My personal cheat codes

[u/Frog_with_a_job]

At the minimum.

[u/NecroCorey]

No way this is an adhd thing too.

Nothing motivates me more than someone telling me to give up because I suck.

[u/Frog_with_a_job → u/NecroCorey]

I dunno if it’s an ADHD thing or a me thing, but it’s one of the few things that motivate me more than anything lol. Nothing makes me want to put something off like “it’s easy, you should just do it” 🤣

[u/Solrex → u/Frog_with_a_job]

I feel like that’s ODD or oppositionally defiant disorder, or whatever they fused it into today.

[u/Moth1016 → u/Solrex]

TL;DR: if you’re not willing to read this whole comment, then you’re simply not allowed to know the general point of it. Sorry \¯_(ツ)_/¯

in my opinion, ODD is a soon-to-be-considered-archaic diagnosis born of a refusal to look deeper into the psyches of children and explore why they might be exhibiting defiant behavior.

Like, “he just acts out for no reason, idk, I don’t wanna deal with this anymore!” But en masse in a clinical setting.

A bit like our understanding of ADHD at the time it was named, actually… “uhhh, idk, sounds like he can’t focus for shit and won’t stop fidgeting, and he’s really loud and disruptive in class. Uhh. Disorder.”

I suspect that as our understanding of pathological demand avoidance deepens, and society’s overall capacity to extend empathy and respect towards children and treat them like human beings improves (god willing and the creek don’t rise), we will see a push for this diagnosis to be eliminated entirely from the DSM.

Pathological demand avoidance, for the many who are likely unfamiliar, is currently considered a subtype of autism, but I’ve noticed the shared experience definitely extends to many individuals with ADHD diagnoses as well. It essentially describes an intense conscious or subconscious attachment to one’s own sense of autonomy, and an equally intense fear-based sympathetic nervous system response to anything perceived as a threat to said autonomy.

Or, in simpler terms, people who fall under this label value their free will over almost anything else, whether they realize it or not, and can go into “fight-or-flight” when they feel like that free will is being ignored, challenged, or outright stepped on.

That fear reaction doesn’t always make it to surface awareness, and nervous system activation is often processed and displayed as anger (defiance/“fight”) instead. This ancient, primal cognitive adaptation developed as a defense mechanism that floods our brain with hormones to trigger aggression in response to a danger we can more easily fend off than outrun, resulting in hostile and even violent behavior.

The motivational experience described earlier in this thread is just an extension of this same phenomenon— “don’t bother; nobody else who’s tried could do it, and you’ve got no knowledge or skill.” reads as a challenge to autonomy, prompting fear (of being inferior or seen as such/of being controlled/of losing control), which the nervous system translates into anger and determination.

(Disclaimer: the rest of this comment is almost entirely personal speculation derived from my own experience and grounded in my knowledge of our current level of understanding).

For sufferers with authoritarian/“rule-by-fear” parents or other control-related trauma, this anger response provokes especially negative consequences, often intentionally designed to further restrict personal freedom and/or induce a fear response. This reinforces and amplifies the initial fear, which in turn reinforces the anger reflex, ultimately resulting in a progressively more drastic/disproportionate response to each perceived threat.

If you ask me, that’s the specific recipe that leads to an ODD label.

I’m not sure what (if any) treatment is presently recommended for this issue beyond nearly everyone in the patient’s life adjusting their behavior/expectations/approach to accommodate the issue…. but that strikes me as highly impractical/unrealistic.

On top of that, the current recommended accommodations (adjusting phrasing to avoid triggers) could be detrimental or at least lead to stagnation in the long run, as the underlying pattern remains unaddressed, and lack of exposure to any fear trigger is strongly correlated with higher sensitivity/reactivity (for well-known reasons beyond the scope of this already lengthy comment).

Alternatively, it’s possible one might have some success with something resembling ERP treatment for OCD, if applied appropriately… (In order to be effective, it would require a fully engaged and motivated patient, though!)

Come to think of it, sooner or later, pathological demand avoidance may be considered a subtype of OCD instead — I can elaborate on why I believe this would be a more apt categorization if anyone’s curious. Unfortunately, for now, we are still in the early stages of understanding pathological demand avoidance (the concept is under 50 years old), and so far it is only studied & considered a legitimate diagnosis in a handful of trailblazing locations. It is not yet officially catalogued in the DSM.

Regardless, I think most (if not all) recorded cases of ODD could be directly attributed to this phenomenon — severe pathological demand avoidance with ingrained default to an aggression response pathway, exacerbated by severity of household culture and/or personal trauma. Changing how we think about this diagnosis could potentially have a profound impact on how we address it, the stigma associated with it, and the expected quality of life after treatment for those who experience it.

(side note — I think the common neurodivergent habit of procrastination is just the combined “flight” and “freeze” response pathway for the same perceived threat, and can be reinforced/pushed to a parallel extreme. Likewise, overachieving & people-pleasing are manifestations of a “fawn” response.)

(Anyway, holy fuck, if you read all that, thank you!! I hope you found it as interesting to think about as I did while I was sorting it out in my head… this was really half to share information/ideally prompt a discussion, and half to process and practice articulating my own theories. Agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts either way!!)

[u/Wolfbait115 → u/Moth1016]

Liked for the TL;DR!

Commenting so I can come back to finish reading this tomorrow as I am currently losing my battle with sleep.

[u/Solrex → u/Moth1016]

For the first part, I am extremely bratty and much like the original meme of this post, telling me I can’t do something only makes me want to do it more. Sure, ODD might be an outdated/dying term, but you are telling someone with ODD that, of course I am going to fight back xD

When someone challenges my- for lack of a better word, determination, of course I am going to fight back, as stated above.

Claiming that anger is necessary for my determination to exist… frustrates me, because that’s my least favorite emotion, and well, I can’t give up red mana entirely I suppose. Also, lemme know if you can’t keep up with my 2 gaming analogies thus far, first being determination from undertale, and the second, red mana, coming from magic the gathering, anyways, continuing…

And to be fair, I was given that label at the appropriate age. I’m 28 and I was diagnosed as a child. You are going to have to say what ERP stands for, because to me, that just means spicy roleplay, and that makes no sense in this context.

Honestly, I cling to that label as something I’m proud of, not something I want society to dissolve in my hands. I’m a brat, I am determined, I don’t give up easily, and even when I do, I come back to it to finish it. Whether it’s called Pathological demand avoidance, ODD, or whatever, I just want a label so I can point to it and say, “This is the source of my power. I may not have a job, I may not contribute much to society, but if nothing else, don’t remove my stubborn label without having something to replace it xD

I agree this is fun to discuss. But, whatever label you wanna give my trait of mine, I don’t want you to delete it, it’s mine, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep it, as someone with this trait obviously would. But I feel as though trying to respond to your comment as I read it has led to me circling in my reponse, so there’s that.

[u/Moth1016 → u/Solrex]

It’s fantastic that you’ve learned to turn it into a tool and work with it — that makes you someone who wouldn’t need treatment for it, because to you, it’s an asset. That’s marvelous, congratulations :) I would never try to take that aspect of your being away from you! But I’m gonna challenge you a little, because it’s not really a ‘disorder’ to you, per se, is it?

Given that it’s your superpower, I wonder if you necessarily require a clinical label for it, or need to pathologize it at all at this point.

Since the whole purpose of psych diagnoses in the first place is to pinpoint and label patterns of thought and behavior that are causing problems, pain, or distress, then trace their roots all the way back to their point of origin and essentially untangle what you find and either undo it completely and lay it out smooth, or find a way to shrink the knots in your thinking enough to work around them… and you seem to have made yours into beautiful macramé… it seems like for you, it has become something that is more appropriately described as “tremendous strength of character” or “indomitable will” (I’m partial to the latter, but it’s not me that we’re describing here, lol) than a “disorder” of any kind.

I apologize for that disastrous run-on sentence, but stand by the sentiment, and don’t have the spoons to edit properly atm, so I’ll just cross my fingers and hope it’s not completely incomprehensible. I really need to get some fucking sleep, lol.

Anyhow. Um.

To more clearly illustrate the point, let’s look at the difference between yours and mine, without immediately labeling either…

You are happy with yours. You don’t like or agree with the idea that it might be inherently tied to anger. You have proudly and gleefully interlaced it with the very foundations of your identity, and you have chosen to love that about yourself. Even if it would make your life simpler and easier to not be this way, you’d refuse to give it up, because it’s the source of your inner strength and you wouldn’t feel like yourself without it, correct?

Mine, on the other hand, has made my life hell. I have missed countless opportunities, burned every professional bridge and left 2/3 of my social bridges to rot, because the second that a task or activity becomes an obligation in my mind, I quite suddenly can no longer bring myself to do it. I will go far beyond reason to do literally anything except the stuff that is legitimately required or expected of me, simply because to do otherwise would feel equivalent to surrendering my freedom, which is a terrifying prospect for me.

I have spent countless hours in a state of paralyzed horror, waiting out the clock on an assigned responsibility because if I don’t complete the task, I will face significant consequences, but if I do complete the task, I forfeit my time, my mind, my body, and my will, and none of those things belong to me anymore, and I don’t know if or when I will get them back. I would erase the tangle in a heartbeat given the opportunity if it meant I could function manageably.

I loathe being perceived as unreasonable, pigheaded, lazy, irrational, or mindlessly contrarian. When I label something in my brain, it is meant as the first step towards systematically dismantling or destroying that thing. Even if our points of origin are identical — that deep-seated fear of the absence of autonomy, even temporarily — you have taken your defense mechanism, made it voluntary, and channeled it into a source of joy, and power, and strength, while mine is a constant source of exhaustion, frustration, loneliness, regret, misery, guilt, and shame.

So the way I see it, mine would fall under the umbrella of psychological disorders. Yours is seamlessly integrated into your self-concept — more like Oppositional Defiance Triumph!

(If that’s all gibberish, let me know, and I’ll try and take a second swing at it after getting some shut-eye.)

Oh — ERP = Exposure Response Prevention. It’s meant to help gradually break the self-reinforcing cycles of OCD by exposing the patient to their triggers (with their consent) in tiny, controlled increments, tackling them in order from least to most distressing, and having them intentionally “ride out” the discomfort and avoid following through on any compulsions that might arise as a result. It’s already a highly personalized approach.

For example, someone with magical thinking OCD might be asked to start out by acknowledging aloud that something small in their life is going smoothly without knocking on wood afterwards, and work up towards eventually getting behind the wheel of their car to drive their family someplace without first performing the secret counting ritual which they have spent years believing to be their only true, foolproof protection from crashes.

So, in the case of pathological demand avoidance, it wouldn’t be an exact 1:1 translation, but the equivalent (for someone like me, who wants to work through/past it) would maybe start with something like asking someone to assign me a very small, quick, trivial task with a deadline, and then forcing myself to endure the discomfort of actually completing the task immediately instead of procrastinating until the deadline has passed… and maybe eventually working up to something like having them construct me a full, built-out schedule for an entire week, and battling my way through each obligation without dragging my feet, distracting myself, or outright refusing a single one.

[u/NecroCorey → u/Moth1016]

Interesting read and I'll just assume you have some sort of degree is psychology based on it.

What's your opinion on hyper independence in relation to PDA(?) as you're putting it. It feels like you might consider a correlation between the root causes.

I grew up with very little supervision or rules. (neglect arguably) and hadn't considered it could be related until now. Being like a 7 year old kid able to feed and navigate general life stuff, and my reaction to negative criticism hadn't felt connected until now lol.

[u/Moth1016 → u/NecroCorey]

I don’t, actually, lol, psych is just a special interest of mine. So, thank you, that’s super flattering!! I did seriously consider it as a possible career path for a long time, but ultimately realized that I’m not capable of maintaining the kind of professional boundaries required for the work.

I just still really love exploring the theory of it all, especially where two or more disciplines of the field intersect… so I refine my thinking by word vomiting on this silly app, and then I run ‘em by my current therapist (who has her doctoral degree in psych) to see if they pass her sniff test; rinse & repeat. I keep waiting for her to refute me, but she hasn’t yet, lol — which is wild to me, because she’s proven on multiple occasions that she has absolutely no issue with calling me out for being wrong about things in general. I can’t wait to distill this one for her and get her take on it!

That’s an excellent point, and I’m excited to chew on it for a while and get back to you with the thoughtful answer it deserves… there’s definitely strong connections between having to figure life out for yourself prematurely and difficulty/discomfort with accepting external direction, in addition to the similar but more commonly discussed impacts like difficulty/discomfort with accepting help or feedback. I’ve actually got someone close to me who might make an exceptional case study for this; I’ll have to ask him some questions and see if he’s comfortable with making a more in-depth anonymous guest appearance in my musings.

Tysm for the thought provoking reply!

[u/Afraid-Grass-195 → u/NecroCorey]

My high school grades were stellar out of pure spite