RDC: Rational Demand Compliance

Looking at something's opposite can often help us understand the thing itself. While thinking about Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) I was struck by the thought that the vast majority of people in the world must experience the opposite. Here's my questionable equation: autism affects an estimated 1 in 32 people. This means that, based on a current US census of 348M people, about 10.9M people are autistic. It is my very conservative estimation that about half of the autistic clients I work with would qualify as having PDA by a knowledgeable parent group. This equals about 5.4M people in the US with a PDA profile. So, how do the other 342.6M people in the US respond to demands?

The D in RDC has the same meaning as it does in PDA. We are surrounded by demands. Demands come from without and within. Our parents tell us to clean our room, and our hunger tells us to eat. We even set goals for ourselves, and our own expectations become our demands. We are all striving for autonomy, but no one is ever fully autonomous, especially from our own desires. Our goal, practically, is to increase our autonomy, or adequately manage the demands we experience.

Rational. Pathological can mean dysfunctional or disordered. People with RDC make decisions that favor functionality and order, for the most part. It is true that not all decisions are perfectly rational, like Mr. Spock, but there is a rationale that can be effectively communicated to others even if they would not make the same choice. The rationale is based on values and resources available to the individual, and is sometimes very personal. The point is that people have a thing they want to achieve and will change the rationale if their choice moves them further from a desired thing. The other reason I like this word "rational" is that many of my clients suggest so-called "Neurotypicals" often mindlessly going along with the group. I have discovered that group behavior is rarely ever valueless or goal-less. Being a part of the group is an intense drive that people have. A sense of belongingness often supersedes lower goals, including doing moral behavior. So, doing something because the group is doing it might be immoral, but it is not necessarily irrational.

Compliance. No one complies with all demands because no one can comply at that level. Compliance, especially as an adult, means failure to comply as well. The point is that people with RDC have a compliance default. We choose among competing demands those with which we will comply. During my first year in grad school a student a couple of cohorts above me told me that the challenge of grad school is the inability to avoid procrastination. He stated there are so many important things to do that by doing any single important thing you are putting off doing many important things. I know now he was talking about the skill of prioritizing and increasing work efficiency, but at the time the truth of the cost of even my good decisions was disheartening. People with RDC comply systematically or strategically. This is as opposed to a blanket avoidance strategy the literature says is common in people with the PDA profile.

Take what you will from this very brief description of what I consider to be the functional side of people's efforts to increase their sense of autonomy and control. In the spirit of debate around and discussion of the term PDA I attempted to explain what might happen if someone consistently responded to demands in a non-pathological way.