This thread is about my AvPD experience. I am not sure why I am doing this. Perhaps it will help others, or perhaps it will help me. We shall see, but I will try and add to it as things come into my head. That's how I intend to to write - as it occurs to me.

Where to start? At the beginning? I have always felt that I was playing catch up, really. That I had to work really hard to be as clever, funny, interesting, attractive and all that as other people. I guess I have always felt that I had to work harder than everyone else to achieve these qualities. This is difficult to reconcile with the assumption that my thought processes were normal, but I guess I felt deep down that everyone had to work as hard as I felt I had to socially to achieve these qualities.

Hindsight would be a great thing. I always felt that despite my best efforts I failed terribly; I was an uninteresting, unfunny and unattractive idiot who people regarded as a kind of limpet on their social circles. The crazy thing is, in my teen years at least, I didn't care too much about this. I accepted it as a fact ands got on with it. As a result, with hindsight, I was quite a relaxed guy and had a lot of friends. It just didn't feel like it at the time.

Fast forward 15 years later, and things are greatly different. I don't know what changed my attitude, perhaps one of life's events (future update!!) but these days, I do care. I still feel like a bit of a useless moron but this time I really care about this and try extra hard to not be this way. The result is, predictably, I struggle with relationships (both partners and friends) and I am not nearly as popular as I used to be, and also I struggle in other areas such as my job.

These days it's more of a self fulfilling prophesy - I feel this way, and I care, and I try too hard to change my ways, and I end up being rather unusual. I don't think I can change these thoughts, but I would love to get back to be good old days when I didn't care so much, and as a result it wasn't actually so true.

One unfortunate thought for me to close with tonight is that I do love a good drink. I try and keep a lid on it but it does help to suppress those constant negative thoughts that stream through my mind.

Future updates may feature one or more of the following: wife, kids, divorce, family, and of course a lot more negative thoughts about myself!