What Is "Demand Avoidance"? A Case Study

Why you might put up a fight when asked to do simple things.

This is the story of me failing to renew my driver’s license until the very last minute, one day before the year after it expired. It is also a story of something called demand avoidance. 

Just like time blindness, dyscalculia, ADHD, or high sensitivity, you may or may not recognize this trait in yourself, or perhaps in someone you know. If so, perhaps you can learn something. The goal is not to pathologize anyone’s behavior (more on that in this very post!) but to understand it. 

And of course, be sure to seek out a mental health professional instead of diagnosing yourself with anything. 💚

Why I Struggle at Anything Involving Bureaucracy (Among Other Things)  

I have very low frustration tolerance for navigating some simple challenges of daily life. Some of this is due to having ADHD—one of the core characteristics is being pretty good at some things and very bad at others.

To provide a few examples: 

• I didn’t have health insurance for more than five years because I didn’t understand how to apply for it 

• I have paid for multiple internet services for more than a year without using them, because these companies require users to cancel by phone and I hate calling

• For years, I repeatedly missed out on dozens of legit opportunities because I failed to get back to people in time. It was (and still is) a struggle! 

Anyway, this brings me to the world of government ID, especially driver’s licenses. Needless to say, I’m not great with registering, renewing, or keeping up with anything of the sort.

A while back, my drivers license was expiring and I kept forgetting about it. I finally decided to not worry about it until right up to the expiration date—and then I discovered a cool thing: you basically get a full year after your license expires before it’s ever really a problem.

Fun Fact, You Can Wait a LONG Time Before Renewing Your License

This isn’t really the point of the post, but I learned through this process that you can do almost anything with an expired license that you can with a valid one, at least for up for a year. 

Going through TSA? I did it 100+ times last year. Two or three of those times, the agent would look down and say, “Oh hey, this is like six months out of date. Maybe do something about that.” 

And I’d say “Sure, of course, no problem.”

Renting a car? Also no problem, at least from the three agencies I did it with. 

ID check at bars and restaurants? Over and over. 

So basically, you get a whole extra year on your ID if you want it. Follow me for more life hacks! 

Back to the point: if you’re a chronic procrastinator, you know you will eagerly accept any chance to defer a problem for as long as possible. And so I did. 

But eventually, all timelines arrive at an end date, and I was finally at the point where I had to do something or it would get a lot worse. So last week, I dutifully made an appointment the day before my birthday—when my license would not only be expired but also “expired + 1 year,” which means something technical like really expired. 

Visiting the DMV on Day 364 of 365 (or “D-Day minus 1”)

I made an appointment online (two weeks in advance!) and coordinated numerous logistics to make it happen. The whole time I was thinking, am I wasting my time? 

But it was the next step in the process, and I told myself that I had to try.

In the end it came down to a 15-minute interaction with a clerk, one of the many people at the office in charge of checking credentials and getting people licensed up or turning them away empty-handed. 

My visit with her—she was really quite nice and helpful—sent me on a roller-coaster ride of emotions. I noticed a strong sense of rejection, despair, hopefulness, and (finally) relief during the course of the interaction. 

REJECTION: She’s telling me I’m not eligible, I have to talk to another bureaucrat in another state. I’ve come all this way and arranged my week around this appointment, only to be turned away. 

DESPAIR: It’s not going to work. I shouldn’t have even tried. This is just really bad. 😔

HOPEFULNESS: Wait, this might actually work out? Do I dare to dream? 

RELIEF: Oh my god it’s actually going to work. This is incredible. 

If you don’t understand why this was so hard for me, I get it. In that case, you probably don’t have a problem with demand avoidance. 

What Are Demands and Why Do We Avoid Them? 

Demands are requests we encounter as we go through life. They are neutral, meaning that they aren’t necessarily good or bad—they’re just requests. It’s kind of like the word norms, which refers to a broad set of societal expectations. When it comes to demands, it basically means anything we encounter where we’re supposed to adjust our behavior. 

Here’s a helpful image (shoutout to Julia Daunt for making this).

As you can see, we encounter a lot of demands! A lot of people—and institutions want something from us, and the sense of demand-receiving can be constant. We are always on the receiving end of demands. 

Some of us are less eager than others to respond positively to those demands. We are either pathologically avoidant, according to one definition, or simply have a strong (overriding) desire for autonomy. 

Why Does It Matter? Because Sometimes Avoiding Demands Is Unhelpful 

You might think, hey, nothing wrong with resistance. I don’t want to give in to someone else’s demands. And I would fully agree with you! 

The problem is that sometimes it is better to give in to certain demands, even from a strictly selfish perspective. In other words, demand avoidance can be harmful. 

This is something I’ve had to learn. I wrote about it in Lessons from Your Six-Year-Old Self: 

One classic example is threat perception. If you didn’t always feel safe as a child—and especially if feeling unsafe was somewhat routine—you have probably internalized something about that experience that is still with you now. 

For me, I learned to be suspicious and defensive. Because I internalized a belief that there are no small conflicts, and that the stakes are always high, minor confrontations can escalate quickly. 

I carried this response pattern well into adulthood. Never back down from a fight, I tell myself.

But sometimes, of course, it’s much smarter to back down. Never backing down is not an aspirational quality.

So this is something I have to unlearn. I can do that—or at least, I can begin the process—simply by recognizing this fact. The pattern of always fighting back does not serve me well!

The next time I find myself in a confrontation, I can remind myself that choosing to deescalate is a viable option—frequently even the best option. 

If the lesson on walking away vs. fighting seems like common sense to you, again, you do not have this problem. 

Writers often use the term “resistance.” Believe me, it would be easier for me to write a book than to deal with bureaucratic institutions. If someone said to me, how about you write 30,000 words or fly to Singapore to give a talk instead of spending half the day on something bureaucratic, I’d choose the book or talk.

But again, this isn’t necessarily the smartest move. It leads me to put off making healthcare appointments and many other things that would probably be good to do. 

And it’s not just me! 

• Hoarders will allow their homes to become uninhabitable rather than face the overwhelming demand of decluttering, even as it severely impacts their quality of life

• People will “ghost” important relationships rather than face hard conversations 

• Students will fail classes or drop out entirely to avoid the demands of studying and exams, despite major consequences to their education and future

• Last but not least, people WHO ARE DYING will sometimes fail to get life-changing prescriptions refilled, or fail to see a doctor in the first place

If some of these behaviors seem irrational, that is the point. They are not well-reasoned. But haven’t you ever made a poor decision, even realizing in the moment that it was a poor decision–yet you felt it was impossible to do something different?

This is what extreme demand avoidance can turn into.

It’s the Autonomy 

Without getting into the weeds of a mental health terminology debate, the extreme version of this condition is sometimes categorized as Pathological Demand Avoidance, or PDA.¹

An alternative description, coined by Tomlin Wilding, uses the same acronym but calls it Pervasive Drive for Autonomy. This might be a better term all-around, both because it’s more affirming (resisting expectations is not necessarily pathological behavior, after all), and also because it places the desire for autonomy front and center.² 

As Dr. Megan Anne Neff writes: 

“The intense desire for autonomy and the simultaneous avoidance of external control are pivotal in PDA. This profound urge for independence can trigger heightened anxiety, sometimes to the point of panic attacks or meltdowns, when this autonomy is threatened.”

There is much more that could be said about this, but once you understand how central the desire for autonomy can be for some people, their seemingly-irrational choices can make a lot more sense. 

Of course, choices can still be harmful, whether they are rational or irrational. But as with time blindness and other neurodivergent experiences, the more you know, the better off you are. 

Olivia and I both got our driver’s license last week, like we always talked about.

In the End I Emerged Victorious 

After a full year of unclear driving privileges and a lack of proper documentation, I was issued a brand-new license—valid for five years! Or as I like to think of it, six years since I get a free extra year after expiration. 🏆

As the credit card machine charged me $68, it triggered an MP3 file of an air horn that played throughout the DMV. I present to you the finest replica I could find: 

Yes! A bunch of balloons fell from the ceiling, everyone cheered, and a gospel choir started assembling in the back office. I left just as the van from a local TV station was pulling up for interviews. 

Okay, some slight exaggeration there. But I got a driver’s license! A legal, legit one. And I learned something about myself. Specifically, I learned about how the drive for autonomy (or demand avoidance if you prefer the original term) affects my life in both positive and negative ways. 

Am I going to change? Honestly, I’m not sure! It’s annoying that it’s incredibly difficult for me to do things like call to cancel an expensive subscription I don’t want, but on the other hand, most of the time, things work out just fine. 

If I don’t worry enough about insurance or government ID, I tend to think that “normal people” worry too much about trivial things. A good lesson for all of us to keep in mind is that life goes on, you know? Or at least it does for a while, and our task is to put the time we have to good use. 

So that’s what I try to do instead of worrying about things I’m not that great at. Which usually works out without too many problems! Except for once in a while like last week, when I find myself stressing out over something that many people find very simple.  

Conversation Starters 

1. Do you avoid demands? 

2. Something you’ve learned about yourself recently. 

3. Something that’s hard for you to do. 

4. What you’re looking forward to this summer. (Or this winter, for our readers in the southern hemisphere.)

5. If you read the whole post, here is a cupcake for you: 🧁

1. Pathological Demand Avoidance is a formal diagnosis in the UK, but not in the US. Read more here.

2. See especially: Pathological demand avoidance: What and who are being pathologised and in whose interests? by Allison Moore in Global Studies of Childhood