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Avoidant Personality Disorder: The Eschewnicorn Mind-Pilot

6 years ago3,291 words

Most people experience some kind of anxiety or shame in regards to social situations, especially those that go badly. For me, the mental monster that governs these kinds of reactions is perhaps the most potent and evolved of the menagerie in my mind; it's the 'boss' that holds the reins. It's drastically limited my life, and will likely continue to do so... so maybe my only option is to find a way of living 'around' it rather than trying to get rid of it.

So much for updating this more frequently! I've been trying to write this post for days... It's not that there's anything emotionally difficult in it or anything - as with many things I write about, I've pretty much said it all before anyway - but I've just not had the energy. Always an issue, that. Then failing to achieve a day's goals only makes me feel more drained... Ugh.

Anyway. Now that university has been over for a while, I've moved back in with my parents. Well, my mother and step-dad. This is embarrassing and depressing, and I'd rather things were different, but it's not as if I have much of a choice. I'll likely be having brain surgery next month, which will leave me even more helpless than usual for quite a while, and as I'm not lucky enough to have some dearly beloved partner who'd take care of me, I'll have to linger here again. Plus I have no substantial income with which to pay for a place of my own, though I'll talk about that in another post.

I'm 30, so living at home adds to my feelings of being a failure due to cultural expectations and such. It doesn't seem to be that uncommon these days, though. My mother knows of two other people around this age who live with their parents on this street alone, one of whom lives right next door (though both already have careers, of a sort, and and as such are 'further along' than I am). But even so, it's easy to feel ashamed. I suppose I've technically been living away from home by myself while at university, but even that wasn't ideal; most students live in the 'halls of residence' with other random students during their first year, when they're typically about 18, and find friends to live with in a shared house for the second and third years. As I failed to find friends to live with, I had to stay in halls for the whole three years, which is apparently really rare. So that filled me with shame too.

When I was about 18, I assumed that I'd have my life sorted out by about age 25 at the latest. That I'd have a partner, a place to live, things like that. I felt terrified about the idea of moving out and fending for myself, but assumed I'd overcome the anxieties of my youth in time and move on in the world. That didn't happen though, of course. Unfortunately, the same mental processes that have driven me since childhood form the skeleton of my mind even though surface details might grow and change, and I'm still trying to find my place, purpose, and people... though it's got to the point now where I don't expect that I ever will.

Something that's been on my mind a lot recently, as I've reflected how miserably university went - what with all the mind-ravaging loneliness and constant thought of suicide, despite (or perhaps because of) being surrounded by people who could potentially be turned into friends - is how my mind is of course the monster that closes so many doors to me, and its shape could best be described by the label "Avoidant Personality Disorder", rather than 'mere' social anxiety as I've talked about before. This isn't the first time I've described it as such; in ∞ a post from over a year ago ∞, I describe the condition, and the same thought processes that have been going through my mind recently. I don't know if this is a universal property of minds or not, but I find myself repeating the same general patterns of thought again and again, month after month, year after year. Nothing really changes, not permanently. Maybe it never will, maybe it can't. So I know I repeat myself a lot, but it helps, in a way. Maybe.

It does at least help me feel better to read descriptions of the condition which fit me very well, such as this, from Wikipedia:



I like reading things like that because it resonates with me completely, and I suppose it's nice to know it has a label, that it's not just me, that there are surely enough others out there who experience the same species of monster that it can indeed be classed as a species. I wonder what it's like though to be the sort of person - and maybe most people are like this? - who, as a form of ego defence, will reject and deny having any negative traits they read about while eagerly embracing any positive ones. Few would admit to being selfish, most would gladly accept being defined as kind. Or is this not true? I wonder. All I can know for sure is that I have no qualms about accepting these negative traits as part of myself, but maybe that's just a part of my 'condition'.

Also, a common attitude I imagine in my head when having or expressing thoughts about having a labelled 'condition' is that of the surly critic, who'd respond to the embracing of any label - and of self-diagnosis in general - as something that a person needs to be attacked for, told not to do, because obviously by embracing a label they'll alter their behaviour to fit that label, and obviously the only one who can make any kind of diagnosis is some trained professional who's listened to scant, selective bits of personality presentation for a few minutes and read psychometric test responses and compared these to a checklist in the ∞ DSM ∞. Anything other than that is invariably wrong; after all, how could we possibly know ourselves better than a complete stranger who's talked to us briefly?? Mental and personality disorders aren't discrete entities that objectively exist, that necessarily require expert eyes to identify. They're fuzzy labels for nebulous lists of subjectively variable behavioural inclinations, labels which are constantly in flux (some disorders simply cease to exist when a new version of the DSM comes out). Their whole purpose is to succinctly summarise clusters of traits, and with that in mind, I say that my own personality could fairly accurately be described as fitting into the 'Avoidant Personality Disorder' species of personalities. I write this paragraph, with frustration, just because this overly sceptical attitude towards someone self-diagnosing seems to essentially be the programmed, knee-jerk reaction for a lot of people, and it's annoying. It's what happened on deviantART years ago, when I mentioned I might have this, and if I'd been met with more understanding and less "you're just trying to get attention, you deluded idiot!", perhaps I might have found some resource that might have helped me overcome it instead of just developing even more negative feelings towards strangers and less willingness to read what they have to say (what with my hypersensitivity to criticism and all).

But maybe something like this can't be 'overcome', or 'cured'. If mental illness were compared to physical illness, then personality disorders would be more like physical deformities. Depression might be like the flu, while 'AvPD' (as the cool kids call it) might be more like ∞ gigantism ∞. Someone entirely 'normal' could get the flu, be debilitated by it for a bit, then make a complete recovery, returning to normality. Someone with gigantism, however, would have their whole life affected and defined by their condition; all their abilities, disabilities, people's reactions to them, their reactions to others. To 'cure' a person of an overly large body would require such extreme reconstructive surgery that you'd essentially have to remake them from scratch, somehow, and would they even be able to use that new body? It'd be completely infeasible.

Avoidant Personality Disorder and social anxiety/phobia seem to be the same general thing, but with one being a more extreme version, or so the literature says if you look (though there's dispute and disagreement and nothing's clear-cut). You could say that AvPD is the Charizard to social anxiety's Charmeleon, if you were a mature, sophisticated adult like me (Charmander would be 'shyness').



Or maybe that. I say, suddenly remembering some amusing monster designs way back from Miasmon, many years ago, which I felt compelled to draw when I came up with a name for their evolution which made me laugh.

The point is that what I have is 'worse' than social anxiety, and it's more fixed, impossible to change without completely changing who I am. The best I could ever hope for would be to forge a fake mask to wear to cover up my mental deformities (to borrow from the other post), and while I suppose most people have to develop a mask to get by in the world, I feel so... incapable of that in a way that's hard to put into words, but which is very much tied to the nature of this condition. If you were balding, you could hide that with a hat, but what about metre-long devil horns? Not so much.

Some people I've known who have social anxiety as late adolescents / young adults have spoken of how as children, they were bubbly and open to strangers, but then something happened to make them painfully shy. They're able to overcome that anxiety as they grow up. Others were always shy, but that shyness slowly fades as they experience more of the world. With me, though... As a small child, I rarely saw people other than my brothers and father, and I have this memory of being somewhere with a small number of other people, relatives I think - perhaps this was at my grandma's house or something - and just lying on this sofa thing, unmoving like a log, face pressed into the back of it so as to block myself off from the world and the people in it entirely. Strange behaviour for sure. I also missed school more often than not before I moved to Australia at around age 13, even though I was regarded as one of the brightest students in my class, because I dreaded it and my father was so negligent that I could get away with just not going. Now, aged 30, I froze with dread and considered suicide (as if there's a time I ever don't these days, though) when my mother was driving me back home and told me that my step-dad had been saying I shouldn't eat in my room alone this time, like I always do; that I should eat with them instead. A simple thing, to me like being told I'll have to be disemboweled every day. This house is also directly next to a community hall which my step-dad looks after, such that the large kitchen window looks out onto its entrance, affording a clear view of anyone going in or out... and this makes me wary and on edge every time I go into the kitchen in case some stranger sees me for a moment through that window. It also extends online; I mute many YouTube videos that might have someone unfamiliar speaking, and using social media feels as inviting as going to war in the trenches. Even messaging someone I actually like takes an enormous amount of mental preparation first, so I rarely do it.

It's all so absurd, and profoundly pathetic. I'm clever enough to know this is not a way I should be. But I don't feel that it's within my control exactly. I can recognise all these mental processes and how maladaptive they are, but invariably succumb to them anyway. Though I can imagine objections because 'the mind is different to the body', I suppose it's like having a bad back such that you experience pain every time you lift something even though you'd rather not experience that pain. It's not like you can just decide not to and then it'll go away, because you're not choosing to feel pain in response to what you're doing; it's an outcome controlled by processes beyond your control. And I'm aware that's an imperfect analogy that might just provoke a response like "but you can get medication for a bad back" or something.

The worst part isn't the interactions themselves, exactly. Rather, each one is like sitting in a fire, in that they leave burns that continue to ache long afterwards, perhaps forever. Brief conversations that others would immediately forget, consider unremarkable, replay over and over in my mind after the fact, sometimes appearing again years later for no reason, triggered by nothing. Again, it isn't as if I decide to do this after-the-fact review. If anything, I actively resist it, but the surely-warped memories come up again and again and again. The subtlest signs of disapproval or disgust are the worst. Facial expressions of annoyance, disappointment, irritation, bafflement, condescension. Slight shifts in tone of voice hinting at the realisation that they're talking with a weirdo and they regret it or want to get out. Surely strange things I did or said. Everything's put through this negative filter that seemingly 'wants' to find the worst possible interpretation to feed the mental monsters, which eat pain. It doesn't seem worth it to interact with anyone - especially anyone very different to me who'll have no hope of understanding what these mental processes are like - if each interaction leaves this torturous storm for a disproportionately long time afterwards.

It's interesting though that I have both this and a strong desire to be 'naked' about my struggles, to share honestly, to not hide behind a mask, pretend to be something I'm not, or to seem tough rather than flawed so as to protect myself. I avoid so much, but wouldn't say I value my safety in the way that most other people seem to. It's an odd combination, and perhaps not a very compatible one. Most of my thoughts these days seem to revolve around these two concepts. Cringing about little things I've done or said or which others said to me, while wanting to express what it's like to feel this way, and wishing that people were more understanding and less judgemental. That we could all just walk around naked, literally and metaphorically, without laws written and unwritten to penalise people just for being what they are underneath. That people met others with interest and curiosity rather than judging their flaws to divert attention from their own. Back on the deviantART thread I mentioned, where I first wondered aloud whether I had Avoidant Personality Disorder, years ago, people took issue with the fact that I posted about my mental workings at all; surely someone avoidant wouldn't do such a thing. And I suppose many wouldn't. But perhaps that's the part of my mind I want to be, slipping through the cage of AvPD in the only way it can. Or something. I don't know. It's complicated.

Anyway, I'm writing about this because I need to decide what to do with my future, but having a mind like this narrows down my options drastically. Many things that are simple to others would be impossible to me. It's not a matter of 'confidence', which could be built; it's something far deeper-rooted than that. So deeply-rooted that literally killing myself seems infinitely easier than, say, getting a job in a supermarket. It must seem baffling - irritating, even - to people whose minds don't work this way. "Just go out there and do it!". But I just can't.

I'll leave it at this for now, just so then I can finally get this post out of the way. I want to talk about some other stuff, but wanted to get this out first because it's a crucial consideration when thinking about my options, much as something like, say, blindness would need to be considered if someone with that was thinking about what they could do with their life. To suggest that anyone can do anything if only they put their mind to it and put the effort in is just not true, and some of us must contend with limitations more severe than most.

I'd also like to cover some ways to cope with or even to some degree 'overcome' these limitations in another post, so it's not as if I haven't thought about that at all. I suppose this post is a description of the situation, while others will be the "so what now, then?" response to it.

I know that my struggles resonate with some readers of this blog, but I wonder how many - if any - are driven by an Eschewnicorn as I am, or whether they 'merely' have an Emberass by their side. Perhaps those most like me wouldn't be posting, though...

(Also, preemptive edit: I've already been getting 'professional help' in the form of therapy for years and it's done essentially nothing for me. It bothers me a lot when people speak as if going to see a therapist is a magic solution to all mental issues. It absolutely isn't... and I say that as someone who wanted to be a therapist myself.)