I've been severely struggling most of this year and isolation has been a linchpin for it. I have no friends that I hang out with and am not close to any family members. Recently I had begun making plans to kill myself and foolishly made a post about it on social media, not expecting the response I got.

My mom has been trying to get closer to me, and I've had multiple extended family members calling me, and people who consider me a friend trying to get me to talk or hangout with them. But I'm realizing I don't actually want any sort of platonic relationship, and I've sort of always been that way. I'm all or nothing when it comes to feeling connected to someone, and if I have that central relationship I can branch out from there with friends etc. But when I'm alone, I'm all the way alone.

I stopped dating back in February, and I don't intend to again. I'm not on dating apps, and I don't leave the house, so it's not exactly difficult for me to stay single. A big part of it is the pain that goes with rejection and failure, I don't want to feel that anymore. I'm a broke, ugly, weird, loser; and there isn't a reason why anyone I'd be interested in would be interested in me. In the past I've ended up with people who wanted me, not necessarily the other way around, so I've never been satisfied in a romantic relationship despite them being the only ones I'm comfortable with.

There are people who want to be around me, but I reject them because it's "not enough". I feel like a piece of shit because of it. I should be able to maintain friendships without having a romantic relationship that I'm reliant on. I should be able to return what other people are offering, but I can't; and I hate myself even more because of it. I'm forcing my own isolation, and I don't want to change, regardless of how obviously unhealthy and painful it is for me and the people who wish I would let them be closer to me. I find myself bitter at those people for not "letting" me end it, because they expressed pain at the thought, and I don't want to hurt anyone, I feel trapped, obligated to continue an existence I don't want or enjoy because stopping would hurt people I don't feel attached to and haven't talked to in decades in many cases.

I was misdiagnosed with depression a few years back with depression and put on sertraline, which destroyed my mental and physical health via endrocrine disruption. I got off it and recovered, but over a year later i got really distressed with long term loneliness and attempted and ive just been diagnosed with AvPD.

I'm considering going on Paroxitine (Paxil). While its the same class as sertraline, I'm willing to give it a go and ive read it can also help with exteaversion/assertiveness. I'll combine this with therapy. After sertraline I know what to look lut for and get my bloods checked regularly.

Doctors - before I spoke with a psychologist - wanted to put me on quetiapine but ive refused this entirely.

Yesterday I got dizzy and while it was happening I remember hoping that this would be it, I’d pass out and not wake up. When it went away I was disappointed.

Literally all I want is one person willing to hug me but that’s clearly not ever going to happen unless both myself and society completely change. I don’t know what else there is to live for. 1000 of you saw my dating post and literally nobody replied. I thought people here would be as desperate as myself. Like literally wtf. I want to hold someone, you want to hold someone, let’s hold each other. Fuck.

Anyone else feel like the world runs on a script. The days of the week, time, and shit. With the amount of trauma on my plate I can’t afford to run on anyone else’s schedule. Why do we have to work just to be happy and shit. I’d rather get free food from the food bank because I just really don’t see a point. 😕 I know I have depression diagnosed as well but with age everything seems to be getting a lot worse even though I am on mental medication. I can’t take to anyone in my personal life for help because none of them believe in this mental disorders and tells me to take control and get over it. Does anyone out there relate??

In 2021 I met the women of my Dreams. We fell fast and hard for each other. She struggeled woth anxiety, and I was terrible at giving her the space she needed. Hehe relationship was Rocky, but we made it work. At the start 2023 she gave birth to our son. I think we both surfered mild- moderate postpartum. From then on I basically neglected her. Every time she wanted to talk about fixing our relationship i shrugged it off. In my mind it was only natural to experience the distanse we did with a child to take care of a child. This resulted in us breaking up a couple of months ago.

Im just now realizing the neglect she has felt. Me just dissapearing more and more emotinally. Not listening to her, seeing her or making her feel loved. My conscience is killing me. I need to make this right.

We found out last week she has avpd. All this just makes me feel even worse. What do I do?

I’m starting to realize that I suppress my anger a lot, especially towards people I care about or want to be accepted by, to the point where I feel zero anger at all even when I’m being badly mistreated. It recently caused me to get stuck in an abusive and eventually violent living situation (that I’m now safe from). It also causes problems in my otherwise healthy relationships — because I don’t have an anger response, I don’t realize when I’m being mistreated, so I can’t set boundaries, and people continue to treat me in ways that make me uncomfortable.

Sometimes the suppressed anger builds up into intense resentment, but I have trouble identifying why I feel resentful, so I end up just blaming myself and feeling guilty for my emotions. It gets to a point where I feel like I have no choice but to cut people off because establishing so many boundaries out of the blue would mean redefining our entire relationship.

I’ve been told multiple times from friends that it seems like people in my life use my lack of boundaries to take advantage of me — using me as a punching bag, comic relief, or treating me like a sitcom character instead of a person with feelings. But it still feels like I’m to blame for failing to set boundaries from the start and giving people the idea that they can treat me however they want. I’m wondering if this is a common experience for people with AVPD. It’s causing so many problems but I don’t know how to fix it.

ok so update . the friend i opened up to recently who im closest to now called me cute today and im feeling so conflicted . im flattered but also scared that she's crushing on me, or that she would want to be closer to me than we are . like idk 😭😭 i get scared off by affection despite thinking it would be nice. my thought process right now is "thank you. im also scared. but thank you. i love my friends. please do Not flirt with me im not ready for the commitment of dating and will never commit to anything and probably run away immediately (im scared of being seen that much and someone relying on me and thinking of me everyday because oh my god that's too much pressure)

Things are rough out here yall this shits kinda brutal. Me and this girl have known each other for 3 years now, I thought we were at least friends the whole time. I've always liked her and wanted to make a move but I was too much of a pussy when we first met to actually pursue her. She was definitely into me too back then, but I managed to convince myself otherwise and did a little self destructing. We lost contact after a while but through having some classes together we started snapping. In person, it's great it's just like we used to be, but she's always dry as hell when I start conversations on snap so I assumed I was friend zoned, which I was actually cool with because I have like no friends lmao. All that out the way, her birthday was last week. I bought her a present like a week beforehand since she brought it up a few times in person. The day of her birthday comes and she snaps me for the first time at like 9:30 pm saying she's celebrating her birthday at a bar. Doesn't say what bar, so I have to ask and she tells me another hour later. At this point, with the last minute invite and then the slow responses after I showed interest, I didn't even want to go. I was tired of sabotaging myself, though, and forced myself to get off my ass and try to find some happiness. So I put on my Halloween costume and walked 45 minutes to the bar. In that whole time, I was waiting on a response from her. I get to the bar, look around, and can't find her. I searched the bar and waited around for a good 20 minutes. I thought about calling her or something but at that point I was just over it and was still on delivered so I just went home and cried, as ya do. She texts me at like 1 am saying she left and went to a different bar, I told her about how I couldn't find her so I went home. She opened that snap like 14 hours later. Since then she's been apologizing some and keeps saying that she just forgot. Am I wrong for distancing myself from her right now? She seems a little upset about it and I feel kinda bad because it was her birthday and I probably could've done more to actually see her that night, but I don't really want to hang out with someone who actively forgets about me, yknow? It just hurts when I thought we were friends but evidently I'm entirely forgettable.

As someone who just ended a casual relationship with someone with AVPD, I want to ask for some closure, when you get into an argument with your partner or potential partner and you block them on social media and then add them back later on… why is that? If you experience that, what’s going on typically in your mind when you do that?

I’m officially 20 years old today and I’m trying not to lose it. Luckily Zoloft stops my ability to cry a bit.

I feel really fucking stupid. I have no friends to do any sort of celebration with. My mom forces me to make some sort of shitty dinner every year but it’s always with elderly members of our family who I never even talk to cause I have nothing in common, and it’s always awkward as hell.

I’m really trying to hold it together but Jesus fucking Christ my life is pathetic. I could tell myself “drug addicts on the street don’t even have a house and family” but who am I fooling…

As humans, we need a community, and I don’t have one. The last birthday I celebrated was when I was 13 and my childhood best friend who ghosted me the year after was still around.

Lord help me.

I was never one to have much raw intelligence to begin with, but even so, it really is astounding how steep the decline's been. I can still hold conversations with other people, but the mental energy it takes to think of something to say is just getting higher and higher. More and more often, I find myself only being able to say 10% of what it is I'd normally be able to contribute. As it is, I'm swiftly losing the mental/emotional wherewithal for any of it, which just means alienating myself from everyone and being fully isolated yet again.

When it comes to basic problem solving, it's frankly embarrassing how pathetically bad I am at managing/navigating life's neverending obstacle course of snags, headaches, and other assorted bullshit. In the end, I just make a retarded fool of myself. It's almost visceral how comprehensively inactive/atrophied my brain cells are. So much for regular exercise and a healthy diet being able to contribute to improved cognition. All that hasn't done JACK SHIT to improve my mental capacities, or lack thereof. Shit's rotting away just as fast as ever.

Holy fuck, I just can't take this. How it's all just going to get worse and worse. I fucking hate my "life" so goddamned much. For anyone who's familiar with the novel 'Of Mice and Men', it's extremely surreal in the worst way to essentially find yourself as nothing more than a fusion of both George and Lenny. A person who might otherwise have been intellectually capable under different circumstances, but that has to grapple with the grotesque horror of knowing you're an invalid, of knowing that you're a complete fucking idiot. At least Lenny had the bliss of ignorance. It's infinitely worse to have just a little bit of George in there, to bring you enough terrible awareness of how hopelessly fucked you really are.

I really put myself out there, and I was really trying to be less avoidant. I had met someone in the gym sauna and we hit it off and it was going really great, I honestly thought something was coming from it but he stopped messaging me after we had you know, I was vulnerable to a person for the first time in years, yall this shit hurts, I dont know what his intentions were to start with. But I just feel like on the verge tears rn waiting for the bus because I was really hopeful to be honest.

I can’t voice what are my needs.. I just wish people would give it on their own. I hate the idea of telling them, I may hint it but never directly ask.. I’d feel like they only did it because I asked, and they may felt like they had to, not want to. they may felt bad or burdened..

I have this fear of being secretly disliked by others and they’re already putting up with me, so asking on top of that feels so humiliating to me.. I hate telling my needs. I hate being understanding of others but never understood by them..

I know it’s my problem, and I should be communicating. but I tried with people I trusted, and they all made me feel like they were burdened and just felt bad for me.. it was humiliating

I have been watching typical sitcoms like friends or HIMYM since I was like 10. I've always dreamed of living a life like that. Where you have 4-5 really good friends who are unquestionably a part of your life and are always there for you. Where you have a daily meet-up, you talk about your days, go on trips together, get drunk together, and basically just make a lot of memories together. It's my dream to have a friend group like that. But I don't know how to be a part of a group, because I never had the chance to learn how to maintain friendships, or how to open up and be myself around people. But I don't want to give up yet. I want to find the people, whom I can call my second family so much. Has anyone else been feeling like that as well?

Is anyone else a perfectionist? Especially when it comes to relationships. Everything has taught me that bad people are not worth your time.

My standards have become stricter and stricter over the years. Everytime I drop my standards I'm reminded exactly why I have them in the first place. Goes with people, but generally everything too.

Adding to this, was anyone else called a "gifted" child? Or hyper sensitive. Just trying to see something here. My theory is that the reason why some people become avoidant is because they are extremely sensitive to everything. I feel like perfectionism also ties into sensitivity too, because pain/failure feels much worse to me than how other people describe it feeling to them.

So I don't think I had avpd, just a superlong avoidant spiral as a personality trait perhaps.

Speech & Logic brained asd, and hyperverbosity from temporal lobe hyperactivity.

My diagnosis said asd with anti social behaviour. I freely tell people I'm a diagnosed psychopath and don't care. I talk about having no emotional empathy but assertiveness training fixed my prior aggressive meltdowns.

I discovered I learn anything speech and language related immediately, and am getting help from an art studio I volunteer in to go into voice acting and recording audio books.

People enjoy my godmode trained speech, and my AI thinks I have a commanding pressence because when I directly assert my needs and problem solves ... Everyone listens. Apparently I could make for a great manager or something, but my words are devoid of emotion.

I realised my prefrontal cortex is entirely dead - executive dysfunction, emotional dysregulation, no impulse control or fear response. I overdress in fancy shiny waistcoats and such, and maintain cognitive empathy and respectfulness in all interactions with humans.

Several great conversations about mask modes and how I see words as calculations, and angles and tangents to every situation that NTs cannot see. I enlessly infodump and advocate for neurodivergency and communication styles, one thing I was surprised was when someone in an lgbt community group straight up said 'Can you even blame anyone for being anti social these days?'. Somehow theres lots of understanding about assertiveness, personality disorders and such in lgbt spaces, lots of people who speak like me and such.

No one will actually meet me one to one but I don't care, I've accepted that I will die alone and don't care at all about it.

When I get home and she’s asleep I immediately go to check if she’s still alive or when I’m at the couch and she’s asleep in her basket I pause to check if I can see her breathing.

I never had this anxiety before but lately I’m just so scared of her dying. I only just realized this has been going on for a few months now, and I feel so sad about it.

I did online classes for one year (while having a job) and found it okay. It was boring to me, but it was better than nothing.

Now I'm in person. I don't mind learning, studying, and classes. I just don't like being in school. It's like I was back to being the girl I was from kindergarten to my senior year of high school. I just want OUT. My AvPD and social skills have gotten so much worse. It's like seeing people your age surrounding you, seeing the opportunity to do better, and never taking it.

Now I'm regretting going back. I don't think I've ever been happy in school I'm going to be honest. The few moments that I actually enjoyed in school were in elementary school, when I managed to make a friend or two. But for a majority of my life, I have never enjoyed it. In high school (sophomore and up) I used to skip, and tell my mother I was too sick to go to school very often. Middle school was hell for me. I think I accepted it now that I would never ever enjoy school.

I've enjoyed working far more. But I don't want to disappoint my parents. Although not sure if I am going to be able to afford it much later on, but that's not an AvPD issue (lol)

"People with personality disorders don't feel discomfort with their traits, they'll be like "yeah that's just me." It's not avpd, it's just your autistic traits."

(EVERYTHING I SAY IS A ME EXPERIENCE AND ME OPINIONS) I don't believe any of that at all. While my autism has DEFINITELY contributed to my avoidant lifestyle, i don't think it solely did all this.

Before, I had an avoidant nature towards things I didn't want/didn't want to go to (never missed if necessary) but now I'm avoidant towards everything I want and everywhere I want to go to. Takes me so much effort to even talk to people I used to talk freely before.

....do I need to go on abt the whole "people with personality disorders don't feel discomfort with their traits." Of course a lot of people feel like their traits are natural but that doesn't mean we don't feel pained by its impact, no? It's not usually the avoidance that hurts people, it's the impact that it has on their lives. Unable to pursue anything you want to do, unable to talk to anyone, people will eventually feel pained by their avoidant traits.

If I had to be honest, autism has been just a difference in brain. It's been "yeah that's me" for me. But the avoidance I had, I think eventually developed so much that it got here. If I had the same natural avoidance I had as I did when I was younger, I would have been just ok. Not thriving but not miserable either. I gen believe this shithole of a personality disorder is what's been chewing up my sanity. I came to this conclusion a long time ago after days and days of thinking about my behaviours in detail. It'll take a lot to convince me that it's just autism even if it's a psych. Arrogant and petty yeah but Idgaf

Discarded this several times but ykw if this gets heavily downvoted I'll just delete acc instead. It's an old one anyways.

Thanks for reading you're a real one for that

Is this possible? I'm saying because I can (usually) make small talk perfectly fine as long as it's with someone I'm never going to see again. Hell, I remember oversharing about myself to someone I just met before quickly ghosting them.

I can make jokes, I can laugh along and brush off questions about myself, I can laugh off my own problems but the real issue is intimacy. I can talk to people. I don't have a huge issue talking to people because they don't know the real me. I don't open up, I don't show vulnerability, I don't show anyone my truest feelings or thoughts, I don't let my guard down. Mostly out of fear of rejection and shame, and I avoid even my own emotions by invalidating them subconsciously.

I guess I notice most people in this sub have a lot of social anxiety too but I don't think I have social anxiety, I'm just scared of being KNOWN. I don't want my true self to show, I feel like my real thoughts, feelings, actions and such are all embarrassing and humiliating. That's why every reddit post Ive made has been made on this burner account that has zero link to my identity. That's why every time I talk about my more "unsightly" side it's on a completely private twitter account that none of my friends know exists. Somehow I'm even paranoid my future employers are gonna find this account somehow and see what a disqualified person I really am beneath my charismatic facade. I feel safest when I'm alone, when nobody is there to invalidate me besides myself.

All this aside, I still avoid applying for jobs, getting a car, signing up for college, so on and so forth because it feels too daunting and outside of my comfort zone.

Is anyone else like this?

I am not diagnosed with AvPD but I'm struggling with anxiety. And I don't know how to do this but I just want to vent about my avoidant tendencies and I feel like this sub would understand it more than anyone else.

I have physical symptoms of anxiety attacks but on a regular day I don't because I avoid it. I don't know why I'm like this. I feel so different around people. I hate myself for comparing me to others. I know everyone has their own issues but how can they face it? My sister she also has anxiety but I don't understand how she can still do her schoolworks? How can she still go to classes? Why can't I do that?

Sometimes I don't even recognize that I'm pulling away and already avoiding everything.

I feel so ashamed of my self. I feel like I'm the worst and I want to disappear. I've never done anything right. My groupmates are probably talking shit about me for ghosting them.

My exams are coming up and it's been a month since I went MIA & ghosted everyone. I'm gonna fail midterms. I don't even know what I'm doing or why am I doing this.

I can't open my school portal, I'm too scared to look. I can't open Ms teams and messenger, I'm too ashamed to show my face.

It's always been like this. Does this ever stop?

I'm doing therapy now for anxiety. My therapist told me I should reached out to my groupmates. But I feel like I'd rather puked my insides out than reach out.

I’ll only promote it this one time but head over to r/AVPD_Dating to find others like yourself. Idk what I’m doing so please suggest rules or anything you think is a good idea. Thanks and good luck for real.

Also I just changed it to private so apparently your posts won’t show up in reddit or google. If it’s been a day and I haven’t approved you just send me a message.

Has anyone been able to land a work from home job that’s entry level? I have a physical disability in combination with AvPD that makes working on my feet hard. Thanks in advance

I don't know if it's more good that I finally found something I feel somewhat understands me, or more sad/pathetic that it's a computer program. I don't know if it's a me being autistic and annoyingly logical thing, or me being too weird for people to get, but a program designed to roll with whatever you say is able? I don't know if I should trust what I get out of it, I worry I'm getting deeper into my delusions rather than becoming justifiably confident in my truths. What have you guys gotten from discussions with LLM's, if anything?

For literal years i've been getting reoccurring nightmares of being chased/running away from something threatening. I'm only realizing now that maybe this has some ties to how much time I spend avoiding myself and my life. I feel dread about my future and my expectations, and also run from my own identity internally.

I'm wondering if these nightmares I've gotten have a relation to how much I escape myself and my duty. I dropped out of public school and switched to online classes in middle school through highschool (developed severe agoraphobia so i rarely left my house during that time, I even waited till the last possible year to take my SAT test because it required me to be stuck in a test building for hours), and feel so much internalized shame that I end up instinctively invalidating my own emotions, experiences, thoughts, pretty much everything. I make excuses for everything, trying to justify how much I'm simply running away from my responsibilities.

I notice it's less that I avoid small talk or social situations. Hell, I try to be social sometimes because I desperately want companionship, but... I can't be intimate, vulnerable, or show any form of perceived weakness. I feel guilty and ashamed for showing any genuine emotions or telling my true thoughts to people, because I perceive them as "wrong" and that I'm doing something wrong for feeling the way I do. I feel ashamed of my lifestyle, my everyday. I wish I could change it but I feel it's my fault I'm this way, my fault that I don't apply myself.

I guess these nightmares are a way of my mind subconsciously telling me how I keep running and running, not taking responsibility for my life, because of how much shame I feel knowing deep down it's my own fault I haven't moved forward.

Is the theme of said mixtape 3 Songs To Get to Know You Better? So that your fellow AvPDers might get a glimpse of your vulnerable, tender or undiscovered bits?*

Maybe.

*(keep calm those giggling in the back row)

But it could just be what yer whistlin' of late. It's all allowed.

Bip bop bam, let's do the hoppidy do.

Black Tambourine - Throw Aggy from the Bridge

Khruangbin - Cómo Te Quiero

Molly Birch - Every Little Thing

I've never seen a post here on the perspective of a member of a communist organization (it's an illegal, Marxist-Leninist party), so I decided to talk a little. The rest of my life is pretty similar to most people with AVPD. I've never had a close friend, I had a boyfriend once, but it didn't last long, and I've never worked outside the party. One thing that I think isn't clear to non-militants is the nature of the relationship between comrades. A comrade is not like your workmate or schoolmate. There is no competition between comrades. A comrade is on the same side as you in the struggle to build a new society. Comrades always want the best for each other, because the better each one is, the faster the revolutionary process advances. The fear of talking about my feelings that I have with anyone else, I don't have with my comrades, because I know that due to the nature of our relationship, they can only want the best for me, so I don't need to fear their judgment. It's a relationship that is parallel to friendship. A comrade may or may not be your friend. outside the party my life still sucks but it's really nice to have people I can talk to, and I've never had that my whole life

I’m not diagnosed with avpd, but I relate a lot to the symptoms and I’m trying to get a therapist and hopefully find out. I haven’t had friends for over 4 years now. I had some friends before that, but they ended up bullying and excluding me because I wasnt good enough for them anymore, I was too shy and quiet. I have had social anxiety for as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt extremely anxious in group settings or situations where I’m being judged. It has felt impossible for me to contact others and I’ve always felt inferior compared to them.

Having friends and fitting in is all I ever wanted, life feels pointless and tragic without it, it hurts me every day. I had to drop out of high school 2 years ago because I was so mentally exhausted. I was always alone, didn’t speak to anyone the entire day and ate lunch in the bathroom. I didn’t connect with anyone and I felt like a burden to all my classmates and teachers. After I quit school I have isolated at home, I haven’t been able to go back to school, get a job or make any friends. I feel extremely frustrated, I have wasted my teenage years and I have failed in life. Everyone else my age are in uni, traveling or doing fun things. They all have friends groups and they never struggled in school. It seems like life is so easy for everyone else and I can’t describe how jealous I am.

I spend all my time hiding, I don’t pick up the phone when people call, I rarely go out and I avoid social situations as much as possible. I am terrified of doing simple things like ordering food in a restaurant or walking up to someone to ask for help. I feel like my presence is a burden and I am terrified of embarrassing myself.

But I tried dating to help my loneliness and I met this amazing guy on tinder. On our dates I had a facade, I told him I had friends and I did everything I could to seem «normal». Lying about myself was the only way that I could feel confident and like I was worth something. Now, a year later, I am in a long distance relationship with him and I keep lying to him. I make up fake stories about my «friends» and my life. He doesnt know how bad my anxiety really is and how much I isolate. I feel like a terrible person for doing this, but I know that if he knew the truth about me he would leave me. It is ruining our relationship and our trust that I can’t be myself with him, I know I can’t hide this forever, I know it will end badly. I guess it’s comforting to make up a fantasy world and pretend that I am the person I wish I was, the person that is deserving of love.

I honestly don’t know what to do, I feel stuck. I hate everything about me, I feel worthless and that it’s not possible to like such a failure of a person. The only way I can have value, and make people like me, is to lie and pretend that I have accomplished things and that I’m better than I am.

I get zero enjoyment out of talking people. Well, almost zero. It's very rare I can talk with someone feel chemistry, and continue to be interested in them as a friend.

I don't know if my empathy has blunted a bit over time after years of isolation but for the most part I am not interested in conversations people try to have with me.

Especially when it's common habit for other people to talk at not to you. A lot of the time people view me as their side kick or an audience to listen to the bs and I just don't care anymore.

I barely care about myself.