Avoidant Personality Disorder

The diagnostic criteria for avoidant personality disorder are readily available online, tempting many to self-diagnose. But what does it mean, even if you have received the diagnosis from a reputable professional? Is it an explanation, or just a description of what you already know is happening?

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[neasahayes]

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

[Olivetree]

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.

[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.

[matthewdavis]

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.

[freedomwarrior]

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.

[tiggywinkle]

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.

[Vladivstok]

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.