#Define pathological fear how to#
#Define pathological fear zip#

You go into survival mode (responses include the five Fs – more on this in another blog) and there is no rational thought in sight. It protects you by shutting down the human reasoning part of the brain (neocortex) to ensure that you do not overthink this threat and you act quickly. Scientifically, the part of your brain that assesses and responds to threats (the amygdala) sees the day out as quite as serious as being attacked by a sabre toothed tiger, and responds accordingly. Depending on the level of your anxiety, you may refuse completely to go without caring about the consequences, or you may quit your job, I have seen it happen. You may negotiate with your boss, procrastinate getting the childcare needed to go, find yourself feeling so unwell the night before that you couldn’t possibly go. You are likely to try and avoid doing the day.

#Define pathological fear zip#

Say you are at work and everyone is required to do a team building day and you like the idea but you are genuinely terrified of heights and you know there will be a zip wire. I bet everyone reading this can thing of something they are afraid of and therefore will choose not to do, even if they are told to do it, asked to do it, expected to do it or even if they wanted to do it. Their motivation (if they had any) is over-ridden by their threat system telling them not to act. If someone is scared, they will completely naturally avoid the thing that is causing them fear at all costs. I believe that it is in human needs and motivation that we will ultimately find the neurological answers to PDA but for now, I just want to focus on the differences in demand avoidance.Īvoiding doing things is always significantly higher when anxiety is involved.

When we are not motivated, no dopamine, no action. When we are motivated, regardless of how, dopamine makes our neurons fire, and we act. The neurotransmitter that is understood to influence motivation (once thought to induce pleasure), is dopamine, a chemical that is triggered when your brain recognises something important is about to happen or needs to happen. There are different ones for different things. It does this using chemicals known as neurotransmitters. Let’s look at the science: The brain functions through passing electrical signals down neural pathways. If not, they may be motivated by receiving some kind of reward you have offered them (not how I parent but many do). If you ask a teenager to do it for you, they are not motivated by this, but could be motivated by pleasing you, or feeling like they have helped. However, most adults are motivated by having clean dishes and a clean, tidy kitchen. Here is an example: Most people do not ever really “want” to wash the dishes. Like sexual arousal, you are either motivated or you are not (you cannot tell yourself to be turned on). The key thing is that you cannot fake it. Some people have been programmed to be motivated by things that are external to them, and others only feel motivated by internal feelings (such as exploration, feelings of self-worth and recognition). As we develop in this society we find can be motivated in many ways, including being self-motivated. I will write more on this in another blog but it is important to understand that because our needs vary, so does our motivation. These needs get more complex and although all humans have common human needs, they vary in intensity and proportion for every human. People are born intrinsically (internally without influence from others) motivated to meet their human needs. In order for a human being to do anything, they have to be motivated.

I will also help to explain the use of the word “pathological” because, having had many discussions with all kinds of people, including PDAers themselves, most don’t even understand what the term “pathological” means in this context. Once I have explored each of these in turn, I will describe the two other forms of demand avoidance: Neurodivergent (or Autistic) Demand Avoidance and Pathological Demand Avoidance. each of these things are neurological and each of them impact neurotypical people and neurodivergent people to different extents. There are three factors here that I can see, motivation, anxiety and executive function. We put things off, get others to do things for us or just fail to do the thing entirely,

#Define pathological fear how to#

We all procrastinate rather than doing the thing we know we are supposed to be doing, often because it is hard and we aren’t sure how to start, or because we are exhausted, or because we are afraid we will do it badly, or because we genuinely don’t want to do the thing. What very few people seem to understand is how this behaviour can ever be pathological.įrom my experience and understanding all human beings experience demand avoidance. They are also right that many autistic people avoid some demands to a greater extent than their neurotypical peers. The thing is they are right that all humans do experience demand avoidance.