Get out of autonomy debt

Has your nervous system experienced enough agency today?

Autonomy may be something you lose when someone tells you what to do, but that's really only half the story. An individual's felt sense of autonomy slowly drains away over the course of an ordinary day. This happens even in the absence of demands poking holes in the bottom of our cups; when we face more demands, we're drained more quickly. But we're never without demands: almost everything we do is in response to necessity, expectation, or obligation if we trace our behaviors back to their original catalysts.

We know that most biological and psychological human needs are not binary; that is, you can't just say, "Yep the need is met" or "No, you don't have that." For example, sleep is something you can function with very little of, but the quality of that functioning will usually be impaired, and you will build up sleep debt until you meet the need. The more debt you're in, the lower quality your output. Likewise, your body isn't an empty gas tank that simply "runs out" of food. Hunger builds over time if you don't eat adequately. We can say the same of less tangible, more relational needs, too: connection, play, novelty, movement...they all work the same way. They require ongoing replenishment.

Autonomy is not an exception! Sure, it's usually excluded from the "universal human needs" lists they pass out in mental health treatment, lest anyone justify breaking the program's rules by saying they're meeting their needs as was recommended. But it is a need. You might classify it under the umbrella of "freedom," a need that does make it onto those lists. Some people are more sensitive to having an unmet need for the freedom to do as we please and make our own decisions, just as some people hear their stomachs growling when they're hungry and others don't.

Imagine carrying around an invisible autonomy account. Each time you do something because you have to, a small withdrawal is made. You answer the email because someone is waiting; you pay the bill because it's due; you floss your teeth because your dentist recommends it; you refill your prescription because you need your medication; you stop at the grocery store because you're out of milk. None of these are misaligned with your intentions or values, per se. Many of them are things you genuinely want to accomplish. But they're still responses to necessity, obligation, or expectation. Even self-imposed expectations can become withdrawals if they stop feeling like choices and start feeling compulsory.

Consider what happens when you make very few deposits, or none at all. For many who identify with demand avoidance as part of their neurotype (whether the label pathological demand avoidance/persistent drive for autonomy–PDA–applies or not) the next demand, however small, becomes unbearable when it's one withdrawal too many.

PDA accommodations often focus on increasing flexibility of the person making the ask, reducing demands, collaborating instead of directing, limiting question-asking, and preserving autonomy wherever possible. Those strategies can be incredibly valuable, but this idea shifts the focus a bit. Instead of viewing agency as something we can only protect when it's threatened, can we view it as something that needs to be actively replenished? It's the difference between setting out to survive a specific demand in front of you and proactively giving your nervous system what it's been missing all day as part of your routine.

I'm not merely suggesting you rebel more, that at a certain threshold of rule-breaking, you'll simply override your demand anxiety. That would be the end of this blog post. And following along with the banking metaphor, it would imply that the wealthiest people have no problems whatsoever; just deposit enough into your account and all is well. Frankly, it would also be a little insulting to suggest that you hadn't already thought of breaking more rules or that you could do that without causing other problems for yourself. What I'm actually suggesting is that your nervous system is not concerned with whether what you chose was rebellious but rather whether it was genuinely yours. If you're not regularly doing things for no reason other than "I wanted to," you're building up autonomy debt.

By "I wanted to," I mean there is no side agenda whatsoever. No "I did it because it was healthy, and being healthy is important to me" or "John recommended it, and I like John, so making him feel good makes me feel good" loopholes.

If you're familiar with dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), this may sound similar to the distress tolerance skill called "alternate rebellion," which encourages folks who have urges to rebel in objectively dangerous or self-destructive ways to instead satisfy that urge through something harmless, like wearing mismatched socks or using a purple pen for official paperwork. On the surface, if you're just observing someone using this skill, it appears identical to my "Do what you want" suggestion. Both involve intentional violation of low-stakes expectations, but the underlying theory is different. While alternate rebellion assumes the urge already exists and helps redirect it into something safer, what I'm describing is about the prevention of deprivation, not redirection. It's the difference between eating because you're starving and eating because you know your body functions better when it doesn't get to the point of starving. One is reactive; the other is proactive.

Rebellion itself isn't healing. In the autonomy debt framework, harmless rule-breaking is valuable because it's a means of making a deposit into an overdrawn account. Rule-breaking of the Christmas-in-July, spaghetti-for-breakfast variety creates experiences that remind your nervous system that you're in charge of many things if and when you want to be in a world that otherwise floods you with reminders that you aren't.

Breaking established fake rules isn't the only way to make autonomy deposits, though. Its cousins, making superfluous choices and being intentionally inefficient, are great ways to get your balance up. Change your mind after you've already decided on something. Choose a mug at the way-back of the cabinet that makes you smile instead of the closest one. Hand-write something that's usually typed. Fold your towels differently for the first time ever.

There is nothing therapeutic about any of these behaviors themselves; the therapy is in the practice of doing things without justifying them with productivity, necessity, or expectation; in behaving for no other reason than because you chose to do so.

Accommodation doesn't have to mean eliminating every withdrawal from your autonomy account; it just has to mean making enough deposits that your autonomy card doesn't decline when you face the high-stakes demands that aren't so negotiable. The next time you're feeling unable to approach an unavoidable demand, it might be useful to pause before trying to make the task easier with a good old executive functioning hack and first check in on the last time you did something "just because." We deserve enough freely chosen moments that we don't have to fight to remember what choice feels like.