Free From Demands

When, like Emily Bronte, It Vexes You to Choose Another Guide

I met Emily Bronte this summer. It was amazing. I’d bumped into her before- but just didn’t think we had much in common. She was always scowling, writing very intense novels about what seemed to be the original trauma-bond relationship and tramping off over the moors with her big dog. I preferred her chattier, warmer sister Charlotte who wrote about the sort of banter and word-driven relationships I’ve always preferred - and would rather be inside having a nice cup of tea than lying on a rainy grave before Barry Keoghan and “That” scene in “Saltburn” were a flicker in anybody’s perturbed eyelids.

But then I read her poem “Often rebuked yet always back returning” before I chaired a panel about her- and there she was. “I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading/it vexes me to choose another guide”. Oh, hang on. HERE you are. “Often rebuked, yet always back returning to those first feelings that were born with me”. It’s hard though, isn’t it Emily? To do your own thing, to go with the promptings of your inner voice, in a world that often wants you to do otherwise?

Well yes, of course, she said but sometimes you just have to go with it. Well, in fact, you don’t have a choice really, if you’re the sort of person that can only do things that you want to do, in the way that you want to do them. You might get sent off to be a teacher in a school for young ladies but it’ll pretty much break you in half a term- the noise and the pretending and the lack of the moors and sheer pointlessness of it all. Though if in doubt- go for a walk to a quiet place. You’ll know then: “What have those lonely mountains worth revealing? More glory and more grief than I can tell/The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling/can centre both the worlds of heaven and hell”.

Right- that sounds spot on to me, I said. Though you do know that if you’d been born nowish, you might have been diagnosed with Pathological Demand Avoidance? Emily was not remotely impressed. Especially when I told her it included:

1. Resistance and avoidance of everyday demands, including those that are perceived as trivial or routine (she asked if I knew how many times she’d laid the fire or made the bread). 2. An overwhelming need to be in control and avoid being controlled by others. She just sort of nodded at that. 3. Using Social Strategies (such as distracting, excuse making, outright refusal) as part of their avoidance. Avoidance which is often driven by anxiety. She had turned away by now and folded her arms. 4. Appears sociable on the surface - though struggles to perceive social hierarchies and may want to be co-teachers or co-parents. 5. “Obsessive” behaviour, often focused on other people. 6. Appears comfortable in role play and pretend, sometimes to an extreme extent.

Full List Here

Where My Own Nature Would be Leading

I thought of the made-up worlds of Emily and her sisters and the novel she was secretly writing - the one that was going to be partly what gave her the freedom to live her own too-short life in her own way. I tried to make up for the clinical list by telling her that actually I preferred the term by autistic advocates who fit the profile. “Pervasive Demand for Autonomy”.  Sorry, that’s a lack? She asked. Not to me I said. But in a world where, from childhood, we’re asked to obey, comply and fit in, then it is, isn’t it? Her words echoed in my head again “I’ll go where my own nature would be leading/it vexes me to choose another guide”.

Avoiding Demand Avoidance

Other voices too. The parents concerned about their “stubborn” or “wilful” children. Particularly the girls (less acceptable still perhaps than being a boy who does his own thing). Late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD adults confused by how they struggle to do things they don’t “want” to do (if they’re generally focused on pleasing people) or proud of their own internal compass, their rebelliousness or their free spirit. But of how particularly frustrating it can be to not feel able to do things that you actually WANT to do because when you’re under some stress then any “demand” even from within, can feel like the straw that will break the camel’s back.

For myself, I know that I have a very variable resistance to demands- external and internal. Maybe I could only meet Emily when I had cleared away more of the masking and the pleasing to recognise just how much it vexes me to choose another guide, though I have always tended to prefer to learn things in my own way in my own time, give only superficial respect to authority and struggled greatly with doing anything I perceive as boring, routine or unnecessary.

There is a very small example of “demand-avoidance” I often bond over with fellow bookish folk. The difficulty of reading things that other people have recommended. Not so much if it’s a general “I loved that!”, more if it’s a “Here’s this book- you’ll love it!” or “You should read this”. (I’ve overcome it with course reading lists and when judging competitions but with quite a lot of resistance and wrangle. Same with telly programmes, videos and memes.  Little grinding gears of “I might have watched this anyway, but not now you’ve told me to”.

So, it would be an irony if I were to urge you to read all of Emily Bronte’s extraordinary poems. It might trigger your demand avoidance, or interfere with your drive to autonomy. Or, well, you just might not to want to, or have twelve thousand Substacks to peruse and an entire life to live. But, as strategies of Low Demand Parenting suggest -sometimes letting an option emerge and float without pushing or pressure is the best way to moot something. So I’ll do that- and just be glad I felt like I had the opportunity to feel I’d discovered her myself.