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No. 2455690>>2455832
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posting this for other nonnas that may be curious
No. 2455832
>>2455690Biggest I'm on this photo and I don't like it. I have been refusing to accept I'm very likely to be ND and gaslighting myself with "It's because I couldn't be around people when I was lityle due to [ABC], I just need to be socialized like a dog :)", but it probably goes much deeper than that, even a part of that reasoning is because how fucking autistic I am and was.
I really wish I could go to a psychologist, but I can't pay those $70-100 per visit and social security only gives you therapy if you try to kill yourself and a family member snatches and tells your doc.
AVPD and autism are running my life. Family members think I hate them, I only have a single irl friend, when I try or want to talk to others it ALWAYS goes badly because I fucked up some unspoken rule I'm unaware of, I can't get a job because I don't know how to do anything and interviews always go wrong anyways. Even on the internet I can't talk to others. Some people were kind enough to ask for my Discord because I seem nice (I scream to the void a lot) but I keep refusing their invitations and it makes me want to die every time right after I hit send and realize I keep avoiding everything because I don't know how to hold conversations and I'm scared of 1-1 talk, specially written (which is much harder than simply speaking imo)
I have no money, no friends and everyone thinks I'm failure (this isn't made-up, I have overheard how my parents talk about me to others). I honestly don't want to live anymore.
(emoji) No. 2455868>>2455897
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>>2455845Here's an answer I got from google.
No. 2455904>>2455910>>2455953
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>>2455845Most content about covert narcissism online is extremely clickbaity which makes me skeptical of how legitimate it is, it's not even an official classification or anything. But looking at one proposed measurement scale of covert narcissism, I can definitely relate to many aspects of it (idk if that makes me a narcissist or just an asshole kek). I guess one difference seems to be the assumption that a narcissist feels they deserve and are entitled to better while someone with AVPD is convinced of their inferiority.
No. 2455941
>>2455910You can have a healthy "narcissistic" personality
style, e.g. liking accomplishing goals, wanting success, take good care of yourself, like materialistic things, but to a healthy degree. It's disordered when it gets well, out of hand
No. 2456110>>2456116>>2456141
>>2456001>Is the former more deep or ingrained or something?Yes. The major difference is that people with AvPD think they are garbage people and no one will ever like them and avoid the vast majority of social situations. People with anxiety disorders can recognize that the situations that
trigger their anxiety will not actually result in derision and mockery from everyone there and that their anxiety is an overreaction and not rational. And they only avoid the few specific situations that
trigger their anxiety.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/avpd-vs-social-anxiety#summaryAVPD and social anxiety disorder share many symptoms and characteristics. However, there are some subtle differences.
AVPD is a personality disorder, and social anxiety disorder is an anxiety disorder. People with social anxiety disorder are aware they have amplified and irrational fears of social situations, but people with AVPD rationalize their fears of criticism and rejection.
AVPD and social anxiety disorder have different driving factors. Negative self-evaluation drives AVPD, and high anxiety levels drive social anxiety disorder. People with AVPD are more likely to avoid all aspects of social interaction, whereas people with social anxiety disorder typically avoid specific activities.
No. 2456149>>2457088
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>>2456138>i do thisuh oh i thought that was normal..
No. 2457442>>2457643
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I don’t have AVPD but I used to read up on it as a kid since I struggled socially with maintaining relationships. Mainly because I thought the advice that worked for those individuals would help me. It didn’t but I found it interesting especially when so many of the people I knew with PDs seemed to exactly fit the criteria, but they were just diagnosed with depression or anxiety.
No. 2458431>>2459363
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>>2457643https://admin.umt.edu.pk/Media/Site/SSH/SubSites/cp/FileManager/Ebooks/DCPe-26.pdfHere’s the link nona, luckily even if you search up the name it’s easy to find a PDF of it.
No. 2458614>>2458622>>2458623>>2458629>>2458634>>2458639
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>>2458596yes it can overlap and often does with something else, some agoraphobics are paranoid schizophrenics, others have severe anxiety (social, or even hypochondriacs), and others simply avoid social situations to the point of being hermits or nocturnal, less of a stress response and more of a society/conflict/being percieved avoidance. personally as a mostly "recovered" avpd I find that agoraphobia is the end manifestation of totally losing yourself in this sickness.
The fear of perception and judgement is ALWAYS there, like a constantly shrinking bubble, so you have to keep pushing your own boundaries out so it never shrinks onto you that tightly.
I've done my best to try and help others with this issue but the avpd subreddit posters have been extremely un-receptive and self-disqualify themselves from any of my ideas or recovery plans. I'll post more in this thread if anyone wants to hear it.
No. 2459363>>2459398
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>>2458622>>2458623>>2458629AVPD is hard to find good advice for, as documented in this pdf as well,
>>2458431, because it often flies under the radar because we fly under the radar. These issues seem benign and are dismissed by psychologists and family alike. We don't really hurt others, we just quietly collapse into ourselves. So it is crucial for us to save ourselves, every single day. We are not like addicts—who cause enough chaos to get an intervention—only we can recognize our pain. Otherwise, we can drown in our own isolation. We have the potential to be very contemplative, introspective, creative people if we don’t fall into the abyss of hiding from life, running from stimulation. And trying to change can even be painful because recovering from this means confronting your unconscious mind’s deepest fears and vulnerabilities.
The first thing I had to do with AVPD was recognize that the traits may always be there in some capacity, buzzing in the background—there is no final forever-cure. But it is not me, and it is not you. If anything, AVPD is something that dulls our spirit. It is something that shouldn’t be accepted as a final part of an actualized personality. It is not the Self. Don’t relax into it and call it your personality. The urge to stay quiet when you really have something to say in a relevant conversation, the urge to stay inside even though you picked a great outfit and want to exist outside, the urge to hide because others are nearby, self-rejecting from promotions, conversations, etc. This isn't you, but something hindering you. Indulging in identifying with the sickness like a faction, like many do online, causes a sort of walling-in defensiveness regarding the symptoms and the habits we have. We have to divorce ourselves from the habits we want to stop.
Polytheistic ancients who believed in many temperamental gods often didn’t think of themselves as “angry,” but rather “overcome with the spirit of anger,” some deity’s rage, etc. This is an interesting perspective to me, because I adopt this as well. I have anxiety-based avoidance. I don’t consider myself as being scared to enter the crowd, but rather possessed by the Avoidant Gremlin. My inner desire to be part of society is there, like a dim ember. The Avoidant Gremlin is a personification of the thing that grabbed a hold of me for so many years and stifled me. So I started to use the opposite emotion to fear to stifle it back: anger.
I’m in my 30s now, and after enough years of opportunities passing me by, I started to get pissed. So much fear, so many of my nervous system’s biological alerts being sent over the smallest little challenges made me contemplate what this would be like when I’m 50, 60 years old. My mother was the same way, and she ended up a lonely hoarder. I wanted to throw glimpses of that future straight into the fire. I really began to visualize the Avoidant Gremlin every time I had a dose of adrenaline hit me from something as stupid as walking past a group of people. I imagined that creature like the rat in Ratatouille trying to freak me out and pull me away by the hair. I wanted to smash it, defy it, and finally do what I want. This perspective was a bit unhealthy at first, but it got me out of the rut.
Exposure therapy is not a meme. You do something scary enough times, you will inevitably become bored of it. Your comfort zone is like a giant plastic ball around you, and if you are not constantly exerting pressure onto it, it will collapse and cling to you until every movement you make is irritating your comfort zone. I made a weekly routine of normie shit to do. First I just forced myself to exist near people—at the gym, bookstore, etc. I never stopped being afraid to take up space, but I did it in defiance of the Avoidant Gremlin in my hat. I sat at a restaurant bar table and ate by myself a few times (hard mode was when some girl commented on it, “aww, all alone?” but I just smiled). I challenged myself to start one random conversation a week with coworkers (I never spoke unless spoken to). Then it was one conversation a week with a stranger, even if it was three sentences. I did things that would intentionally give the Avoidant Gremlin a heart attack. I did it out of revenge for the way the Gremlin was giving me adrenaline dumps all my life over nothing.
This approach—naming it, seeing it, confronting it—is called “withdrawing the projection.” This is something within me, but not the totality of me.
Use of anger as the opposing force to fear was a way of tapping into a raw, assertive energy that is often locked away in people with AVPD for fear of disrupting others or being judged. If fear and anxiety were on a color wheel, anger would be the opposing color to cancel it out. It’s not advice my peers think is “fluffy” enough—but I think we are precisely the subset of the population that could use more fire.
However: I eventually had to change perspective once again. I had to return to balance to really reform myself. There’s wisdom in compassion—not just for others, but for the frightened parts of yourself. You are frightened for a reason. The Avoidant Gremlin, after all, was likely born in your psyche out of a need to protect you once. Mine wants to protect me from pain I felt so often as a child. Once you are done fighting the Avoidance—integrate it. Listen to what it fears. Redeem it, if possible. Dialogue with it: What does it want? What does it fear? You may be surprised by what you will uncover.
I still falter and fall into anxious despair once in a while, despite my long stretches of recovery. For those instances, where no amount of inner work will help, I really focus on getting out of “head” space and into “meat” space: I am whole, I am not hurt, I am not sick, I am alive. Over-contemplation and navel-gazing at some point just cause a feedback loop.
I like Jungian psychology, so I view AVPD as part of the Shadow—the disowned or unconscious aspects of ourselves. So the goal is not to annihilate it, but to reclaim it. Avoidant traits hide sensitivity, depth, or insight that society doesn’t value—but which can be channeled into art, empathy, or healing.
This journey is the individuation process, becoming who you truly are-beyond neurosis, beyond persona, beyond conditioning. It’s about reclaiming life. And I mean it when I say no one will intervene for you. Save the part of you that wants to live fully. (Recommended reading: The Highly Sensitive Person & The Undervalued Self, both by Elaine Aron).
No. 2459365>>2459487>>2459496
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>>2458634You energy is zapped because texting back is not just typing and sending, you have an entire process to do in your head before you can even fathom that a response or initiation is good enough to send. I often did this too, put off replying to people, because I thought they were better than me anyway, and I was exhausted by the effort of thinking about it, until it was too late to reply so I'd feel worse. Eventually they'd drop me. All I can recommend is to think of yourself as you were as a child and to care for your little self: another kid approaches you in the playground and wants to play. You're worth interacting with. You don't have to agonize over what to do with them- anything you do is fine as long as you return positive energy. Leave it to them to decide where to take the conversation/play, don't focus on the substance, just hit the ball back in their court. Just don't mistake the exhaustion as your real desire, as you'll likely end up disappointing the part of yourself that wants to maintain relationships.
No. 2459487
>>2459365I used to agonize about playground kids nona.
As a toddler Id just beat them up.
No. 2459548
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I've struggled with a lot of avoidant behaviours because of serious childhood trauma that borders on AvPD. I've done the entire merry-go-round, incapable of maintaining relationship, incapable of texting, ghosting people for months without explanation, avoiding social gatherings and avoiding doing my hobbies or things I love. What helps me the most is having a trauma-informed therapist and dropping all of my failed relationships. Being alone and bored with nothing "to avoid" while doing intensive therapy was the only way I managed to do progress. A lot of my avoidant behaviour comes from being overstimulated and overstressed, feeling like I'm drowning in responsibilities. Now when I meet someone I tell them honestly that I don't have or use social media and that I prefer calling to text. What I found is that I was stuck between being so scared of being alone but being so anxious around people and that was completely blocking my life. Fixing the being alone part and is essential if you are avoidant because you will be with yourself a lot.