Just Want To Personally Say Thank You For Your Avpd Posts. They Clear A Lot Up For Me And I Just Feel...

This is definitely something I experience, and I identify with AvPD very strongly.

I also had obvious social anxiety before I even knew about AvPD. To me, it’s pretty easy to differentiate at this point, because “social anxiety” feels, you know, like anxiety, but my AvPD stuff feels like shame, and the fear of shame.

I experience it like:

social anxiety =

physical tense buzzing wariness

imagining the Bad Thing happening (messing up, being laughed at, humiliated)

catastrophizing

panicky

wanting to escape the danger.

(The danger is a thing Outside of me, which I can be safe from as long as I get out of this situation.)

AvPD moments =

a cold knot of sick shame in my stomach

feeling exposed, seen, defenseless, inexcusable

not having any shields or masks left to hide behind

wanting to flee and be alone / unseen, or

to disappear (dissociate) and be invisible.

(The danger is a thing Inside of me, which I can’t escape ever because it is Me, but which I can avoid having to face as long as I get out of this situation.)

So, the self esteem tug-of-war.

For me, it’s because although I started from a point of being totally incapacitated by AvPD symptoms/self hatred/etc, I’ve spent years rebuilding my self-esteem and creating a sense of who I am. So on good days, I believe in the thing I’ve spent so much time carefully growing – the feeling that I’m an OK person, that I’m likable, that I deserve to have a full life and to enjoy things. (Notice, when I’m in this healthy mindset, I’m not even thinking about “whether other people can see me/how they will judge me”.)

Then sometimes I will be in a lower mood, or something will trigger me into old/negative thought patterns, and I’ll find myself spiraling in “I’m so terrible,” and “any kindness/positivity from others is meaningless, for A, B, or C reasons,“ and “I will be revealed to be Horrible sooner or later, and then I’ll lose every positive relationship I have.”

So I definitely think it is possible to believe you’re worthy and unworthy at almost-the-same-time. Having this kind of push-pull struggle between feelings of adequacy and inadequacy is entirely possible, and it’s probably very normal if you’re in the process of recovering from poor self esteem.

(1) hi, i have really severe social anxiety and i've been wondering if it's possible i actually have avpd. i saw the ask about self-esteem and i kind of related but kind of not if that makes sense? i honestly don't know how i would rate my self esteem. i think i'm a person of worth who is intelligent and talented but i'm always terribly worried that i'm lying to myself and my perceived self is just an ideal i've created and i'm not actually as smart or funny or interesting as i'd like to think.

(2) i guess to rephrase, i think every life has inherent value and that logically applies to my own life, and i have a sense of identity, but i’m scared that it isn’t real. and as ridiculous as it sounds, i’m insecure that this carries into my relationships with other people as well. like with my boyfriend, i worry that i’ve fooled myself into thinking i’m interesting and maybe i’ve somehow managed to fool him, too. i guess i’m wondering if this sounds characteristic of avpd to you at all?

Hey.

It’s hard to say whether this sounds like AvPD or not because low self-esteem can exist with almost any mental illness, or even without it. It can exist with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and it can exist with AvPD. I can’t give you an answer to that, unfortunately.

I would recommend you have a read through the links on our Resources page, but specifically these two links:

AvPD Criteria (in-depth). 

 AvPD or Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD)- Avoidance (forum). 

These should help give you a better understanding and should help you determine whether you have AvPD or SAD. Keep in mind though, you can have both. SAD is very common with in people with AvPD. 

I know personally, my SAD was a pre-cursor for my AvPD. 

- Jay. 

People always think you gain trust first and then you’re vulnerable with people. But the truth is, you can’t really earn trust over time with people without being somewhat vulnerable first.

Brene Brown (via samxcamargo)

That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a collective loss of normalcy.

Understanding the stages of grief is a start. But whenever I talk about the stages of grief, I have to remind people that the stages aren’t linear and may not happen in this order. It’s not a map but it provides some scaffolding for this unknown world.

Grief counseling is something I have found hugely beneficial for dealing with the inconsistencies and unpredictability of living with multiple chronic illnesses. It was suggested to me by my therapist, who realized that my rapid cycling emotions weren’t just due to the ADHD, but because I was also constantly in a state of perpetual grieving; grieving for my past self who suffered and endured, for my current self still going through it, and for my future self, and a future that will forever be steeped in uncertainty.

I will always be in a state of grieving, because the stages of grief are not linear, and even after you reach the stage of acceptance, you will always carry some shard of the experience with you. In my case it’s less a shard, and more my entire existence. I live in a perpetual state of open-ended uncertainty. 

And now, so does everyone else.

You are grieving, both for the things going on right now, and the things we anticipate that will happen as a result. You are grieving, and that’s okay, you need to experience these emotions and process them. You are not being irrational, you are not being weak. You are being human.

Be kind to yourselves. This will pass. It will pass like the kidney stone of an angry god pissing vengeance into the wind. But it will pass. 

Your blog is absolutely fantastic and it's helping me so much you have no idea. Thank you!!!

aww, that really means a lot to me :3 i’m so glad you’re finding it useful. thanks for the message!!

Your purpose in life is not to love yourself but to love being yourself.

If you goal is to love yourself, then your focus is directed inward toward yourself, and you end up constantly watching yourself from the outside, disconnected, trying to summon the “correct” feelings towards yourself or fashion yourself into something you can approve of.

If your goal is to love being yourself, then your focus is directed outward towards life, on living and making decisions based on what brings you pleasure and fulfillment.

Be the subject, not the object. It doesn’t matter what you think of yourself. You are experiencing life. Life is not experiencing you.

I think… one of the interesting things about online messaging and texting is that sometimes, writing out your feelings to someone is actually so much easier than speaking them. Like, I cannot easily express myself through verbal words. I stutter, I panic, I say “nevermind” because I can’t bring myself to admit the words out loud. But with online messaging, I can blabber on the keyboard like a stream of consciousness, and I can express myself to my friends in a way that’s sometimes very hard for me to do irl

Which is why I’m so defensive about this whole belief that face to face communication is more real than online interactions. In a way, yeah, it is, because it’s more literally “real,” and im not at all gonna deny the value in irl relationships. But online communication has genuinely allowed me, a socially anxious person with a fear of opening up, to develop meaningful relationships with people, and you don’t understand how grateful I am for that

Mary Oliver, from “the fourth sign of the zodiac” published in Blue Horses

i went out to the cinema with my mum and my friend yesterday and i was pretty fine i didnt rlly struggle with it like i thought i would when a few hours before leaving i felt physically ill and extremely exhausted just because i knew it was coming. and now i feel like im spiraling im dissociated and i feel like im faking everything because how can i be mentally ill when i left the house for the first time in weeks and was fine? does it mean im faking?

Hello anon! No, that definitely doesn’t mean you’re faking.

I can think of a couple different things that might explain it.

Anticipatory anxiety

It sounds like your anxiety before the event was worse than it was during it.

Sometimes, the wait before a distressing thing can be much harder than actually going through it. That’s common, and it’s an okay way to feel. (In fact, for me personally, that’s the main way my anxiety presents itself.)

Modifying factors

Maybe you felt comfortable, because your mom and your friend were there.

Maybe you were enjoying the cinema so much, you didn’t feel distressed.

Maybe after all the anxiety beforehand, you were just too exhausted to freak out anymore.

Or maybe you were slightly dissociated – just enough to take the edge off and allow you to function semi-normally.

Symptoms can vary from day to day

The thing about our brains & minds is that they don’t really follow any rules. They just do whatever works best in the moment.

And what works best can vary a lot from day to day. Sometimes it’s easier (or harder) to cope, due to other factors. So your symptoms or issues can fluctuate, too.

That doesn’t mean “nothing’s wrong with you” – it doesn’t mean your mental illness is imaginary, or that it’s disappeared. And it doesn’t mean you’re faking.

It just means that on this day, for some reason that may or may not be obvious, you were able to handle that outing more easily than you expected.

That’s not a guarantee that you’ll always be able to do it so easily, and other people shouldn’t assume it is.

The best we can do is look at our patterns over time, try to understand what conditions are best for us – what we need in order to function best & be happy – and work on feeling okay giving that to ourselves.

Rebound dissociation

Earlier in my life, I’d dissociate under stress.

But in some situations, it was more protective to fawn and comply. So while I was there, I’d act super friendly, engaged and responsive, for hours at a time.

And as soon as I got out of the situation, I’d shut down and dissociate completely. I couldn’t move, talk, or think. Once my stress level was low enough to tolerate, I’d “come down” from the dissociation.

At first, I resisted the shutdown because it was terrifying and silent and awful. But when I stopped fighting it, I found myself recovering more quickly, because I wasn’t adding to the stress. So I started thinking of it as “resting” and “re-stabilizing.”

A similar thing still happens when I get overstimulated by light, noise, or other people’s emotions: I naturally withdraw into myself until I can regroup.

It’s possible you also experienced that during/after the cinema.

You might have been overwhelmed by sensory stuff from being in public, other people’s feelings and reactions, or your own feelings. Or maybe you were just totally exhausted.

Dissociation is a coping mechanism

The important thing to know is that dissociation is a self-protective act. It’s not always the BEST coping mechanism you could use, but it is one, and it works. It shields you from overwhelming feelings until you have the resources to deal with them.

If you’re dissociating, it’s probably because you’re having a hard time right now.

That’s the bottom line. So when you’re ready to take care of your feelings, anything you can do to help yourself feel calmer, comforted, soothed, and grounded, isgoing to help.

It may not feel comfortable at first – after all, when you’re dissociated, it’s because you’re afraid to feel – but if you’re ready to come back to yourself, then go ahead, even though it feels awkward and hard. You’ll be okay.

When you find yourself dissociated, try and be gentle with yourself. Don’t judge or hate on yourself for it. Just be a little nicer than usual. Take care of yourself and your poor stressed-out brain.

You can take a nap, do a nice sensory thing like a scented bath or shower, cuddle with a pet, listen to music that you love, give yourself a hand or foot massage, write in a journal, do a guided meditation, or anything that you find restorative and calming.

Basically, anything that reminds you “hey, sometimes being in the moment actually feels okay.”

Right now, it’s probably really hard, but that doesn’t mean it will be this way forever. Over time, you’ll be able to handle it more easily and comfortably. 

Thanks for writing to me, and I hope you feel much better soon! <3