PDA as Existential Resistance to Temporal Dissonance
When Pathological Demand Avoidance Strives for Congruence With Society's Ideas of 'Time'
For an existentially aware individual, this cultural adherence to clock time is often—consciously or not—felt as a pithy, even absurd, representation of the complexity of reality and the potential richness of human meaning-making. Why must my worth be based around a linear structure when I have always known that—while some congruence is helpful for making meaningful connection—there is more to time, to life, than tasks, deadlines, and the prioritization of occupying shared space at a designated moment every hour, every day, on repeat, forever?
This experience reflects what I propose to call temporal dissonance—a state of psychological, neurological, and existential tension created when an individual’s intuitive, embodied, or philosophical sense of time diverges drastically from society’s imposed, mechanical view of time.