[why6]

I think I may have avpd, because many symptoms apply to my life. Around people that aren't close friends or very easy to talk to, I become very self-conscious and tend to either shut down and become unable to carry a conversation or become incredibly hyperactive, thus embarrassing myself. Because of this, people have described more than once as one of the most socially awkward people they've ever met.
My self-esteem is also horrible. As a kid I was very hyperactive due to my ADHD and always seemed to make a fool of myself around people (I was made fun of a lot for this. Not cool.), and I think some of my social inhibition is caused by wanting to avoid embarrassing myself more, although I still do sometimes. As a side note, my low self-esteem was most likely caused by a childhood tendency to allow others to walk all over me that has carried into my life today.
When I try new things, I always expect to fail and be made fun of, but that doesn't usually stop me from trying. Also, when I'm criticized or even when somebody jokingly teases me, I become humiliated and usually blush, tear up, or just shut down completely. Actually, I blush whenever I talk to people and it's starting to annoy me.
My embarrassment and fear of either or being ale to hold a conversation or getting all hyper tends to keep me from forming close friendships easily. It takes a very long time for me to feel totally confident in another person. I can never seem to do the things normal people do to have these close, rewarding friendships with people and I'm worried that the people I care about think that I don't like them. I really do like them, I just can't get close with them, no matter how much I want to.
Also, I tend to kind of... fantasize (maybe that isn't the right word) or dream about suddenly becoming best friends with all of the people I want to be close with but can't. For example, I have a friend that I really want to go to prom with next year, and I always think about how he would ask me and how fun of a night it would be, but he has other friends who weren't afraid to get close to him that he'll probably ask first.
I think that if I do have avpd, it could either be caused by these issues in my childhood, or it could be why I let people push me around in the first place.
And I would tell my therapist but... I'm afraid she'll judge me.
So I guess what I want to know is whether I should look into testing/diagnosis for avpd. But my self-esteem also seems to be a huge issue, and I was wondering if anyone else has experienced a similar issue with self-esteem, and if so how they got through it.
Thanks for reading, you guys are the best

[Ultra Darkness]

It could just be social anxiety. I've never really been able to tell the difference, though, even after asking about it.

[Fuzzybear]

Welcome to pc why6!

[Onward2wards]

Welcome to PC.

Social anxiety and AVpD are related but have differences. It takes some time to separate the two. AVpD is more like social anxiety or shyness plus perceptions of inferiority and incompetency, exaggerated avoidance of risk, among other things.

Here's a link to a good overview of AvPD: Avoidant personality disorder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and a closely related disorder called Hikikomori, in Japan (also noticed in the Western world): Hikikomori - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and finally Social Anxiety: Social anxiety - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia