire for autonomy. What information is it giving you? What does it tell you about your neuro-normal? How can you honour it more often?

• Reflect on this new concept of Pathological Desire for Compliance (PDC), where are you seeing it in the systems you are navigating? In the people around you? In yourself? How and when will you challenge it? How will you hold yourself accountable for doing so?