Avoidant Personality Disorder

[Aerodiabetes]

Has anyone been diagnosed with this?
I’ve had it for decades but never come across anyone else with it.

I think my nephew probably has it but hasn’t been diagnosed (or even acknowledged by my sibling…)

That’s interesting. What makes you think
he has it?

He does a very low level job, as no confidence to get anything better, and it’s a job where has very little contact with others, he is very sensitive to criticism, and sees it where there is none. He rarely goes to anything social, even meals out with family. Never had any relationships and lives alone sadly.

It'd vary based on history, but I'd imagine most people with the same symptoms would usually be diagnosed with attachment disorder instead.

Attachment Disorder is rarely diagnosed after age 13. Boys usually get Conduct Disorder and girls get EUPD or another personality disorder, but maybe that's where your similarly symptomatic people are?

EUPD symptoms are very different if my experience with people diagnosed with that in the psych ward are anything to go by
They were very unregulated and dramatic whereas I am withdrawn and reckusivw.

Yes definitely! Having said that (I was misdiagnosed with EUPD), there is definitely a subset of women diagnosed with EUPD who I’ve come across who have what I think of as ‘quiet’ EUPD who may be misdiagnosed. They aren’t loud or attention seeking, they are very withdrawn. I think there is overlap, but your condition (and mine) are different for a reason. The diagnostic criteria, if followed correctly, are different. In my case, I do not have a personality disorder at all (BD) but in a specific type of episode I can look like I have EUPD for short periods of time (the Mixed Episode… all the energy of mania but with full on depression… woo). I feel very sad for people with EUPD but from being bitten too many times, I generally avoid them as I don’t have the patience.

I'm sorry, my point wasn't clear.
As @MiraculousLadybug noted, there's a lot of misdiagnosis. I'd say most people with EUPD don't have EUPD, and my point was intended to be broader... there will be a lot of people with the same thing as you, but they might be out there with a whole range of incorrect diagnoses, of which EUPD will be one (I'm not even sure I agree with EUPD as a diagnostic classification)

Avoidant personality is a classification of attachment disorder in children, it loosely maps to dismissive adult type, but if not misdiagnosed as a different PD, often comes over as depression.

Accurate diagnosis of mental health requires a combination of accurate descriptions by the patient, adequate experience of the clinician and more than a handful of meetings to get a pattern of the impact. This rarely happens, in truth.

I've not actually heard of it. How does it make you feel? I'm very close to someone who has BPD. I thought I had that but I think it could be avoidant.

But I thought it was just inattentive ADD. Gawd I don't know what's wrong with me. There are so many labels now and I don't know how helpful some of it is.

Is it something that makes certain aspects of your life difficult?

It is incredibly debilitating and has ruined my whole life. I don’t have a single friend in the world and am totally terrified of and avoid any social interaction. I was diagnosed by an NHS clinical psychologist in the 1990s after being sectioned and spending over a year in a psychiatric hospital.

Here is some information about the symptoms

Symptoms
According to the DSM-5, common signs of avoidant personality disorder include:

Easily hurt by criticism or disapproval
No close friends
Reluctance to become involved with people
Avoidance of activities or occupations that involve contact with others
Shyness in social situations out of fear of doing something wrong
Exaggeration of potential difficulties
Showing excessive restraint in intimate relationships
Feeling socially inept, inferior, or unappealing to other people
Unwilling to take risks or try new things because they may prove embarrassing

I do have some of those symptoms @Aerodiabetes but I have never been diagnosed. I had a mental health nurse tell me I had quiet EUPD and then another say that EUPD is often misdiagnosed and that my MH symptoms were as a result if childhood trauma 🤔
At one point I didn't know what was happening and just taking any label churned out to try and understand myself.
In my experience, the MH services are dire. I would have loved for a professional to have spent quality time with me over the years and maybe I wouldn't be such a head mess now. X

I’m so sorry you are not getting a proper diagnosis @NippyNinjaCrab. I agree that the NHS MH services are dire these days. I had years of therapy by NHS clinical psychologists and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get that these days with the same symptoms.
I think EUPD often is caused by childhood trauma so your diagnosis could be correct. Otherwise, I’m afraid you will have to pay to see a private psychiatrist if it is important to you to get the correct label. I’m not sure it’s done me any good to know what is wrong with me really. Best of luck x

Thank you for the info. It sounds really awful for you. I'm so sorry it makes you feel those awful ways.

I'm sure you have plenty of positive features. It's just hard for you to see as maybe your illness is making you think you're unlovable ? Sorry, I'm just guessing here.

Are there any support services for it? Counselling? I wish I could be more helpful but all I can say is I really hope things improve for you. X

Thank you, that’s so kind of you x

I believed I had it for years but turned out to be ADHD and dyspraxia

Were you diagnosed with it initially or you just felt the symptoms matched?

Any chance you have autism? DS has almost all of them except he is pretty thick skinned.

It’s interesting you ask that as I’ve recently realised that my life over the last 40 years has been a series of burnouts with a max of about 5 years between each one. However I’ve had so much psychiatric help over the years but no one has ever suggested that I could be autistic.
I’m definitely not thick skinned like your son though!

I have a lot of your same symptoms and I am also thinking I have high functioning autism . Only ever diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression but have suffered since the age of 4 or as far back as I can remember

Have you tried the online autism tests?

If you consider autism primarily as a difference in social communication then much of what you reports your main difficulties to be could map onto that.

I hope you won’t mind me asking but is EUPD another term used for BPD or are those diagnoses different?

Yes, EUPD is the new term for BPD

What I did was asked GPT to ask me the questions to find out if I was. Chat gpt said The answers to the last two said it pushed me into the likelihood of being autistic rather than just autistic traits Try it ? I don’t know whether the dr will refer me to be diagnosed but I hope so.

I read your first couple posts OP and had to look up the difference between ASD and APD as I thought there was some similarity. Your burn outs do sound typical of ASD - I guess you might not have shown issues like black and white thinking, being very literal, trouble with the joining in the flow of conversations, reading facial expressions or other things that might suggest ASD to a Dr perhaps?

PD's are more common in people with ASD possibly because of the trauma they often go through as children so not impossible that you have both.

I'm guessing you probably had a very difficult childhood as well as adult life OP. I'm so sorry it's all been so very difficult for you.

Thanks for your reply.
I do have issues like black and white thinking, being very literal, trouble with the joining in the flow of conversations, reading facial expressions.
I was OK until my early teens though so more likely to be a PD than autism, I think.