Reactance (psychology)

Reactance is a kind of feeling inside your brain when you can't do something that you want to do or when someone tells you what to do. Reactance makes you feel like you want to do the opposite of what someone tells you to do, even if it's something bad. Your brain doesn't like when it is told what to do, so it pushes back and makes you do the exact opposite. Think of it like a balloon being held down: the harder it is pushed, the harder it pushes back. That push-back is "reactance".