I don't know how to answer this properly without writing a novel, but I don't want to leave you hanging either. So I will do my best.

I have never been formally diagnosed with AvPD.

I've been aware that I've been struggling since I was 10 or so. I didn't understand why or in what ways. I thought maybe I was just depressed because of my life situation and that, once my situation changed, my moods would too.

When I turned 16, I found out about social anxiety on accident and it caught my attention. To a degree, it sounded like what I had been experiencing. I secretly joined some communities and read some posts about SA, trying to see how people's stories meshed with what I was experiencing. I found that, while I could relate a little, something still didn't feel right.

After a few months, I wrote it off as a mistake and decided that whatever was wrong with me (if there was something wrong with me at all) was mine alone.

When I was 19, I went through a really bad time and started to go online to find mental health information again. Now I was living on my own and I had a private computer, so I had more freedom to look around on the net.

One of the SA websites I was reading featured a thread about AvPD. I clicked on it out of curiousity and read the description. It seemed to describe everything that I was going through, both the things that I had trouble with and things that I had never even considered a problem. Things I believed were normal thought and behavioural patterns.

I pushed that information from my mind, trying to make a go of it on my own. Keyword being "trying", and not "succeeding".

When I was 20, I met a guy and we started a relationship. It seemed to be going well. He never pushed me for information and he was shy so I was never pressured to hang out with groups of people or go faster than I was comfortable with. We moved in together out of financial necessity, but we kept separate rooms and had different schedules. I had more time to myself than I did when I lived with my family.

While I lived with him, I was able to conceal most of the behaviours that embarrassed me. The depression, the need for solitude, the embarrassment in public, the hours-long daydreaming sessions. I'd cry in front of him every once and awhile and would avoid him for weeks afterwards because of the shame, but he always seemed to forget those instances and we'd never talk about them.

Things became pretty serious between he and I and we got engaged when I turned 23. I started to endlessly ruminate on how fake our relationship was. I was tricking him into being with me. If he really knew how messed up I was, he'd leave for sure. So, in an act that was two parts guilt and one part self-sabotage, I sent him an email that detailed many of my emotional problems and included some of my past mistakes as examples. I thought for sure that he'd break up with me.

He took it really well and he's actually been incredibly supportive. We floundered about it at first and he made a few really strange comments that threw me for a loop, but I'm definitely better off for telling him than I was before. He's probably the one person in the world who I almost trust. We got married last summer.

Of course I still hide a lot of things from him and I still feel like a con artist and a liar. I still think that, if I reveal just that ONE MORE THING, that it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Sometimes I tell him. Most of the time, I don't.

As for my family, I know that they are already so ashamed of me, of all the wasted potential, that I could never tell them anything. For them, I keep up the facade when I have to and mostly just stay away from them. When they ask where I've been, I usually lie and say I've been busy or whatever.

With the exception of one or two people from this site, I never talk about it to anyone else. And even the people on this site get very few details. This post is the most I've talked about it in a long time.

So, long story short, I admitted it to my husband out of a feeling of moral obligation, and, so far, I only regret it a little bit of the time (even though nothing bad has happened, I am not immune to feelings of panic about it).

For the most part, I am deeply ashamed of being the way I am, but I don't necessarily think about it as being ashamed of AvPD. Maybe because I don't have an actual dx? if anything, I feel ashamed of using these forums without one. I feel ashamed for even thinking that there is anything REALLY wrong with me when I am clearly just lazy and like to play victim for attention (never mind that I don't actually like attention).

If I did have a dx, I wouldn't tell anyone about it, other than the people who already knew about my issues (ie: my husband and someone on this site). It would be so embarrassing. People wouldn't know what it was and then I'd have to explain and they'd think I was exaggerating or being stupid... ugh. There's all these scenarios running through my head just thinking about it.

Probably I will immediately regret this post and panic about it, but I'm gonna force myself to turn off the computer and let the Delete Post timer expire. And now I have posted that I will do that, so I have to hold myself to it or risk further humiliation.