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While it sounds to me like you do have indicators of some avoidant personality orientation (could be on a continuum somewhere short of full-blown APD), I get a strong sense, maybe just an intuition, that there is another dynamic going on that is from something that is not avoidant personality orientation. If you did have APD (or trait), that wouldn't rule out having some other major issue To me, there is something so different between avoiding people and avoiding emotional states, that I think it would be unlikely that both of these are being generated by the same factor. It just sounds to me like you have a complex mental makeup and that it might be simplistic to try and boil all that you describe down to being various manifestations of one particular perosnality disorder.
This may not be where you'll find exactly the answers you are looking for (I think the kind of resources you would like to find have yet to be produced), but I recommend doing some reading on the approach to PD developed by THEODORE MILLON, PhD. I would say you can benefit from continued learning about APD; just consider that something entirely "other" could be going on also. Feel like this is kind of rambling; I had little sleep.
I totally hear you on how, in USA, extent of gainful employment is taken almost as a perfect index to how well one is. Can be very frustrating.
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