# Ah, good old demand avoidance. This is something I absolutely do and I'll attempt to explain why in this note. So, first, let's define "Demand Avoidance." It's not just being "lazy" or "defiant." It's when you are physically incapable of doing *the thing* due to a very hefty mental block. There's also "Pathological Demand Avoidance" which I may or may not have...I'm not really sure as I'm not a trained professional at diagnosing this stuff. For me, this can happen in a number of circumstances. - **Having someone breathing down my neck about a task I already know I need to do** - The more you hover over me or ask me to do *the thing* the less likely it is that I'll actually do it. I need to be able to decide when I do *the thing* and how I do it without someone hounding me. All I need is a direction and a deadline and *the thing* will more than likely get done. - **When I'm already overwhelmed with other things and I just can't seem to figure out where to place the task in my list** - Executive dysfunction and overwhelm work together on this one. My brain will give the label of "high priority" to literally everything and I end up just doing the things that keep me afloat even though there are more pressing things. - **Not knowing the right steps required to complete the task** - If I haven't figured out the whole process or I'm having trouble with a step in the process, it's hard for me to see the "end" and if there's no end in sight, I have trouble starting. And even though I've already said, "yes, I can do that" I get ahead of myself without thinking of the actual steps I need to do first. - This is why I read recipes from beginning to end before I start cooking. I need to know what to expect before I start. - Ironically, I will start writing a fiction story with no ending in sight and then it tends to fizzle out somewhere along the way and I stop writing *anything* for weeks or months because I can't get past that hump. - **When *the thing* has gone so long without being done that I literally can't figure out how to start it** - If I've missed a deadline, which is pretty rare and seems to only happen when I'm lacking proper direction or if I'm in a shutdown period, then *the thing* becomes a failure and I can't seem to figure out how to un-fail at it so I avoid it. - **When I'm in shutdown mode and I'm literally only doing the bare-minimum to get through life** - Sometimes demand avoidance causes or contributes to a shutdown and sometimes it's just a symptom of a shutdown. Either way, I can't physically complete tasks that are "too big" until I come out of shutdown. - **When I'm hyper-fixated on something and my brain literally can't do anything but think about the hyper-fixation** - I used to call this shiny-object syndrome, but it's much more than that. It's a focus and obsession so deep that I can't stop thinking about whatever it is, so other things tend to get the boot. And anytime I'm hyper-fixated on something and I have to take a break from it (like to eat or to do family stuff, etc), I'm still thinking about it constantly and will sometimes not respond when someone talks to me because my thoughts are so loud and clear in my head that I don't even hear them address me. And that's my brand of demand avoidance. I'm trying to figure out how to get past these hold-ups, but so far, I've come up with no solutions. Typically, I just have to force myself to do *the thing*, but sometimes that comes too late and it feels awful at first.