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I am a 35year old male and I am an avoidant personality. I know that you can appreciate how tough it is to expose my "secret" to the entire world, risk being found out and suffer the humiliation. It helps that I am anonymous. But right now, I feel a warm, sickly sensation working its way up from my stomach to my throat. But after suffering from an avoidant personality for 35 years, I feel its important to risk humiliating myself in hopes that other APD suffers will share their experiences so that all of us avoidants may benefit.

Observations on APD

The whole point of APD is to avoid anxiety such as that caused by seeking help for APD. This style of personality prevents avoidant personalities from seeking a cure for avoidant personality disorder. What a bizarre personality style to have. Since the personality style prevents us from seeking a cure, there are so few writings on APD. What are psychiatrists supposed to study and write about if they do not have APD patients! Avoidants are their own worst enemy since the fear of humiliation keeps us from coming forward.

Rather than be debilitated by APD, avoidant personalities learn to live with APD (albeit unhappily). Avoidants present a picture of an individual who is reasonably normal on the outside, but hide their fears of humiliation on the inside.

I think it is a characteristic of an APD to store (from a very young age) every humiliation, slight, or hurt on top of each previous humiliation, slight, or hurt so that what is a single humiliation, slight, or hurt to others is a tremendous combination of humiliation, slight, or hurt to an avoidant.

Although I have had friendships in the past, I do not maintain those friendships once I move from the geographic area. For the past year and a half, I have not had any friendships to speak of. At present, I don't have any friends and do not try to have friends. Moreover, I have little to no desire to have friends, probably because it is easier to avoid socializing than risk the general anxiety that comes from the rejection and humiliation. I'm interested in so many things in life, but limit the range of my activities to working, going home, or solitary activities because of this fear of being humiliated. I find going out alone embarrassing because it just highlights that I'm only capable of developing friendships in very particular circumstances. So I don't go out and mainly stay home or go to the gym I put up a good front, but fear about 50% of the people I meet. I'm not depressed, but spend most of my time at a neutral state or slightly on the side of sadness, tense, apprehensive. Just recently, I've began to notice how much people laugh throughout the day whereas I really don't laugh. Since I'm not in the particular circumstances that permit me to develop friendships and do not foresee being in these circumstances, the results is no friends.

I have much going for me. I am successful in my professional life and am a good person. Despite having many reasons to be confident in myself and my abilities, I have low self esteem. In college, I not only use to go to parties, but host them as well. However, before college and now after college, I didn't not like going to parties and mingling. It's gotten so bad that I now find it a chore to even attend work functions or family functions and usually avoid them. When I'm there, I usually move around so as not to engage in any long conversations. It's early November and I'm already working on a good excuse to not attend my employer's Christmas Party in December.

Avoidant personalities have many things going for themselves except for the one thing that permits them to take advantage of what they have. With a "winning" personality, even the worst people can be successful. In the United States, a mass murder named Ted Bundy had such a tremendous personality that he cultivated many friends from all walks of life (before he was caught). With a "losing" personality, even the most intelligent, friendly, honest people will not be successful in life. Success is meaningless if you have no one to share it with. I want to share the success of my life with a wife and family but don't ever see that happening. I was married for several years, but am divorced. I am so alone, but deny it to the extent I need to in order to function.

Those who suffer from avoidant personality disorder feel safe "only if they steer clear of all close relationships in all areas of life. They build solitary, fixed routines -they do the same things the same way every day-to prevent surprise encounters. That although people with this disorder seem like uncaring loners, they care too much. They are so convinced that they won't receive love and approval that they'd rather live alone than endure rejection. Signs of an avoidant personality include butterflies in the stomach, heart palpitations, sweaty palms, clenched muscles and shortness of breath. (Except for the sweaty palms, I constantly have all these signs). Some state social phobics and people with avoidant personality disorder may inherit over aroused nervous systems. When faced with situations that make anyone a little nervous, their bodies over-respond, and they are flooded with terror.

My own actions are all focused around avoiding humiliation and the anxiety that comes from the fear of being humiliation. Prison would be an avoidant personality's worst nightmare come true since there is no way to "avoid" the really extreme anxiety situations that come from being in prison. Certain military obligations would also create the situation of an avoidant not being able to "avoid" anxiety situations. Occupations such as a policeman, fireman, military officer, or other occupations which require group dynamics result in difficulties for the avoidant personality. Occupations such as teacher, psychiatrists, attorney, engineer, scientist, or other occupations which require little group dynamics are easier for an avoidant personality to deal with. My guess is that most avoidant personalities are successful in their professional life because of the intense desire to understand themselves and their environment.

As for my learned coping mechanism, I shut off most of my feelings so as to be able to tolerate the isolation from people, where the isolation allows me to avoid the anxiety but causes great pain in the remaining active feelings. It makes me feel sick to my stomach to think that I am an avoidant personality, that others can humiliate me because I am an avoidant personality, that despite all my accomplishments, I am worthless and nothing because I can't even achieve something as simple as having friends.

Medication proscribed by a psychiatrist can remove the anxiety so as to enable you to understand your learned improper reactions to various situations. By understanding your learned reactions to various situations, you can slowly alter the way you react in the future to various situations. Since there is a finite amount of situations to which the avoidant improperly reacts, therapy need not be a life long activity, but one that has a beginning, middle, and end.

As for my childhood environment, my parents are socially awkward and have few friends. My father is retired and has no friends. He's never had any friends as far as I can tell, although he and my mother do go out with people they know. Growing up, my parents beat me and my siblings for punishment when we did something wrong. I never received any advice on anything from my father and all the advice my mother gave me turned out to be wrong. I had to teach myself everything, but obviously missed a lot about life. I don't know if this changed my personality or developed undesirable aspects of my personality while leaving undeveloped the potentially positive aspects of my personality.

Avoidant personalities are a pleasant people. The pleasantness is a defense mechanism that wards off humiliation to a certain extent. However, in my own experience, this pleasantness coupled with my desire to avoid people is seen as weakness by both men and women. People avoid me because I refuse to open up my feelings to them, but I too desperately want people to like me, to be part of the group. Mostly, I'm treated with indifference, which is so much better than being humiliated. Contempt is another, but less common reaction to the avoidant personality.

As a child, I took things apart and eventually learned how to fix them. Perhaps even then I was trying to take myself apart to learn about myself in order to fix myself. But what was a small boy supposed to do where even his parents offered no help. I've been trying to remember at what age my social decision making went wrong, but haven't determined the age yet. Although I remember always being attracted to girls, I was deathly afraid of approaching a girl that I liked. This fear started around 5, I think. In 12th grade, I went on my first date and kept trying to remember how to kiss a girl based on my experiences before kindergarten! I want a relationship with a woman, but fear the humiliation that comes from rejection.

I stay away from social situations and push people away when I am in social situations. Just recently, I reflected on my life and realized that I had nothing in my life to keep me from participating in life. I know that I am smart, attractive, honest, and have a high paying job -- everything people strive for -- and yet I have low self esteem, no friends and no social life. I've worked on all aspects of my life driven by the need to understand what is wrong with me. Maybe I was too dumb. I now have several college degrees. Maybe I wasn't athletic. I drove myself to be strong in swimming, running, and weightlifting. Maybe I was mean spirited. I bent over backwards to help everybody out. I am now at the point where all obstacles have been removed to reveal my social under development. At 35, I've run out of excuse and have to face the fact that I am an avoidant personality and need help -- medication to control the anxiety, cognitive behavior analysis to understand my improper learned reactions. I remember in Kindergarten (age 5) that I use to like playing by myself and at age 7 in the second grade, feeling that I was not part of the group. I remember at age three or five, standing in the street just in front of the drive way of my parent house feeling alone in the world. A healthy child should not have a perception of being alone.

I remember it was when I was 22 that I first started to understand that the adult-like decisions I made as a very young child were significantly affecting me as an adult. During the 13 years after age 22, I've spend much time contemplating on my childhood, having anger at my parents, brothers, people I knew then. I've racked my brain trying to figure out why, figuring out who am I, what does it mean to be "me?" The anger has passed me by, but so has the outward desire to have friends.

Avoidant's do not fear one on one situations. I don' have a fear of public speaking, don't mind one on one conversations. But I definitely avoid group discussions. If I am in a group discussion, I always break into my own quiet discussion with one person in the group and out of the corner of my eye see others trying to hear what I am saying. I think that in teaching and public speaking, it is a one on one situation where the audience is "one" group. In a group social situation, everyone is equal so avoidant personalities can't create a one on "one group" situation.

Avoidants have good memories, but only for painful situations. The situations I remember most from my childhood are the painful situations. In fact, I have very strong memories of most of the painful situations throughout my life. My memory for the good situations is minimal. As an aside, I don't remember my dreams if in fact I do have them. Maybe once or twice a year I'll wake up and realize that I had a dream. Dreams supposedly resolve the conflicts or painful situations we have. With no dreams, no resolution. Perhaps this is a characteristic of an avoidant personality. Maybe its something else all together

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