Demand Avoidance

Demand avoidance is a symptom of autism and ADHD, and the hardest part is that it doesn’t mean you won’t do things when other people tell you to, like a child. It means that when you tell yourself to do something, nothing happens. For instance, demand avoidance is not “please go to the store” from your partner, it’s “I need to go to the grocery store. Why do I keep putting it off?”

In a lot of people, it’s not treatable and I’m waiting to see what kind of demand avoidance I have. I know that it’s nigh impossible for me to create inertia from nothing. I put off phone calls, letters, anything that will help make my life easier, really. Because that’s the thing… even if the demand you’re asking of yourself will improve your quality of life, you struggle against your own mind.

As a result, you handle life in order of fires, because you have no mechanism for preventative care. The analogy here is that your brain is missing a primary care practice and makes you jump through hoops at its perpetually understaffed ER.

There are days I cannot take care of myself, because my demand avoidance will not let me shower or brush my teeth.

These are where my deficits really start to show. My compensatory skills are off the charts- I know what to do in a group, but when I am alone I am pulled into my own thoughts and I cannot get back out.

I look lazy on the outside, but my brain is running a marathon trying to convince me that taking care of myself is a bad thing. It’s why my social worker at the hospital found me a cognitive behavioral health group instead of just leaving me to my own devices. Obviously, she saw someone who needed help.

One of the men that goes to group with me every Thursday was in the hospital with me, providing me with an anchor of progress… he makes me smile when he says he remembers me from back then because I have to wonder what I was like.

Apparently, the show was spectacular because I’d never had “psychotic features” added to my bipolar diagnosis before, and I have no memory of saying anything that would land me in that category. But saying I have no memory is not the same as “I didn’t say it.” There are quite a few gaps in my memory from that time, and I think I just need to let it lie.

What is good about having bipolar disorder is that it sometimes adds hypomania to the mix, which is a burst of energy that I wouldn’t normally have. This takes away some of my natural demand avoidance and is the source of all my “good days.”

Today my demand avoidance is telling me that doing the laundry will physically hurt while the rest of me is saying, “won’t it be nice to have it done?” My demand avoidance is telling me that the shower will physically hurt and the rest of me is saying, “won’t the water feel good?” I use these tricks to jump start myself when the going gets tough, but they do not always work.

Sometimes my brain is going to stay stuck, and I will be staring off into space.

I want to be productive in my staring, so I’m trying to write out what it feels like to have an overwhelming task list and a neurodivergent mind. Organizing and prioritizing make me weak in the knees, so a flood in my apartment is the last thing I can really handle and it falls to me- I live alone.

I called in maids and they said the house would already have to be picked up before they came over. That they only did deep cleaning. I need to call more, but it would be better if I could find a recommendation. Josh’s never called me back and I don’t know anyone else locally. Therefore, a recommendation is extremely unlikely.

Neither is a service that’s actually support to a neurodivergent person, but I’m going to keep trying. I have noticed that a lot of these places want you to have things picked up before they come over as if your house being a mess isn’t the point. If I was so on top of it that I was ready to deep clean at the drop of a hat, I wouldn’t need help.

Neurodivergence generally means digging yourself out of piles, the arrangement of which only you know.

So I’m praying for strength today as I embark on this journey of self-discovery. Just how much can I do before my brain decides to shut down? The thing is that I can probably do most of it once I get started in earnest because inertia builds.

I need some high energy music, because when I can’t think my way into doing something, movement can re-wire my brain.

I’ll listen to it in the shower.

One thought on “Demand Avoidance”

Dear Leslie,

Your words land with the weight of truth we rarely dare speak aloud. In this moment, you have done something your demand avoidance said you could not – you have written your way through the maze, made visible what society keeps hidden.

We live in a world that mistakes motion for meaning, productivity for worth. Yet here you are, naming the paradox that lives in so many of us: the mind that knows what needs doing but cannot bridge the chasm between knowing and being. This is not laziness. This is the particular ache of a brain wired differently in a world built for different wiring.

Your hospital social worker saw what we all see when we look closely enough – someone fighting battles invisible to the naked eye. Someone whose compensatory skills shine in company but whose solitude becomes a labyrinth. There is wisdom in recognising this, courage in accepting help, grace in allowing others to witness our becoming.

The man from your Thursday group who remembers you – he is your mirror and your anchor. We all need witnesses to our transformation, people who can hold our then and our now in the same gentle hands. Memory gaps are not failures; they are the mind’s way of protecting what it can whilst healing what it must.

Your flood, your maids who demand tidiness before they clean – this is the absurdity of systems built by those who have never known the weight of overwhelm. Of course the house is messy. Of course we need help with the very thing they expect us to manage first. This is not your failing; it is their fundamental misunderstanding of how healing happens.

But listen: you are already doing the impossible. You write when writing feels too hard. You shower when showering feels like climbing mountains. You attend group when group means facing yourself in others’ eyes. These are not small victories – they are daily resurrections.

Your high-energy music, your bargaining with the shower’s promise of warm water – these are the tiny revolutions that keep us moving forward. Movement rewires brains, yes, but so does the simple act of naming what is real. You have done both today.

We who share this particular struggle know the ER mind, the fire-fighting existence, the way inertia builds once we begin. We know the peculiar exhaustion of battling our own thoughts before we can battle anything else. You are not alone in this knowing.

Tomorrow will ask things of you again. Some days your hypomania will carry you; other days you will stare into space and call it productive. Both are valid. Both are part of the larger work of living as yourself in a world not yet ready for all the ways minds can be.

Keep writing. Keep naming. Keep letting the water run over you when you can manage it. The world needs voices like yours – voices that tell the truth about the beautiful difficulty of being human.

We see you, Leslie. We see your courage in the small daily acts and the large vulnerable sharings. You are enough, exactly as you are, mess and music and all.

Bob

LikeLike

Bob Lynn says:

September 10, 2025 at 5:37 pm

Dear Leslie,

Your words land with the weight of truth we rarely dare speak aloud. In this moment, you have done something your demand avoidance said you could not – you have written your way through the maze, made visible what society keeps hidden.

We live in a world that mistakes motion for meaning, productivity for worth. Yet here you are, naming the paradox that lives in so many of us: the mind that knows what needs doing but cannot bridge the chasm between knowing and being. This is not laziness. This is the particular ache of a brain wired differently in a world built for different wiring.

Your hospital social worker saw what we all see when we look closely enough – someone fighting battles invisible to the naked eye. Someone whose compensatory skills shine in company but whose solitude becomes a labyrinth. There is wisdom in recognising this, courage in accepting help, grace in allowing others to witness our becoming.

The man from your Thursday group who remembers you – he is your mirror and your anchor. We all need witnesses to our transformation, people who can hold our then and our now in the same gentle hands. Memory gaps are not failures; they are the mind’s way of protecting what it can whilst healing what it must.

Your flood, your maids who demand tidiness before they clean – this is the absurdity of systems built by those who have never known the weight of overwhelm. Of course the house is messy. Of course we need help with the very thing they expect us to manage first. This is not your failing; it is their fundamental misunderstanding of how healing happens.

But listen: you are already doing the impossible. You write when writing feels too hard. You shower when showering feels like climbing mountains. You attend group when group means facing yourself in others’ eyes. These are not small victories – they are daily resurrections.

Your high-energy music, your bargaining with the shower’s promise of warm water – these are the tiny revolutions that keep us moving forward. Movement rewires brains, yes, but so does the simple act of naming what is real. You have done both today.

We who share this particular struggle know the ER mind, the fire-fighting existence, the way inertia builds once we begin. We know the peculiar exhaustion of battling our own thoughts before we can battle anything else. You are not alone in this knowing.

Tomorrow will ask things of you again. Some days your hypomania will carry you; other days you will stare into space and call it productive. Both are valid. Both are part of the larger work of living as yourself in a world not yet ready for all the ways minds can be.

Keep writing. Keep naming. Keep letting the water run over you when you can manage it. The world needs voices like yours – voices that tell the truth about the beautiful difficulty of being human.

We see you, Leslie. We see your courage in the small daily acts and the large vulnerable sharings. You are enough, exactly as you are, mess and music and all.

Bob

LikeLike