29- Avoidant personality disorder (part 2)

To continue the subject I started in post 28, I want to discuss Avoidant Personality disorder. There are 7 main criteria to diagnose a person with this social inhibition ; as long as minimum 4 of them are found, the patient has this disorder.





1. The patient avoids occupational social activities that involve significant interpersonal contact for fear of being criticized, disapproved or rejected : 
ex, I hate all extra-professional activities, such as meals, meetings and so on.

2. Reluctance to get involved with people unless certain of being liked : 
i can add and specify that I need intellectual and emotional appreciation, to boost my low self-confidence

3. Is reserved in intimate  relationships, out of fear of being exposed to shame or ridicule : 
As I said in post 26, this fear is present within me. Eg the fear of going to the pool (see post 6), due to several phobias ; one created by a near-drowning experience, by social anxiety and a fear of ridicule; rejecting my masculine image, I always hated my body hair such that I considered and still consider it a bit ridiculous ... exposing myself in a bathing suit exasperates me ... and this is just one example...

4. Fear of being criticized or rejected in social situations : 
After painful experiences of rejection and above all, long before that, words that have demoralized me and depersonalized, I struggled to assert myself and respond to criticism ... coupled with social phobia, it becomes almost impossible to do, hence ... avoidance and avoidant personality disorder.

5 Is inhibited in new interpersonal situations because of a feeling of not being adequate : 
I need lots of time to get used to new people, and I never know how to initiate new friendships. The majority of my friendships were forged online and, for some, after a while, met in person.
Otherwise, people introduced me to others, and after the initial anxieties, I could accept and build some links ... but it has never been easy and still isn't, which results first in avoidance, and secondly, I cling to friends out of fear of losing them .. Because it was hard to make the connection!
The vicious circle here can either send me to isolation when I avoid contacts, or to complicated friendships to maintain, as I either suffocate and choke them, and I lose anyway, or chose to end it myself..

6. Perceives himself/herself as socially incompetent, unattractive or inferior to others: 

When a person experiences, like I have lived with a past where people constantly belittle and ill-treated me, it is difficult to believe that I'm comptent, in whichever area of life. I always struggle against this sense of inferiority because I feel ''defiled'' or ''damaged'' and always have deficiencies emotional growth, intellectual pursuits and so on ; traumas and phobias that many people around me do not understand...

7. Is particularly reluctant to take personal risks or to engage in new activities for fear of be embarrassed : 
After all these factors and hard life, I am always reluctant, even for activities I intellectually know there is ''no risk'' or ''lower risk'', but emotionally through automatic and bad thought associations, my automatic emotional responses are not good, and I avoid these situations...

Concluding this small tour of the 7 criteria, as I showed, I have not 4  but the entire 7 symptoms ... yes, I am completely suffering from avoidant personality disorder, and for this and for fear of ending isolated  (see post 26 ), I force myself to face social situations as it is imperative that I get rid of this disorders as well as my social phobias.