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Dec 17, 2012, 06:53 AM
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Member Since: Mar 2010
Location: UK
Posts: 929
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I see there’s not a lot of traffic in this forum, which is a shame seeing as how I have just been dxed as having AvPD and was looking for a place to belong 
Thought I’d start a thread anyway though, wondering who else on here has a dx of AvPD or think they fit the criteria, and how they deal with it.
I seem to be a tad different in that behaviourally I’m fine socially, I can go to parties go to the pub go shopping generally mix with people and do it without too much angst, can talk to people easily and maintain connections (to a degree) relatively painlessly. I no longer work (retired) but when I did it wasn’t that excruciating either.
My problem is that the terror of what people think of me, the way they judge and silently criticize and reject and abandon, lives inside my head, in open awareness. I seem to not fear so much what people ACTUALLY think of me as what I just ‘know’ inside my head they think of me – my thinking tips over into paranoia regularly 
I live in permanent fear of all the judgements and criticisms and rejections by others that my own perceptions keep throwing up all the time, even when I’m alone and there’s no-one around to do the judging. Like I’ve got a permanent judge inside my head monitoring every thought and feeling and perception, action and word, and I feel like I’m being watched, scrutinized, seen by the whole world. To the point where sometimes it's less stressful and safer to be with people than not. 
There’s nowhere safe inside my own head to hide from those all seeing eyes 
So ok I seem to have this to a paranoid degree, but I can see quite clearly that it stems from a real fear of what people actually would/might think of me (all negative of course!) and that puts me in the AvPD category.
I suspect that a lot of people with AvPD or social anxiety, can overcome some of their fears and bad feelings by getting out there and mixing and being able to see that other people aren’t really thinking the negative thoughts we fear they are. Trouble for me is that that doesn’t change anything. I do all that, I do mix, I do socialize, I do have contact with people, and it changes nothing. I still live in permanent fear and have an overriding drive to withdraw all the time (which I ignore and work against.) But it’s hard work being amongst people all the same. Countered by an awful need TO be amongst people
The whole idea of ‘challenging’ fears by testing reality just doesn’t work for me – because I still come away from interactions with people convinced that I have shown myself up for the bad wrong unacceptable unlikeable unwantable person I really am and nothing anyone can say (if they bother to say anything at all that is) can undo that negative emotional conviction.
Hm this is getting rather long, sorry for the ramble. I just wanted to sort of introduce myself here and hope that others in the same boat, or anyone who gets this experience, will feel moved to post as well.
Torn
p.s. might start a ‘check in’ type thread here too, what do people think of that?
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