#demand sensitivity

[clatterbane]

I really do have an extremely “low tolerance for prescriptive or paternalistic patterns of behavior”. (That description still cracks me up. Talk about understatements.)

But, demand sensitivity and demand resistance are also things. Which I’ve had to recognize cause me a lot of trouble, personally.

And these tendencies do seem to run together, frequently. Maybe especially with too much experience of people trying to pull those “prescriptive or paternalistic patterns of behavior” on you. After a while, hypervigilance can be a problem.

Just reminded by seeing some commentary on something I had initially read as descriptive, but which could also be interpreted as more prescriptive. Rather a lot of things like that, yeah. :/

[clatterbane]

It's also really hard to talk about certain things without it coming across as trying to tell other people what they're supposed to be thinking or doing. Or that you're judging them for not thinking/doing particular things. Especially when a hell of a lot of discussion about these topics does consist of that kind of controlling garbage. And when you're living in a society that treats this as a largely OK if not downright beneficial way to interact with other people. This can cause some obvious problems. Including, but not limited to, people developing shedloads of demand sensitivity and resistance. (Besides the obnoxious pattern of deciding what someone REALLY meant, and jumping down their throat.) I know I have some serious problems with demand sensitivity and resistance. Often in a "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" kind of way, yeah. :/ Sometimes that works OK, other times not so much.

[clatterbane]

One of the things that keeps jumping out at me is that demand sensitivity/resistance really is a thing. Especially for people who have lived in controlling situations, where other people really did keep telling them what to do and they kept getting criticized (often over not very much).

I am personally dealing with some of that. My mom went totally OTT with it, as a result of growing up with severe emotional abuse, to the point that she often made things difficult both for herself and the people around her by automatically interpreting any kind of disagreement as criticism and orders.

This unfortunately can also work at a societal level, when you keep getting all theses ridiculous and often conflicting demands and criticism. When very little of that crap is really about you, as an individual, but has everything to do with social control through rigid roles and bogus hierarchy.

It's also a lot easier to deal with once you see it at that level, IME.