Avoidant Personality Disorder
Unfinished Self Discovery Research Project
"The APD has the real self in hiding - hiding from an original environment or internal objects that were traumatic, rejecting and abusive. Due to early original pain, the adult APD cannot separate the present from the past, so everyone and everything becomes potentially dangerous and filled with anxiety and fear. As such, the deep core self, reality and everything that can trigger early pain is avoided."
I can certainly relate to this in my own life. I am afraid of my own deep core self, i.e. who I really am. Who I was or was becoming as a young child before the seperation anxiety from my mother became overwhelming for me and beyond the protection of my undeveloped defensive coping mechanisms. I avoid any connection with people or things which cause me to get in touch with the frightful feelings of vulnerability and the deep seated depression which is hidden being incorporated from early childhood into my personality.
Out of fear of confronting my "hidden self" behind all the trauma, I have lived a life disconnected, superficial, and purposeless, my only pleasure being basically an avoidance of pain.
When extreme or restricting circumstances sometimes prevent me from being emotionally able to run away from life and my relationship with people or things, such as even the reality of changing a flat tire, or going to someones house as a guest for dinner I feel the pain of emptiness of being and inability to experience a sense of bonding with others, or to achieve a sense of accomplishment. I just want to go away alone and hide.
It is hard to explain exactly what it is like for me but I feel that when it becomes imposible to get "alone by myself" , or sometimes even to have a feeling of getting "away from myself", the dissociation of Depersonalization is my last defense from this horrible dark depression and hurt I have buried so deeply inside.
As some of you may recall I was initially diagnosed years ago with a Depressive Personality Disorder, but recently I am beginning to see I have lived my life by avoiding "life" as much as possible, which leads my to suspect how great a role the defensive patterns of "avoidance" has had for me over the years. I am thinking that the APD may be the primary pathology I am struggling with. So many of the descriptions of APD correspond to the way in which I have come to live my life.
Anyway I have linked a URL below which addresses the issue of Avoidant Personality Disorder for any who may be interesting in learning more about it, if it is unfamiliar to you. Of course I had heard of AVD over the years but never really looked at it in relation to my own life. Nor to my experiences of DP
http://www.tljones.co.uk/apd/apd.htm
Sincerely
John
