This is me. [1]
Let’s check out the symptoms, shall we?
Do I avoid jobs that involve contact with a lot of people? Yes. By avoiding jobs entirely. I am so afraid of rejection that job interviews are impossible for me, as is the usual “apply for a hundred places and maybe one will hire you” method of job hunting. The fact that I have a 25 year gap in my resume and no job skills does not help either. Still, I do enjoy working customer service, so half a point here.
Am I reluctant to interact with people unless I know they will like me? Kinda? I guess I have enough faith in my charm to feel like the person will probably like me at first, but I know the clock is ticking on when I am going to say something weird or awkward and they are going to realize I’m an alien and want nothing to do with me. Maybe I should just start off being weird as fuck and get it over with. Another half point.
Do I move very slowly in romantic relationships? Well yeah. So slowly that I have never been in one. I warm up to people pretty slowly because of all my shame and fear. It’s hard for me to believe that someone truly likes me. The real me, not the fox I pretend to be because it’s the only way I can be myself. He can attract people because he’s cute and fluffy and silly and fun. The person playing him , on the other hand, is some kind of bloated swamp ox.
Am I preoccupied with criticism and rejection? From who? I am too isolated to face this much. If I was more engaged with life then yes, this would preoccupy me.
Am I inhibited in new interpersonal situations due to feelings of inadequacy? A million times yes. I feel so awkward and inferior in novel social situations that I want to run away and hide. I feel like I am a horrible, disgusting, unlovable freak who should not inflict his pathetic and nauseating self on an innocent world. So um. Yeah.
Do I see myself as socially inept, personally unappealing, and inferior to others? See the previous response for your answer. But in short : hell yes.
Am I reluctant to take personal risks? All the way yes. To the point of having very little in the way of initiative at all.
Oh, and I am completely unsurprised that people do not take this disorder as seriously as much showier ones like Borderline Personality Disorder because the very nature of AVPD makes us avoid attention and minimize our problems and disappear into the background and do our best to blend in with the wallpaper.
So of course it doesn’t seem as big a deal as the other disorders in its class. We don’t slash our wrists or punch cops or count our change dozens of times because we are sure that if we don’t, our moms will die.
We just… fade away.
And that’s where we stay.
Till the end of our days.
More on this topic after the break.
More on AVPD
My theory is that our new pal Doctor Grande refers to Avoidant Personality Disorder as AVPD and not APD because APD already refers to Anti-social Personality Disorder.
Assuming that’s still a thing.
And now, more homework!
Relax, you don’t actually have to watch that one. I include it here purely for reference.
To sum up : Like with everything, there’s a genetic component and an environmental component to how one ends up with AVPD.
Genetically, there is depression all through my family. At least the Acadian part of it, anyway. Though I would not be surprised if it runs in the Ontario part of it too, given that my paternal grandfather was Satan.
Just an evil, evil man.
And my mother is shy in a way I find quite familiar. She’s never had AVPD, as far as I know, but that might be because she had a job and kids to keep her from ever retreating from reality like I have. Plus I am positive she suffered from depression when I was a kid but she does not agree.
“Environmental” seems like a funny term for traumatic life events. “Biographical” might make more sense but it would just remind people of Peter Graves.
Anyhow, yeah, I primarily blame my AVPD on my rotten childhood.
First I was raped when I was only four years old, wounding me so terribly that I have not recovered 43 years later (and counting). And I couldn’t tell anyone about it. I didn’t even have the words. How do you even talk about something like that?
Kids today know. They get the education about bad touches and such. But that came in the Eighties. I didn’t have it back in 1977.
Subsequent to that, I was emotionally starved during a very important developmental phase. I had no friends after Pat and Janet went to school ahead of me and I didn’t go to kindergarten either, so right there, before I even set foot in school, I was socially isolated right when I needed social connection the most.
Patient readers know the rest. Outcast at school, ignored at home, nobody wanted to deal with the weird sloppy precocious fat kid, not even my teachers, so I went through childhood alone till Grade Six.
By then, I was already the brilliant basket case you all know and love.
So yeah. That is why I am in the “neglect” category of AVPD. There were a lot of people who might have helped me but I was just too hard to deal with.
Kind of puts my present state of disability in perspective, doesn’t it? Given the atrocious conditions of my childhood, it’s a wonder I can function at all.
Oh, one last thing : another article mentioned that amongst therapists, AVPD is considered to be extremely hard to treat.
Well duh. I have shit I still haven’t told my therapist because I am too afraid he will reject me. We are a skittish and timid bunch prone to bolting for the shadows at the slightest sign of trouble. I spent years without any kind of therapy because it was so hard to bring myself to ask my doctor for it.
Damn right we are hard to treat. But I swear I’m worth it.
It just takes a lot of digging, that’s all.
Anybody got a shovel?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.