I agree with what you're saying, that the diagnosis is just showing you where the starting line is.

Rock bottom for avoidants is pretty far down. Avoidants avoid help, so you have to have nothing left, no other sources of fuel, before you can really look at what's going on, peel the avoidant thoughts back, and choose how you will respond instead of just reacting. That said, I still don't think fear is a valid excuse to avoid a diagnosis.

It is true that when you know what's going on, it has less power over you. I, too, had never heard of AvPD when I was diagnosed. When I learned about it, I had something to fight back against all the thoughts that I was weird and wrong and a bad human being. No, I am a different human being, and I'm not a unique freak, and it's not a series poor choices I'm making to be this way, the same as everyone else with AvPD.

I think that traditional CBT therapy is not infallible - it just doesn't do enough. Obviously, there hasn't been much research on avoidant people, so the therapists and psychs are kind of working blind, and are missing some gaps that avoidant people have. We're never going to speak up about them, after all.

I think learning about yourself, and learning what thoughts are avoidant vs authentic and how to tell the difference, I think that's only part of what needs to be done. It does give you a boost of confidence - suddenly the world makes a little more sense - but that can actually end up biting you. You might start to reach out to people, but you've had no experience learning what makes someone trustworthy because you've never done it before, so you're vulnerable to be victimized by people who seem nice on the surface. Then the problem with that is, when that happens you start to second guess yourself again, and backslide.

It's too bad you feel like you are cycling back into avoidance Snap. That flies in the face of the theory that PD's get better as we age. It does appear that avoidance is something that we have to constantly work on to maintain our progress, either by learning more about it or having fewer interactions with people. I doubt either of those options are available to you, or you would have done them. Despite your protestations, I think you're pretty intelligent and you're not just sitting around unaware. Perhaps looking into non-avoidant human nature so you can feel less vulnerable? You've learned how you tick, if you learn more about how other people tick, maybe the combination can help keep the avoidance at bay.