avpdpossum

[avpdpossum]

avpd/szpd culture is experiencing "love" more like a reptile would--in the sense that you are familiar to me and I appreciate you, however I cant feel any deep emotional connection to you.

#oh my god yeah this is it exactly #the closest i usually get to a deeper connection is…protectiveness? i guess? #even when there is a deeper connection it’s not like. the same as what ‘love’ is supposed to be i think #like it’s just I Feel Safe With You but that’s so rare that it constitutes a really deep emotional connection in itself #it’s hard to articulate the difference between Love and my version of it but i know it is different bc i felt Love in the past #poss.reblogs #avpd #feels

[avpdpossum]

me: i know they’re you’re friends and they’re really nice but that just makes them even scarier because i really want them to like me and would be genuinely devastated if they didn’t so it’s just easier to never engage with them and endlessly wish i was friends with them without ever risking being rejected by them even if that means i never actually get to be their friend. like sure, strangers are scary too, but they’re easier because i’m not super invested in whether they like me or not. the people i already like? those are the most terrifying people ever. you know what i mean?

my boyfriend, who doesn’t have avpd: no. no i do not know what you mean. that is literally the exact opposite of how my social anxiety works. i can’t even imagine how that would feel.

#they get regularly baffled by my avpd shit #bc our bad-at-people-ness as socially anxious autistics looks similar on the surface #but when you dig into it ive got all sorts of weird avpd shit going on that they can’t understand #poss.speaks #personal #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c

[avpdpossum]

me: avpd is something i’ll have forever. even if i learn how to manage it and accommodate it, it’ll always be part of the way my brain works and i’ll always have to deal with certain challenges that come with that. i have no interest in trying to reach “complete recovery” because that would require fundamentally changing my brain, and i would rather stay myself and learn how to live a good life with the brain i have.

my avoidance: starts becoming more prominent again after a period of time where it was easier to live with, resulting in the return of a lot of feelings i’d gotten used to not feeling so strongly, because having an easier time for a while doesn’t mean my lifelong neurodivergence has just disappeared.

me:

#i’ve been mostly dealing with more passive/less emotional avoidance lately #so those big feelings starting to come back? terrifying terrifying go away #yes avpd will be a lifelong struggle for me. yes i know and accept that. yes i am screaming crying clawing at the bars of my enclosure rn #i can understand my reality and still want to fight god for making it my reality sometimes #poss.speaks #personal #vent #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c

[avpdpossum]

the way people talk about and treat avoidants and schizoids and any other outcast is disgusting. we are not bad people for not fitting in with everyone else or for being different than everyone else. we did not choose this lifestyle, it was forced on us by you, the rest of society. you forced us into a life of isolation and then blame us for being alone.

#god. yeah #isolation is a vicious cycle bc people push you away when you seem like too much of an outcast #and it’s like well. shouldn’t have cast me out then i suppose. don’t know why you’re making that my problem #poss.reblogs #avpd #solitaryschizoid

[avpdpossum]

What do you think would be some better internal indicators for AvPD?

i while ago, i posted my own rewritten criteria for avpd. the point of it was pretty much to create a set of criteria that focuses on the internal aspects of avpd, not just the outward presentation.

the first section of it is what i would consider the core internal features of avpd, the psychological patterns that make it what it is:

view of self as inadequate, socially inept, personally unappealing, incompetent, inferior to others, or otherwise "wrong" in some way.

prominent fear of negative evaluation (i.e. being criticized, embarrassed, disapproved of, rejected).

general life dissatisfaction associated with the perceived presence of negative evaluation.

hypervigilance to possible signs of negative evaluation. tendency to perceive neutral or even positive responses as negative. may have difficulty paying attention to the situation at hand due to a preoccupation with searching for and preventing such signs.

heightened emotional sensitivity to perceived negative evaluation. intense emotional distress/dysregulation upon experiencing perceived negative evaluation, characterized primarily by feelings of shame and potentially activating a fight/flight/freeze/fawn arousal response.

the third section also is completely made up of internal indicators, and many of the associated features are internal experiences as well, if you’d like a more extensive list. i hope that helps!

#poss.answers #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c

[avpdpossum]

this is 100% a thing, and my understanding is that it’s a feature of the DSM, not a bug. does that mean i agree with it? definitely not, it’s one of my big complaints about the DSM, but i do think it’s done purposefully.

because the thing is, the DSM is a diagnostic manual. the point of it isn’t really to describe the inner workings of a disorder, it’s to lay out a way for clinicians to identify that disorder in someone else from an outside point of view. of course, a clinician is never going to be able to read their patient’s mind to see exactly what’s going on in there, so the DSM offers behavioral indicators that (supposedly) correspond to what’s going on in the patient’s head. that’s why i get so annoyed by resources that explain a diagnosis by listing the diagnostic criteria; they don’t provide a full or accurate picture of how a given disorder actually works because how it works isn’t the focus of the DSM in the first place.

obviously, there are a few flaws in this strategy. first, it assumes that an internal experience will always present externally in a specific way, which obviously isn’t true. even most clinicians who use the DSM will acknowledge that that isn’t true, but they’re still using a resource that doesn’t have a good way to deal with the fact that the same internal experience can look wildly different on the outside depending on who’s experiencing it. it also runs on the assumption that a patient can’t tell you what they’re experiencing — that may be true of some patients who either don’t realize that their experience isn’t “normal” or who aren’t in a mental state where they can do that kind of self-reflecting, but it’s not true of all patients (or even most) and i don’t like that it encourages clinicians to not just talk to their patients instead of relying on outside indicators that may or may not mean what the DSM says they do. third, the way they pick which behaviors will be the markers for a given diagnosis is very clearly rooted in biases about those diagnoses, and i think approaching it from an inside-out perspective where the inner experiences of the patient are the foundation of it would allow for a lot more compassion. i doubt it would be set up the way it is if so many clinicians weren’t allergic to just…talking to their patients to better understand them. fourth, it assumes the clinician has a solid understanding of how each disorder functions and just needs help with how to consistently identify it in the real world, when in reality, most clinicians really only have a solid understanding of a handful of the most common ones. it’s supposed to be a diagnostic manual, but when a clinician really has no knowledge of the thing they’re dealing with outside of its DSM checklist, that diagnostic information is treated as the be all end all of the disorder when that’s not what it should be.

i’m reminded of a man i talked to at work who told me about how it says on his record that he has auditory hallucinations even though he doesn’t because the doctors saw him talking to himself and just assumed he was responding to voices when he wasn’t. i’m also reminded of my own experience with a psychiatrist who decided my biggest issue was anxiety based on the fact that she observed me bouncing my leg and playing with my hair throughout our appointments. while i do have anxiety, she completely missed that those particular behaviors weren’t anxiety-related at all — they were stims. in both cases, it’s pretty clear how clinicians will use their understanding of what certain behaviors mean to decide what a patient must be experiencing instead of asking the patient themselves, because that’s the kind of impersonal deduction that the DSM encourages with the way it describes diagnoses, and how that leads to them getting things wrong.

at the end of the day, the DSM doesn’t care about our internal experiences. it cares about making it as easy and seemingly scientific as possible to put labels on us based on what kind of weird we are on the outside. it’s a tool for categorizing us, not for truly understanding us.

I feel like a lot of the personality disorder criteria in the DSM-5 focuses on the outward appearance of the disorder rather than what the person with the disorder is actually feeling. Npd and aspd are what I’m thinking of as examples right now, so let’s go over those first. People with any sort of personality disorder, feel free to chime in and add any thoughts you may have on how the DSM-5 represents your disorder.

Npd’s symptoms in the DSM-5 are listed as:

A persistent pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy

An exaggerated, unfounded sense of their own importance and talents (grandiosity)

Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited achievements, influence, power, intelligence, beauty, or perfect love

Belief that they are special and unique and should associate only with people of the highest caliber

A need to be unconditionally admired

A sense of entitlement

Exploitation of others to achieve their own goals

A lack of empathy

Envy of others and a belief that others envy them

Arrogance and haughtiness

The focus is on how other people might see someone with the disorder rather than what someone with the disorder might feel. As someone with npd, the main symptom of the disorder is lack of self-esteem. Someone with npd very well might experience or do these things BECAUSE of a lack of self-esteem, but I feel like the lack of self-esteem isn’t focused on enough for how much it impacts everything else. Honestly I’d go as far as to say it’s the very root of the disorder (y’know, besides trauma. But the low self-esteem is caused by trauma so, you get what I mean).

Now, I don’t personally have aspd myself, but from what I’ve heard from people with the disorder (people with aspd feel free to chime in), anhedonia is pretty much the biggest symptom? But if you look at the criteria it’s…

A persistent disregard for the rights of others

Disregarding the law, indicated by repeatedly committing acts that are grounds for arrest

Being deceitful, indicated by lying repeatedly, using aliases, or conning others for personal gain or pleasure

Acting impulsively or not planning ahead

Being easily provoked or aggressive, indicated by constantly getting into physical fights or assaulting others

Recklessly disregarding their safety or the safety of others

Consistently acting irresponsibly, indicated by quitting a job with no plans for another one or not paying bills

Not feeling remorse, indicated by indifference to or rationalization of hurting or mistreating others

And again, it’s not like people with aspd CAN’T experience or do these things BECAUSE of their anhedonia, but I really feel like that should be emphasized. Anhedonia isn’t even LISTED as a symptom. But when I listen to people with aspd talk about their experiences, the most commonly talked about symptom is generally feeling extreme boredom constantly, aka anhedonia. Again, people with aspd feel free to correct me and or add any thoughts you may have.

Looking at the criteria now, I see the same sort of issue with stpd (though I see this issue to an extent in the criteria for every personality disorder). I don’t have stpd myself so if you do, feel free to correct me or add anything, but I swear to god if I have to see the word “odd” or “eccentric” or “peculiar” one more fucking time. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!!!!! The definition of those words is going to be different from person to person. It literally feels like they’re saying “I have diagnosed you with ABNORMAL disorder.” Like…please be more specific, I’m begging. What do you mean by ODD? What classifies “odd” behavior?

Anyways, that’s my little rant. I just wanted to see what other pd havers thought about it???

#can you tell this is something i have a lot of opinions about #i have on multiple occasions considered going into research specifically focused on developing psychometrics #because i have sooo many thoughts about how we categorize neurotypes and define who goes in what category #i’d love to explore alternatives to this system in an official capacity but alas. i suck ass at statistics #poss.adds #discussion #littlemeowmeowmaeve #not avpd #<- not specifically at least

[avpdpossum]

Me, who fractures myself into more palatable pieces, presenting only one facet of myself at a time to different groups of people:

what if I made just one more sideblog

#oh so we’re just all doing this then #the amount of sideblogs i have is truly astonishing #like it’s over a dozen. idk exactly how many but i do know it’s Too Many #poss.reblogs #feels #avpd #avpdvoidspace

[avpdpossum]

i might try to do a deep dive into the conflicted avoidant subtype at some point, and maybe the self-deserting subtype after that. every time i read the descriptions of them, i’m struck by how accurately they describe me, and i wish there was more info about the subtypes out there

#i know a lot of people don’t like the pd subtypes #and i agree with that when it comes to some of them #including one of the avoidant subtypes tbh #i definitely don’t think they should be treated as discrete categories where you can only belong to one (hence me relating to both of these) #but like. i can’t deny that these two make so much sense for me and i wish i could do more with that #poss.speaks #avoidant subtypes #subtypes #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c

[avpdpossum]

sometimes avoidance is a very conscious and active thing but sometimes you don’t even know that it happened until much later. sometimes you just look back one day and realize you haven’t even thought about your dream job in 4 months because 4 months ago someone said something negative to you about it and that was all it took for your brain to throw the idea away. sometimes you think your life is going pretty well until someone asks you what you’ve been up to and you have no idea how to answer because you haven’t actually done anything in months.

#poss.speaks #feels #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c

[avpdpossum]

this tiktok is so funny to me as someone whose primary mental health struggles are avpd and dissociation.

“mental illness is what happens when you’re the person who breaks the generational avoidance of pain and emotions” bestie my mental illnesses are must avoid everything disorder and nothing feels real disorder. if this was supposed to make me better at confronting and dealing with pain, it failed miserably.

like yeah, true, mental illness is often a result of generations of pain being passed down, but it’s less in a “we are the spiritual leaders chosen to break this generational curse” way and more in a “my parents treated me like shit because it was all they knew and it fundamentally changed the way my brains works” way (sometimes with a side of “my family’s brains all work differently in a way that i inherited because there’s some genetic component to it”).

dealing with generational pain and breaking my family’s cycle of avoidance isn’t something that i was ~born to do~; my mental illnesses don’t make me somehow uniquely suited to that task. it’s actually something that’s infinitely harder for me to do because of the ways my mind has been affected by those things, but which i have to do anyway because i’m too aware of it now to just let it continue unchallenged.

but sure, his version works too…as long as you pretend that mood and anxiety disorders are the only mental illnesses.

#maybe it’s inspiring to some people but i just had to laugh #im not a shaman or a healer im a possum. if shit gets stressful i freeze and do not unfreeze until the bad thing is gone #poss.speaks #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c #dissociation #depersonalization #derealization #dpdr #actually dpdr

[avpdpossum]

google search: how to stop secretly hoping i get fired from my job even though it pays really well and is really good experience and i mostly like the work i do there. i don’t want to get fired but god, it would be such a relief if i did, the idea of going in fills me with indescribable dread.

#fuck working let me be a hermit #how am i supposed to isolate myself in these conditions #poss.speaks #feels #personal #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c

[avpdpossum]

another fucked up thing abt avpd (n personality disorders generally i think) is how hard it can be to separate rational/healthy thought from disordered thought. am i being kind or am i being self sacrificial? is this something i just shouldn't do around people or am i masking? would this actually be rude or is it normal to other people? sometimes i cannot fucking figure it out

#this is so real #and my assessment always seems to be different than my therapist’s so then im like. okay which one of us is wrong here now im extra confused #poss.reblogs #feels #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c #frogtrenchcoat

[avpdpossum]

today the thing about avpd that's the most upsetting to me is that no one can know me how i am when alone. it is the best version of myself & i am utterly alone in knowing it. i wish i could cook for people i care about. i wish i could live with people n keep our space clean. i wish i could think straight when among friends.

#god i feel this #ive been trying so hard to show that person to my boyfriend but even that is just. never quite possible #poss.reblogs #feels #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c #frogtrenchcoat

[avpdpossum]

Hi. After following a hyperfixation rabbit hole (thank you, ADHD and Autism) I have been wondering if I have AvPD. I've been obsessively researching it for a while now, and it would make a lot of sense for the struggles i've been facing that just aren't really explained by my other diagnoses but also aren't really *normal* per se, but I'm scared I'm wrong or just looking for something else to be "wrong" (i put wrong in quotes bc i dont think any disability/mental illness is actually something wrong, but that's how a lot of the people around me perceive it) with me so I feel like my suffering is more valid. My thoughts and hang ups are this:

I feel like my avoidance isn't severe enough to qualify (also me: hasn't made a follow-up appointment with either my neurologist or psychiatrist bc the idea of making the phone call "wrong" is crushing; changes the time I eat lunch so I don't have to either ask to sit with the people I know would let me sit with them bc they consider me or a friend or have them see me sitting alone even tho I literally like them and want them to be my friends; still haven't applied for my college housing accoms that I literally need bc I'm too scared i'll get turned down; feels crushing embarrassment even existing in the same space as my roommate; has a grand total of 1 friend)

It could just be my social anxiety/autism/agoraphobia. I feel like none of these really explain how deeply I feel rejection (my best friend was too busy to eat dinner with me like we usually do bc finals season and I nearly threw up bc of how much it hurt, and I ended up in tears for almost an hour) or just how crushingly embarrassing I find being perceived by others/existing to be (I literally can't make phone calls unless I'm locked in my dorm without my roommate there because I feel like people will judge me for doing a normal human activity like answering my mom's phone call; can't brush my teeth in the morning bc what if people see and only do it at night when most of the dorm hall is asleep), the constant reassurance I need from people (I'm constantly asking my best friend (only friend really) if I'm annoying them/too much work/going to get left by them/actually welcome to hang out with them).

I also wonder if my self-esteem is too high since I know low self-esteem is a key part of AvPD? I don't feel like I'm inferior academically/intelligence wise, hell I'm kind of arrogant in that respect, but also feel like I'm not good enough/interesting enough/pretty enough/funny enough for someone to want to be around me and have struggled with suicidal ideation because of it. I sometimes (by that I mean almost weekly) have meltdowns where I end up just wallowing in my own self-hatred for hours and ignoring people's texts/my homework bc I feel like i'm not good enough to have friends/long term partners.

I'm also not particularly quiet when I *am* in social situations. I tend to blurt out whatever's on my mind, even though I immediately regret it 99.9999% of the time, and my ADHD impulsivity results in me interrupting people a lot even tho it makes me feel like a horrible person. I always feel like I've overshared to everyone (tho my best friend, the only person I can be around all the time and not have a meltdown, says I actually under-share and should open up more to people).

I don't have any childhood trauma that could have caused it, at least I don't think? Like. My parents are amazing, they've always been there for me emotionally and physically. I was kind of bullied in pre-school through elementary school (people would take stuff from my bag and throw it and make me "fetch like a dog," I was really short so they'd hold stuff out of my reach) and never really had friends in middle school, just these three girls who let me hang out with them when I was around but would ignore my texts a lot, not invite me places they were going, etc, and after I moved away just before high school i didn't really bother to try making friends bc even tho i was lonely it just didn't seem like it was worth it bc they wouldn't like me anyway and I was just gonna go to college soon and they'd leave me then but none of that's really traumatizing?

I don't know. I feel like it really fits but also like if it were actually a big enough problem to qualify as a personality disorder my therapist would have caught it by now? And I'm scared to bring it up bc if she thinks i'm wrong i'll probably never want to talk to her again bc i'd be so embarrassed. Sorry, this was really long. If you actually read all of this, I guess I just want to ask if you think it's even possible I could have it.

i'll give you the short answer first: yes, it's absolutely possible that you could have it. i can't tell you if you do or not, but i can tell you that all of the doubts you mentioned are things i've personally struggled with while figuring my avpd out.

i'll put a much more in-depth answer addressing each of your concerns under the cut:

I'm scared I'm wrong

here's the thing: being wrong doesn't hurt anyone. people will act like researching your own potential diagnoses and coming to the wrong conclusion is the end of the world, but the reality is, there's very little actual harm that could come from a self-misdiagnosis.

with a clinical diagnosis, if the doctor is wrong, that could end with consequences like taking the wrong medication or doing therapies that do more harm than good to you. but just doing your own research and coming to your own conclusion? the worst that happens is you use the wrong word for a while and then eventually realize it doesn't fit as well as you thought it did, or you ask a doctor about it and they decide it's not a good fit and (if they're a good doctor) help guide you toward a more accurate explanation of what you're experiencing. either way, there's no harm done!

or just looking for something else to be "wrong" with me so I feel like my suffering is more valid

here's the thing: whether avpd is the answer or not, you're suffering. and if you're suffering and you want to better understand why that's happening, you're allowed to do that! your suffering is valid whether there's a name attached to it or not, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to want a name for it. it's only natural to want to understand why you feel the way you do and find people like you.

and if you're worried about a "psychology student syndrome" kind of thing – that you might just be projecting symptoms onto yourself that you don't really experience – the best thing you can do for that is to take some time to really look at yourself and your life and see if you see those things taking place. don't worry about if they're "as bad" as other people's; if you see examples of those things in your life and you're suffering because of them, that's all it takes to know you're genuinely experiencing it.

I feel like my avoidance isn't severe enough to qualify

it seems like you already know this on some level, but yeah, all of the things you listed after this sentence absolutely sound like some pretty significant avoidance to me. again, i can't tell you if it's avpd or not, but those do sound like the kinds of things i would count toward my own self-diagnosis if it were me.

there's no hard line of how severe your avoidance has to be, or any real way to objectively measure severity in the first place. if those things are getting in the way of you living your life and/or causing you to suffer emotionally, that means they're bad enough to be taken into consideration.

the secret is, almost no one feels like what they're experiencing is bad enough. i've had times in my life where my avoidance literally almost killed me, and i still wonder if it's "bad enough". don't let that imposter syndrome feeling stop you from better understanding your brain and getting the support you need.

It could just be my social anxiety/autism/agoraphobia. I feel like none of these really explain how deeply I feel rejection or just how crushingly embarrassing I find being perceived by others/existing to be, the constant reassurance I need from people.

this feeling was actually exactly what started me on the path that led to me realizing i had avpd. i knew that i was autistic and socially anxious, and i thought for a long time that those explained what i was experiencing, but the more i interacted with people around me who were also socially anxious autistics, the more i realized i was dealing with something none of them seemed to understand.

and all of the things you described – intense emotional dysregulation caused by rejection and embarrassment and needing constant reassurance to function in social situations – are classic avpd things. so i would say, if your gut tells you those things aren't being explained well enough by the words you already have to describe yourself, avpd is definitely worth considering.

I don't feel like I'm inferior academically/intelligence wise, hell I'm kind of arrogant in that respect, but also feel like I'm not good enough/interesting enough/pretty enough/funny enough for someone to want to be around me and have struggled with suicidal ideation because of it. I sometimes (by that I mean almost weekly) have meltdowns where I end up just wallowing in my own self-hatred for hours and ignoring people's texts/my homework bc I feel like i'm not good enough to have friends/long term partners.

hey, you're talking to the guy who's not just avoidant but also a narcissist. avpd can absolutely coexist with being highly confident (or even overconfident) in certain parts of yourself.

it also sounds like that confidence is an exception to the rule. feeling like you're "not X enough" for other people to the point of having self-isolation spirals or suicidal ideation because of it are really common forms of low self-esteem in avpd. if you ever here an avoidant refer to having an "avpd spiral" or "shame spiral", the experience they're talking about is a lot like what you described.

I'm also not particularly quiet when I *am* in social situations. I tend to blurt out whatever's on my mind, even though I immediately regret it 99.9999% of the time, and my ADHD impulsivity results in me interrupting people a lot even tho it makes me feel like a horrible person. I always feel like I've overshared to everyone

the stereotype of avpd is a super shy and quiet person, and some of us definitely are like that (myself included), but not all avoidants are. there are some who mask their avoidance by coming off as incredibly social and talking to people a lot, and others who (like you described) talk a lot even if they don't want to because of other aspects of their neurotype.

i think those feelings of regret and shame that you feel in response to what you're saying are really the important thing here. those internal experiences are much more fundamental to what avpd is than how they present externally, so the fact that you're experiencing them means i definitely wouldn't count avpd out just because you're not as quiet as some of us are.

I don't have any childhood trauma that could have caused it, at least I don't think? Like. My parents are amazing, they've always been there for me emotionally and physically. I was kind of bullied in pre-school through elementary school and never really had friends in middle school, just these three girls who let me hang out with them when I was around but would ignore my texts a lot, not invite me places they were going, etc

first of all, a history of trauma isn't actually required to have avpd. it's often assumed that personality disorders are also trauma disorders because they are often associated with trauma, but there's nothing suggesting that's always the case.

there's also research that has shown some people are born predisposed to avpd. it tends to cluster in families along with social anxiety, suggesting there's some sort of heritable aspect, and some research suggests avpd might start in childhood with a person having a nervous system that's naturally hypersensitive to certain triggers.

it's also important to remember that the kinds of trauma that can lead to something like avpd aren't always things we would look at as obvious trauma. for example, one paper i found said that a possible form of trauma that could lead to avpd is having an overprotective parent – the parent projects their fears onto the child and, despite just trying to keep them safe out of genuine love and care, ends up teaching their child that the world is dangerous. we might not look at that kind of parenting and automatically see it as traumatizing, and it's hard to fault that parent for trying to keep their child safe, bu the result for the child is the same. especially if we are born with more sensitive nervous systems than the average person, things that seem totally mundane could have a significant impact on how our brains develop.

all of that to say, it is possible that the experiences you described –being bullied in school and excluded by your friends – had enough of an impact to cause the struggles you're experiencing now, even if they don't feel like trauma. it's also possible that they're unrelated, because avpd (if that is what you're experiencing) can develop even in the absence of trauma.

I feel like it really fits but also like if it were actually a big enough problem to qualify as a personality disorder my therapist would have caught it by now?

you'd be surprised what therapists don't catch, especially if there's a much more common and less "scary" label (like social anxiety) that can, on the surface, explain away what you're experiencing. i've been seeing my therapist for 8 or 9 years now and she's very aware of my avoidant tendencies, including how much they get in the way of my life, but she still never brought up avpd with me. whether it’s because they just don’t hear about avpd enough to think of it, because they avoid diagnosing personality in general, because they don’t know “do with” avpd and would rather assume it’s something they do know how to handle, or because they think avpd is just another word for severe social anxiety, a lot of therapists will see all the signs of avpd in a patient but never actually bring up avpd as a possibility.

at the end of the day, you know better than anyone how much of a problem these struggles are for you. if you think this really could be the explanation, don't worry about what she did or didn't catch. therapists aren't infallible; they're human, and they can miss things.

I'm scared to bring it up bc if she thinks i'm wrong i'll probably never want to talk to her again bc i'd be so embarrassed

i 100% get that fear. i actually had that happen to me with my therapist – i brought up a few theories of mine to her, she shot them all down, and i ended up stopping our sessions and eventually going to a different therapist for a while because i felt like i couldn't trust her anymore. ultimately, i went back to her (mostly because the second therapist was an incredibly condescending asshole and my parents didn’t know of any other options), but i honestly still haven't brought avpd up to her to this day because of that.

so i can't blame you at all, and it's okay if you feel like you need to work up to bringing this up with her. try doing some more research and getting more confident in your theory so you feel like you can explain it well to her, and maybe even put together a collection of the evidence you have for it – examples of how you feel like you exhibit the symptoms, things like that – so you have something to hand to her instead of having to explain it on the spot. once you've looked into it more on your own, you can reevaluate how confident you feel in the theory and decide if it's time to talk to her.

in the meantime, you could try testing the waters to see how she might respond to you bringing up a theory. there are some therapists who are super against patients doing their own research and having their own ideas about what's going on, so it’s good to know if your therapist is one of those people ahead of time instead of finding out the hard way.

i would also recommend telling her that exact fear if/when you do bring this up to her. that sentiment of "one somewhat negative interaction is all it takes for my embarrassment to be so bad that i can never talk to you again" is a really common thing with avpd, and is one of the reasons a lot of avoidants struggle with therapy. so being honest about that fear can both help her understand that she needs to be cautious in her approach if she does disagree with you and could actually make her more likely to agree.

I guess I just want to ask if you think it's even possible I could have it.

so yeah, like i said at the beginning of this, i think it's very possible that you could have avpd. i can't tell you for sure, but pretty much everything you've described here sounds very familiar to me as an avoidant person, so at the very least i think it's definitely worth looking into further and seeing if it continues to feel accurate as you learn more.

i hope this helps! and whether you end up concluding that you're avoidant or that there's something else going on, i hope you're able to find the understanding and support that you need.

#poss.answers #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c

[avpdpossum]

curious about something

feel free to share your PD and your parents' PD/suspected PD if you feel comfortable. i just thought this poll might be an interesting idea considering PDs are believed to be born from a mix of genetic and environmental factors. personally, i have a mix from all the clusters and neither of my parents were diagnosed with a PD, but i've gone over the BPD criteria with my mother and we both heavily suspect she has it. we also suspect my father had NPD, but i am admittedly less confident about that one as he had other diagnosed mental health issues that his symptoms could be attributed to.

#i don’t necessarily *suspect* it #but i also wouldn’t be shocked if that was the case yknow #like i can see how it could be possible but it’s not strong enough that i have any real suspicions #they’ve definitely got Something going on but ive given up on knowing exactly what #poss.reblogs

[avpdpossum]

Remember that not everyone with AvPD is conventionally quiet.

We all avoid things differently, and some people may talk a lot in some or all situations because it makes them feel less vulnerable. That doesn’t mean they don’t have AvPD or that their AvPD is less “severe.”

AvPD isn’t social anxiety plus. Because of that, the type of interaction often plays a major role in our fear. For some, the only situations that bring them fear are ones that involve personal connection. For most, all situations are terrifying, but we’ve had to learn to hide it or overcompensate in most. If we can’t hide it, it means we are completely unable to cope.

The impact a disorder has on a person can’t be determined by its visibility.

#poss.reblogs #discussion #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c #astrangerthatlovesyou

[avpdpossum]

hey i miss ur posts wya

i'm still around! and i do plan on posting here more in the future, this blog is far from dead. my motivation to post on any of my blogs is very dependent on my hyperfixations, and neurodivergence generally is a recurring hyperfixation of mine, but my brain has been occupied by other things lately.

also, around the time i started posting less on here, i was just seeing a lot more posts in the avpd tag that i didn't really want to see – not that the posts were bad, just that they weren't what i was looking for, much more vent posting than resources or discussions or other things like that. so i just stopped going into the tag as much and figured i'd check back in a little while.

all of that plus just..life being life means i haven't been posting much lately, but that doesn't mean i'm done with this blog! i fully plan on coming back here more consistently, i've just been more focused on other things for the last few months.

that being said, if people do want more from me, send asks! ask me questions! i still check my inbox so even if i don't have any ideas for posts, if someone else gives me an idea i will gladly spend some time writing something new here.

#poss.answers