Avoidant Personality Disorder

[@neasahayes6044]

One of the best explanations of this problem and a nice short and sweet intro.

[@derunfassbarebielecki]

I also never understood people identifying themselves with a personality disorder and doing nothing about it. I am still almost unable overcoming the fear talking to someone, but I dont excuse it, I just look towards the future and tell myself If not now then next time. Self diagnosis can be very helpful, especially if you internalised your struggles and therefore lost the perception for your own avoidant behaviour. Literally before I thought I might have avoidant personality disorder, I told myself Im unable to socialise, because Im an arrogant human being, because my sub-conscious fears found reasons to avoid people, even if I usually wouldnt care about those things at all.

[@Olivetree80]

Although I agree with the sentiments, it really depends on why someone is seeing themselves in the disorder and what they do about it. Sometimes it can be a motivator or catalyst to get help or get the right help, because it's often overlooked by mental healtj professionals, since it's a very easy disorder to mask or appear just as social anxiety. Diagnoses can be a collaboriative with an individual's mental health providers. If someone is responsible enough, they can see signs of a personality disorder within themselves without coming to a conclusion.

[@nd9366]

Amazing content! ❤

[@matthewdavis3014]

I’ve been through this process. I was self diagnosed AVPD or Schizoid. I knew ultimately fear had to be confronted if I was ever going to improve, but I needed help straightening some things out before confronting fear was productive. I think in my case there was a CPTSD element at play, but the bottom line is this: the avoidance is not necessarily the enemy. In my case it was a warning that I had some work to do before outcomes *could* be favorable. Specifically I had to get my obsessive rumination under control. I needed professional help.

[@kathrynturnbull990]

This is great insight. I think its often the case that people avoid a lot of things when they feel they are not prepared to face a situation. Have a sense of how to cope, and more ways to approach the situation really helps, and it isn't so easy to see what you could be doing differently when you are all alone or have little support. I'm guessing based on what you wrote that you were able to get professional help for this, and that is excellent.

[@matthewdavis3014]

@@kathrynturnbull990 that is correct. I was diagnosed with MDD and SAD but mentioning that I thought I was avoidant did provide more of a context and a more targeted treatment.

[@RandyPaterson]

The one caution that I would give is that the self-diagnosis of personality disorders is an extremely imprecise act. As I discuss in the following video, even very experienced clinicians can’t really manage it. Self-Diagnosing Personality Disorders kzbin.info/www/bejne/rIKkhImnqN5pfJo

[@matthewdavis3014]

@@RandyPaterson I completely agree. That’s what I was trying to get at. While in my case it was a helpful information in the actual diagnosis it is a really bad idea for people to diagnose themselves as a substitute for professional help. Unfortunately here in the US a lot of people get left behind.

[@tiggywinkle5933]

This is a fantastic video. We're living in a world where it's now on trend to "identify" as being any number of things listed in the DSM mostly self diagnosed. I don't think it's useful in many cases to label something as a diagnosis of a disordered personality because that fixes it firmly into the person or parents mind that it's an immovable life long "disorder"; it's so much more useful to look at behaviours, what may lie at the root of them, trauma for example and work on overcoming or minimising the behaviours to enable the person to live a more functional and enjoyable life.

[@Vladiv0stok]

I'm uncomfortable leaving this comment because I'm not used to but I can't understand the logic behind many statements in this video. Self diagnosis can be a motivation for many to start treatment and not disclosing a diagnosis with a patient (like you said you do) is not okay and possibly disruptive for the relationship with the patient. Justifying not disclosing this information saying that an AvPD diagnosis isn't helpful because it just describes a set of behavioral pattern is something applicable to every other mental condition just like using an illness to justify someone's actions is a behavior that could be very well applied to every other mental health diagnosis. AvPD avoidance is not caused because people "have avoided" (you just made a circular argument there, the very same you discarded seconds before manking this statement) but for many reasons not addressed properly and entirely dismissed in this video, making this illness look like a joke basically. The vast majority of people with anxiety disorders can't develop AvPD just because they avoided. Also a PD has very much to do with the person identity otherwise it wouldn't be a PD but just a set of maladaptive patterns that, for the sake of repetion, isn't the only criterion to diagnose a personality disorder.

[@RandyPaterson]

Reading about the symptoms of a mental disorder may indeed help a person see that their challenges are not unique, but common to many others, may indeed encourage them to seek assistance. But the validity of self-diagnosis is likely to be very low - people just can't do it very well. For more on this topic, you might consider this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rIKkhImnqN5pfJo The behavioral patterns seen in AvPD (which form the basis of most of the diagnostic criteria) indeed do not say anything about cause. This was a conscious decision for the DSM teams - to focus on presentation, not etiology. As a result, diagnosis does not tell us much about why a person behaves this way. Usually the answers for 100 people sharing a diagnosis are quite varied. Unlike some of the personality disorders, AvPD is quite strongly tied, in its diagnosis, to maladaptive behavior patterns. Investigating the origins of these behaviors can be very useful in therapy, though ultimately the core of treatment is likely to be a graduated effort to work against the temptations the pattern imposes. What we do not want, in most cases, is to link the pattern with personal identity: "I AM avoidant PD." Doing so imposes a barrier to change: in order to exit the diagnostic category my very self needs to be extinguished and replaced by someone else. This is one of the problems with much diagnosis - it gets over-identified with the person and thus imposes a barrier to development.

[@Vladiv0stok]

@@RandyPaterson Yes, the DSM criteria are purely based on a superficial level of presentation but there are still great insights about what happens in the minds of mentally unwell people there and in some other textbooks. Unfortunately not that many when it comes to AvPD and some other PDs compared to the most "loud" ones. That's why I think working with (and on) what the DSM offers is the best option instead of the new dimensional approach to diagnosis or to simply avoid those labels. But anyways thank you for the reply, it actually helped me better understand your point of view and your video.

[@finleyfield6912]

I agree with this. It isn't circular reasoning that drives avoidant pd, it's a set of inaccurate beliefs that causes them to expect rejection from others. The patient believes "I am inadequate, therefore others will reject me, therefore I should avoid others." That isn't circular at all it's just an innacurate assessment of themselves and others. Sure, we can form unhealthy habits around certain coping mechanisms like avoidance, but to say that we avoid simply because we avoided in the past is not accurate and it's not how this disorder is described in the literature.

[@Vladiv0stok]

@@finleyfield6912 From what I gathered this kind of thinking is proper of some schools of thought that place behaviors above other factors. Personally, as someone with AvPD, this approach helped me tremendously in the first year of struggle but on the long run I needed a different kind of therapy because, as I've said before, avoidance isn't per se the only qualifier to get diagnosed. Ultimately I don't think this kind of thinking (avoidance comes from avoidance) is "harmful" but is a point of view that can limit the therapy progress because it's highly reductive. At least in my case it would. Just my experience.

[@freedomwarrior5087]

I agree, the little bit I know about it, I would agree it's not a personality disorder. It could be an attachment disorder or something that evolved with anxiety reduction like you explained. Likely the only diagnosis that can be viewed as a personality disorder would be NPD in my opinion.