It’s called PDA, which stands for Pathological Demand Avoidance. I don’t claim to understand the symptoms in great depth, but they appear to run along the lines of:
A fear or hatred of being required by a second party to do something, no matter what that something might be.
In serious cases, I’m reliably informed, it can be highly debilitating and cause high levels of anxiety. And it’s included in the catalogue of conditions associated with autism.
I’ve been experiencing this all my life, you know. Most recently it’s manifested in appointment letters from the hospital. Your next appointment is on Friday 13th of June at 11.30. I wilt almost visibly when I get one of those. I groan and start to consider whether I can think of a credible reason to refuse, even though the nature of the procedure or interview or whatever it might be is not at all taxing. And they’re doing it for my benefit. And it’s free. So what am I complaining about? The fact that I didn’t decide to go somewhere at a certain time, date, and place myself, that’s what. They were given to me by somebody else, and amounted therefore – in my mind at least – to a demand. I can’t tolerate demands, even small, innocent, or helpful ones. The foot goes down and the cry goes up: No!
That was how I felt for the whole of my school years and the jobs I did for employers. It’s one of the reasons why freelance photography was so amenable to me. For as much as my working trips were controlled to some extent by nature and the weather, I was still free to chose the date, time, and place in between the natural strictures.
And maybe this explains why my daughter has the same difficulties, as did Emily Brontë. I regard that as quite an exclusive little club.
(Add this to being an HSP, a sigma male, and an INFJ, and I really do wonder why I bother to stay here. To learn things, I suppose.)
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