Improving

Hello everybody,

I'm new to this forum. I've recently joined PC and have mainly been on the depression forum. However, I believe that depression / depressive symptoms might not actually be the primary concern as doctors and I have believed most of the time.
A very perceptive counsellor had noticed many years ago that I push people away from me and then pull them towards me. Having had a look at the personality disorders here I seem to have most symptoms for dependent as well as avoidant personality disorder (sounds like a contradiction, I know).
I didn't even know that these disorders exist.
I realise that there have been many things going wrong with me in my friendships with others (intimate relationships I've mainly avoided and was almost "phobic" (again my previous counsellor's words) in this context.

It's really amazing for me that there are people who seem to have gone through similar things. I believe that I have somehow improved, but recently I've noticed that I'm far from recovered probably because I've never received long enough therapy for it.

I've often hated how I seem to sponge off others, how I am the needy one and when I got depressed about it I sometimes thought that people like me just behave like parasites and that I shouldn't be alive if I can't give something back. I know that sounds strong, but this is what it's sometimes been like. I want to improve even more and hope you all can do so as well.

As I've usually only received treatment for anxiety or depression and know many CBT techniques for those, I actually don't know anything about treatment options for dependent (and avoidant) personality disorder(s).
Are there any??? Or is all lost? I really think that if I could come to grips more with these disorders, depressive symptoms might be less prevalent and possibly anxiety as well.
I'd very much welcome any experiences, advice or knowledge on how to improve.

I only know it doesn't seem to be as easy as telling yourself not to confide in someone or depend on someone.

Hugs to everybody and thank you for this forum. At least some behaviours might not just be attributable to meanness or selfishness and I feel a bit less like a freak than I sometimes do now.
Shadow-world

Hi, I live in the uk and ive had cognitive analytical therapy and group psychotherapy. It has been much easier to get mental health professionals to understand the symptoms that I suffer since I got diagnosed with DPD.

Good Luck.

I would really like to chat with you about thoughts and feelings I have recently been diagnosed and am scared on where to go and what to do its difficult when the one you love the most and should be able to turn to is the one your dependant on and fear the rejection x

I feel like I can relate quite a bit.

I have a personal view of psychology and I doubt that anybody else would endorse this, but I will say how I look at things. My own belief is: "Show me a mood disorder, and I will show you a personality disorder." Some people could take real exception to that, and I hope not to sound judgmental.

I worked as a nurse in psych facilities, and I came to learn that in the world of Psych, it seems like it is kind of okay to have a "mood" disorder, but it is a bad thing to have a "personality" disorder. I would hear staff say things that indicated that the first problem was a sickness, meriting compassion, while the second problem was something you pinned on people you felt a certain amount of scorn for. I couldn't disagree more.

I have been treated for about a thousand years for having a depressive disorder. My own belief is that me being depressed is just the result of me having a personality disorder that involves a strong component of "social avoidance." Somehow I was not socialized normally as a child (possibly due to over-possessive/over-protective parents who were kind of lonely themselves and a bit overly authoritative in parenting style) and I never made up for the deficit. Like I was developmentally-delayed, socially - and I could never catch up. Oh, I was precocious on some fronts, and that may have made the problem even worse.

The only treatment that I really believe in is anything that involves me being forced to mingle with other people to an extent that I am not comfortable with, and then me figuring out, through my painful mistakes, what gets me accepted and what doesn't.

When I've had to do that, the result has been me being less depressed and less anxious. There is a catch, though. If the involvement is too challenging, and I rack up too many failures, then I become more depressed and much more anxious. That is the tragedy of not getting the right and appropriate stimulation, as a child. Try as I may, I can not seem to be okay. I am under-challenged, or over-challenged most of the time. Much of the time, I am either in my shell getting nothing out of life, or outside of my shell getting traumatized by inter-personal failure. Now and then, I have been in circumstances that challenged me in a way that was not too frightening, and I found myself doing remarkably well and feeling quite amazingly happy.

Wow, you wrote this very well. I can relate to this a great deal and know exactly what you mean.