Avoidant personality disorder is also known to science as "avoidant". Up to one percent of the total adult population of the planet is affected by this pathology. American medicine pays the greatest attention to its study. If a patient has an increased tendency to anxiety, agoraphobia, social phobia, it can be suspected that he has an avoidant personality disorder. These terms refer to the fear of open spaces and interaction with people.
Avoidant Personality Disorder: Symptoms
For people who are characterized by this mental disorder, the following features are characteristic:
- extreme shyness;
- heightened sensitivity to social criticism or rejection;
- low self-esteem;
- feeling inferior;
- the desire for close relationships with other people, which is hindered by the difficulty of creating attachments, relationships (a possible exception is close relatives, but often problems are observed even with relationships within the family);
- an HDI patient seeks to rule out if possibleinteraction in the social sphere, and this applies not only to casual acquaintances, but also to the necessary work contacts or, say, communication at school, university.
Psychotherapy as a method of help
If a person is supposed to have an avoidant personality disorder, it is customary to compensate for the symptoms of the pathology with psychotherapeutic practices. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that patients are usually shy and are extremely shy, so the simplest social interactions are difficult for them. Communication within society for such people is a serious obstacle. As a result, it is impossible to resort to one of the most effective methods of modern psychotherapy - group interaction.
Avoidant Anxiety Disorder is treatable with CBT theory. This is due to the fact that the methodology works well with shy people. It is aimed at developing new social skills and abilities, which has a significant impact on human behavior, simplifying its functioning as an element of society.
What about the drugs?
Traditional medicine suggests that virtually any mental illness can be treated with medication. However, avoidant personality disorder is recommended to be treated by delaying the medication step if possible.
In general, medicines show a good result, so they are used often. But help from drugs is onlytemporary, associated with numerous side effects, persists while the course lasts, and is addictive.
How to recognize?
Psychic personality disorder is usually noticeable even to the naked eye. A person is literally “fixated” on his shortcomings, thinks too much about them, often raises this topic in a conversation. At the same time, such an individual seeks to avoid interaction with other people as much as possible and makes contact only when he subconsciously feels confident that he will not be rejected.
Rejection, any losses in mental disorders are so painful that it is preferable for the patient to remain alone rather than risk his unstable state, trying to build contact with others.
Symptoms of the disease
Mental personality disorder can be diagnosed by the following features:
- strong desire for close relationships with other people, hindered by excessive shyness;
- Striving to avoid any physical contact whenever possible;
- dislike, self-loathing, disgust;
- incredulity;
- self-isolation, the desire to completely exclude relations with society (hikikomori);
- timidity, modesty, going to extremes;
- feeling of belonging to people of the "second class", "lower level";
- inability to work normally, to accumulate professionalism, to improve;
- increased self-criticism, especially in matterssocial interactions;
- shyness, embarrassment;
- loneliness;
- conscious exclusion of intimate ties;
- addiction (mental, chemical).
Information still not enough
As part of determining the presence of the disease, a personality disorder test is performed. Since the disease was singled out by doctors as an independent relatively recently, methods of diagnosis and treatment are still under development. Most of the technologies used today are experimental technologies.
Emotional personality disorder is in many ways close to psychopathy (specifically, to the sensitive subspecies). According to the classification in force in Russia, even today they do not consider it necessary to single out such a disease as an independent one, but only classify it as a schizoid personality disorder, classify it as an asthenic one. Much will depend on the attending physician and his own views on medicine, psychiatry.
Until now, there is no clear record of people suffering from this type of personality disorder. There is no information either on the prevalence of the disease, or on what its dependence on gender is. It is impossible to say whether multiple personality disorder is associated with a genetic predisposition, whether it is inherited. One can only say that the people in whom I subsequently diagnose the disease are shy and timid from early childhood.
Pathology is not dangerous foraround…
If a personality disorder test showed the presence of a disease, we can say that the diagnosis has been made. It is noted that in everyday life a person who has been diagnosed with a pathology behaves in such a way that his inferiority complex is noticeable to people around him.
As a rule, patients are introverts. This is largely due to too low self-esteem. At the same time, patients are not antisocial individuals, and they tend to have a strong desire to have normal social contacts. The problem is that entering into relationships with other people is real for patients only when they are sure of positive acceptance, that they will not be criticized. As a rule, guarantee requirements are so high that their implementation becomes unrealistic.
…but extremely problematic for the patient
Multiple personality disorder affects a person in such a way that he constantly feels that society rejects him. As a rule, the patient has an idealized idea of how he should be treated in society. As soon as reality diverges from this idea, a person runs away in fear, “closes himself in a shell”, withdraws into himself, fences himself off.
It is fear that is the leading factor in the formation of communicative behavior. Patients usually:
- shackled;
- unsure of themselves;
- modest beyond measure;
- unnatural;
- demonstrative in their avoidance of society;
- begging to the point of humiliation.
This behavior is due to the fact that patients are sure in advance that their societywill reject, and try to take action in advance so that it “does not hurt so much.”
Perception of the world is distorted
If you have a person in your life who has avoidant personality disorder, the reasons for communicating with him may be very different, but continued contact is possible only with a clear awareness of one fact: these people exaggerate the negative perception of others and distortedly feel social interactions and society's assessment.
Patients with this type of personality disorder usually have very poor communication skills. This provokes ineptitude, awkwardness in various situations, familiar to those who feel in society, like a fish in water. As a result, patients are seen as wary and often repulsed by others, which only reinforces gloomy assumptions about what to expect from others.
Development disappointing
Over time, avoidant personality disorder causes not only negative expectations from communication between people, but also from life in general. The person begins to exaggerate everyday dangers. He faces serious internal contradictions when he needs to turn to someone. If you need to speak to the public, horror rolls over, which is impossible to cope with without medication.
In a career, a person with avoidant personality disorder can achieve almost nothing, since no one trusts them with responsibilitypositions. These people are practically invisible to others, and a distinctive feature of their behavior is helpfulness, which provokes society to take advantage of the sick without any return. Patients with this type of personality disorder in most cases do not have friends, cannot build trusting relationships.
Going to the doctor
First time seeing a psychologist, psychotherapist or psychiatrist, patients can behave quite unpredictably, but they all pursue the same goal - to please the doctor. At the same time, it is literally obvious that often people are in a very strong tension, which grows if there is an assumption that the doctor “does not like” the patient.
Many of them say that they are afraid of ridicule from the people around them and are afraid that they will start to spread gossip, and therefore fence themselves off from society. In this aspect, all patients are highly suspicious. But when they try to explain something to them, they perceive the information “with hostility”, immediately evaluating it as criticism.
Is mental illness for life a sentence?
At the current level of development of medicine in general and psychotherapy, psychiatry in particular, there are not many methods for eliminating mental developmental disorders. The situation is similar in the case when avoidant personality disorder was diagnosed. Treatment rarely shows real effectiveness for a long time without constant therapy (drug, psychological).
At the same time, the manifestations of the disease are largely related to which social niche, stratumthe person belongs. The happiest can be called those who are lucky enough to successfully marry a person who corresponds to ideas about the ideal. In this case, the relationship becomes stable, both people accept each other with all the positive qualities and shortcomings, but social interactions are limited to the family and end with it.
As soon as social support collapses, a person literally "falls into the inner swamp": he suffers from depression, anxiety, he has dysphoric symptoms.
Differential diagnosis
The difficulty of defining a personality disorder lies in the fact that the manifestations of the disease are similar to those observed in the following diseases:
- schizoid disorder;
- anxiety disorder.
In the first case, the patient seeks to be alone as long as possible. Doctors also distinguish the so-called matte effect. On the other hand, in the case of an anxious personality disorder, people want to communicate, but cannot afford it because of the haunting fear and constant self-doubt.
All described species have much in common in the clinical picture. The most close are the anxious type and the dependent type, but if in the first case the cause of fear lies precisely in the stage of establishing contact, then people of the second group are afraid of parting.
Modern medicine sets itself the task of identifying clear, definite signs of each of the known types of personality disorders so that it can be establishedunmistakable diagnosis.
Similar manifestations are characteristic of hysterical, borderline patients. But these types of people are manipulative and irritable, and their behavior is often unpredictable. It is very problematic to determine whether the disease belongs to the anxiety type, or to a subspecies bordering on it, as well as in the case of distinguishing between schizophrenia and schizotypy. However, it is important to determine the most effective therapy in each case.
What can help?
Choosing the best treatment option, doctors create an integral behavior model, on the basis of which they form a program that takes into account the individual characteristics of the patient. At the same time, attention must be paid to such components:
- cognitive;
- behavioral;
- psychodynamic.
The most significant stage of treatment is when the personal changes achieved during the course of treatment are consolidated. It is important that the person begins to apply the acquired skills outside of the situations simulated in the hospital, in real life. However, here it is impossible to predict the development of the situation, since much depends on the environment of the patient. A small failure can cause repeated damage to self-esteem, which makes the situation even worse. In this case, all the success achieved is immediately reduced to nothing. But the success of social interaction activates a cyclical process of self-affirmation, with each new round leading a person to a new level of self-awareness and self-confidence.
