The first time I heard the term “pathological demand avoidance” (PDA*)—a description of a set of behaviors usually characterized as an extreme avoidance of everyday demands and requests—I felt simultaneously called out and annoyed. “Oh no, that’s me!” I thought (as I imagined an entourage of family, friends, bosses, coworkers, and teachers vehemently nodding in agreement). And then immediately I thought “BUT, BUT, BUT…!!” (though my typically ableist inner critic wondered if those “buts” in and of themselves were evidence of avoidance, or PDA).

Some time later, I came across a post reframing PDA as a “persistent drive for autonomy,” an alternate description that felt much more amicable to my system, and simply truer.

As I’ve touched into that inner feeling of digging in my heels when someone demands something of me (or even suggests I do something), I’ve realized it’s always been accompanied by a feeling of paralysis and oncoming attack, or of losing the freedom to choose how and when to do things (despite the fact another part of me sometimes is able to pretend this is not the case). I’ve spent my entire life feeling like I’m swimming upstream, constantly told how I’m supposed to act, think, or feel, when it doesn’t resonate at all with how my mind works, the pace at which I process experience, or how I naturally function. And not only that: my “discipline” and ability to “follow through” have been so continuously questioned that I’ve become used to questioning them myself. To the point that I often provoke a "PDA" response in myself internally (in other words, when setting out to do something I create so much internal pressure for myself that I fall into paralysis all the same).

The effects of this in my life have been complex, debilitating, and far-reaching, but one small moment that comes to mind as I write this is how, as a child, I had a burning desire to learn how to play piano. I would spend visits at my aunt's house deciphering sheet music, with help and invaluable encouragement from her (one of the only "teachers" I ever had who was able to adjust her teaching style to my learning style). I was so obsessed I even begged my parents for lessons. But as soon as I had a piano teacher and formal lessons, I lost interest. My progress ground to a halt despite all the rewards promised me for practicing.

Until recently, I thought of that moment as a huge failure in disciplining myself.

But what if we didn't consider this a pathological response? Wouldn’t it be much wiser to understand that, as neurodivergent humans, whether we have rainforest minds, are autistic or VAST (ADHD), have sensory processing sensitivities, or are otherwise atypically wired, we are just entirely over being pushed and prodded to do things in ways that don’t suit us? Because I also simultaneously notice the parts of me that trip over themselves with the desire to please and accommodate both loved ones and strangers alike, how a part of me would love to be able to "just say yes," but can’t. As I’m aware of these other parts of me and the considerable space they take up in my inner system, I know it’s not just a stubborn willfulness that has me bucking against demand.

And meditating on it further, I think: even better than or in addition to reframing PDA as a “persistent drive for autonomy,” I would characterize it as a “persistent desire for agency.” Whenever I have the chance to move at my own pace and rhythm, when there is enough spaciousness, I inevitably unstick and move forward. I choose to move forward (or back or away or any which way).

I've now learned to harness this in my favor, not allowing my art teachers' complaints of "you never listen" to stop me from learning by trial and error on my own—something that’s made my creative practice entirely more fruitful. Which reminds me of something Jean Piaget affirmed: "Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself, that child is kept from inventing it and consequently from understanding it completely." I would argue this is no less relevant for adults.

Another aspect of this to consider is that often when someone makes a demand or request of us—whether that be a friend, coworker, boss, family member or even stranger—we may need more time to review how it sits with us, or we may require more information than is initially given. For example, I often dig in my heels when asked to do something if I don't have clarity about the why and how of what is being asked of me, or if I can't visualize all the steps involved and how they fit into the larger picture.

I especially appreciate being able to feel out whether what is being asked of me makes sense, and many times I can come up with a better or more efficient way of doing it (workflows and efficient/effective design are a bit of an obsession for me). This is sometimes interpreted as being "difficult" or "uncooperative." It's true that sometimes I may actually be evaluating whether I want to participate at all (which I believe is fair enough in and of itself), but at other times it's only that I need more information and background to feel like I can perform a task adequately, even if it's within what would be considered a normal request at work or in home life (and perhaps obvious to others).

In the ideal world I would like to live in, “avoidance” would never be characterized as pathological. It would instead always be understood as a desire for agency and choice with an oh-so-important, oh-so-understandable need underlying it.

Whenever we find someone digging in their heels, or whenever we feel this resistance or freeze in ourselves... what would happen if instead of considering it a behavioral issue or fault, we got really curious about it?

* PDA was first coined by child psychologist Elizabeth Newson in the 1980s.

Being present with WHAT IS is definitely the first place to start, the main place to start. The place where we forget to be most of the time.

But it’s also good to go to what WANTS TO BE, what’s wanting to be born, what’s wanting to emerge. And called by this, being drawn to this, sometimes, maybe almost immediately, we’ll notice that we are held back. Maybe we are feeling afraid, or unsure of how to proceed.

And often that will lead us to WHAT WAS. To some way in which we can’t fully inhabit the WHAT IS because we are still in the WHAT WAS.

So despite what we may often hear repeated of “let go of the past,” it’s not a bad idea to take a visit to it, to go see what needs tending to that keeps us with one foot stuck over there. To go fully to it.

What happens if I make the WHAT WAS my WHAT IS for a moment? Take the me of the WHAT IS back, to be present with the me of the WHAT WAS.

I go back to return what belongs there that I'm still carrying, and bring forth what was left behind that needs rescuing. I tend to what wasn’t grieved, or celebrated properly in the moment. Or simply to what wasn’t witnessed or lived fully. I let it express, release, complete… let it do whatever it needs to do. And then I come back to WHAT IS.

Then it might be a purer IS from having leaned forward and dipped back.

In some sense all of time exists at once, right? Isn’t that (in my inelegant words) what theoretical physicists say? All of our existence is echoing internally, spinning into itself in the wheel of time.

What happens if we inhabit all of it, making this moment, whatever WHAT IS we are at in this moment, the AXIS? This means we don't have to push past or future away. We can feel free to embody all of it, to surrender to the folding and unfolding.

I find I can make this into a meditative practice. I feel myself turn, move. I feel how I can’t help but be in the present moment, how I never leave it, truly.

And how it is always leaving.

I feel into that leaving. And this makes me notice the simultaneous rush of the coming. Always, both the coming and the leaving as the ground of my being. The present that doesn't last a single moment, the present that is eternally lasting. I feel how I am in the flow of that river of arriving and departing. Always, the flow of that river.

I am the river, the river bed, the stone in the river.

More and more I think my job as a "coach," as someone who accompanies others in their processes, is that of a birth and death doula.

It's often about witnessing and being with someone in their grief so that those feelings don't get "buried alive" (to reference Ron Siegel) and come back to haunt them. To help what wasn't processed or metabolized in the past, and then also to accompany the living process of the moment so it has the proper care, the proper attention, the love it needs to exist.

And then to cease to exist.

Healing doesn't mean never again feeling distress or grief.

Healing means getting in a better place to allow ourselves to feel all we feel in order to let it through. Healing is just a continuous process of living, of shedding, of cellular autophagy for renewal.

We may get caught in complaint, but when we do, it’s because something in us is unresolved, and the best tonic for this is validation and compassion, not pressing ourselves to look on the bright side or to set aside complaint.

We live in a culture that often insists we "keep our chin up"... I find this is the case in all the places I've lived, perhaps with some nuances, but in a general enough way that I can name that as a pattern.

Perhaps you've noticed that people on a whole tend to be uncomfortable with complaint. It could be a well-meaning concern for your wellbeing, or maybe it's a fear or discomfort in getting pulled under by another's negativity because someone is already in an overwhelming battle of their own. Or maybe it's an entrenched belief that we should be able to shift how we feel, because “our perception creates our reality” (something that is not altogether inaccurate, but that often lacks a true understanding of how our consciousness works).

Whatever the reason, there is often an implied understanding that we shouldn't complain or that complaint should be reserved to the backrooms of the closest of friendships... leading to the tongue-in-cheek Argentinian custom of responding "bien, ¿o te cuento?" ("fine, or should I tell you about it?") when asked how we are.

We would do well to make more room for others to complain, and to allow ourselves complaint as well. Babies, children and animals know to do this instinctively—and from that the saying in Mexico, "niño que no llora no mama" (“the child that doesn't cry doesn't get breastfed”). Complaint can be an important nervous system release, and a bid for support or connection. It's a natural survival mechanism to obtain rescue, attention, or simply empathy and understanding.

It's also true that complaint can become entrenched, a kind of "go-to" evasion that puts us off from actually taking action or being with our discomfort or pain. Sometimes we let off steam and then go right back to enduring whatever it is we're enduring. But I'd say that particular stuck point is also due to something that needs attention. Perhaps fear of taking action, or an inability to see a way out. And, again, the best tonic to approach this stuckness is curiosity and compassion.

So you can't go wrong with getting a little closer to what's ailing you, or someone you care about, without wanting to shift it right away. With taking a moment to pause and be present with it.

About two years ago, after one of those harsh and difficult turns that life can take, I had some issues with my thyroid—a gland that is very susceptible to stress and emotional jolts. First I was hyperthyroid, to the point I had what I would characterize as a manic episode. I could hardly sleep because I was having nightmares, and I would swing from euphoria to terror to panic attacks within minutes. I lost 10 lbs in less than a week, although I was eating so much that my mother, with whom I was staying after the aforementioned life crisis, was exasperated because I was eating a week’s worth of food in one day. I also had changes in my vision, and strong pains throughout my body, extreme thirst, dry hair and skin, and a racing heart. I would run out of breath constantly and I felt very weak, which made it difficult for me to make it from my room to the kitchen or bathroom without great effort.

A couple of months later, after a period where I had leveled off and felt fairly normal, I plummeted… this was a terrible phase that lasted many months. My metabolism slowed down, I gained weight, and I felt a lot of trepidation and a blinding fear about everything, and—most worrisome of all—I felt entirely dead to life. I was in a complete mental and emotional blockage, to the point I feared I had brain damage. Doing anything at all was very difficult, nothing seemed to interest me at all, not even things I used to love. I had trouble distinguishing between important details and insignificant details. I couldn’t recognize a sense of self. I couldn’t read more than a sentence or two of a book, and that with great effort. I couldn’t even do “easy” things like watch TV.

Eventually I learned that what was happening to me, besides the period of hypothyroidism that tends to happen after thyroiditis, was a dysregulated autonomic nervous system response that has a protective intention (likely a combination of sympathetic freeze alternating with parasympathetic collapse): not only had being sick and all the experiences surrounding it been a great shock, but everything I had lived before getting sick had finally overwhelmed me, and my system was trying to protect me as a form of shield or armor. But, as stubborn as I am and as determined to break out of that state as I was, I pushed myself to be active, and would force myself to be with people, to do exercise. I would scold myself a lot, call myself useless and lazy: “You can’t handle anything, what’s wrong with you?”

This not only was not helpful in breaking me out of this state: every attempt I made to be more active and present actually made this protection take stronger hold. It was like hitting my head against an immovable wall.

One day, in absolute desperation, I remembered that my friend Paty Solís had given me a Functional Integration Feldenkrais session that had been quite helpful (Feldenkrais is divided into Awareness Through Movement classes and individual sessions of contact and assisted movement called Functional Integration). As my funds were very limited at the time and I was staying at my aunt’s apartment, I looked on the internet for Feldenkrais exercises, and came upon an older video by teacher Ruthy Alon, one of the most recognized teachers in the method. The class consisted of slow movements that reminded me of a baby learning to crawl.

Without understanding how or why, and in fact feeling a bit silly as I did the movements because of how simple they were, I felt how a huge blockage in me began to dissolve. Something began to unstick in me, subtly but decisively. I was able to cry. I slowly recuperated strength.

That was the beginning of the path to my recovery (I'll write more eventually about other steps that followed), and what eventually led me to ask Paty to teach Feldenkrais classes for Feral Flow Lab (Paty's sessions are in Spanish, but I recommend Movement and Creativity classes for any interested English speakers).

Moshe Feldenkrais said: “It is exactly the opposite of what they say on the television: Higher, faster, stronger. Here we say: slower, more comfortably, more pleasantly.” Many people, like me, have been used to a philosophy of always “going hard,” of strict discipline. Let us not forget that there is great power in tenderness! Through Feldenkrais I am learning how to return to tenderness, to slowness, to being how I am.

We may at times feel guilty about “indulging” in self care, especially those of us who feel a need to help transform the current sociopolitical reality we find ourselves in. We may feel we are being weak or selfish by taking time to meditate, to rest, to socialize, to exercise, to eat well, to create art. It may feel like we aren’t working hard enough, aren’t suffering enough, for our cause.

This however, is a false dilemma.

Self care and political work are inextricably intertwined. What other purpose exists for our political work, but to ultimately ensure true, equitable, and sustainable care and wellbeing for all? Wellbeing, too, for our environment, for our fellow creatures, our Earth. And how can we build a new future, if we do not collectively engage in deep personal exploration and development of our potential? How many past revolutions have failed because we got lost in tearing things down, instead of building what is to come?

Of course, as long as we exist in a system that profits from our exhaustion and inability to get our heads above water, true self care will be an impossible to reach vanishing point. We can heal all our past hurts, but new traumas and damages, on a personal and global scale, will continue to tear us down. This doesn’t mean that we can exist without pain, without death, without accident, without imbalance. As Zorba the Greek reminds us, “life is trouble, only death is not!” But much of what we suffer now, in terms of injustice, in terms of lack of opportunity, in terms of exploitation and discrimination and abuse, is avoidable, must be transformed. And self care, self transformation, is an integral part of this. As Krishnamurti says, “the transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself.” Even if our current life situation presents challenges in taking care of ourselves to the full extent we would like, let us construct internal and external support networks to decolonize from that which requires our suffering and blood and excessive or demoralizing work. Let us reclaim the necessary. Let us recuperate pleasure. We can be gentler with ourselves, and give priority to our right to wellbeing. And we can create communities that support this work.

In Audre Lorde’s words: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”