I've been learning about having an avoidant personality over the past few weeks. It started out with a checklist in a depression self-help workbook & into conversations with my therapist. It's been enlightening but not very helpful.

My therapist doesn't believe that I have a full-blown disorder (yet) because I'm still able to go to work, but I'm starting to wonder about the validity of her beliefs about that. Life is usually more than just going to work, or being able to go to work - it's about relationships and one's internal state as well. I know here in the US at least, a person's relative wellness is usually based on employment, but at this point I'm not getting anywhere career-wise either with my current behavior.

A big manifestation of avoidance for me is that whenever I do anything that makes me emotional, I stop doing it. It doesn't matter if it's something exciting, something that elicits hopefulness, or if I get seriously angry... I just stop. Dead in my tracks, won't go any further, won't try to work past it... I just stop. I've given up on anything that I feel strongly about because if it makes me feel something strongly, I don't want to deal with it. I can't deal with it - it's like I just lose all ability to communicate or move in a coordinated fashion. I am embarrassed, ashamed even, to have emotional displays. I don't like it when other people have obvious emotional displays where I can see them and for me, laughing out loud, yelling, crying, etc. makes me feel like I've just wet myself. About the only thing I can tolerate are irritation, annoyance and mild amusement (and the Autism/Asperger's spectrum has been firmly ruled out for me).

Before I came across the avoidant personality description, I was researching modern stoicism because, as a philosophy, it seemed to be one I was born into. However, even stoicism acknowledges that not having any, or trying to prevent, emotional responses at all is unnatural & unhealthy.

The four or five books I've found that focus solely on APD seem to hold relationships to be the primary manifestation of the disorder. While I do have relationship issues (mainly that the minute anyone tries to 'get to know me' or go beyond my boundaries of shallow co-worker involvement, I push them away like they smell bad), I know not being able to make or maintain friendships isn't the totality of my problem.

Does anyone know of any decent resources for the more internal/personal issues of avoidant personality or APD? Or even books/websites that generally deal with personality types & disorders that might prove useful?