Anyone here have a "normal" background?

I don't mean to offend anyone firstly.
By normal I mean an absence of things which are considered triggers or precursors to mental illness. E.g. a normal two parent home, no significant abuse, no money,addiction or social issues.

What do you think went wrong?

I didn't, that's for sure.

But to answer your second question, children who are bullied or shunned by other children can have AvPD triggered. Again, it has to be at the level of chronic abuse, and they need to be predisposed to get the PD.

inverse wrote:I didn't, that's for sure.

But to answer your second question, children who are bullied or shunned by other children can have AvPD triggered. Again, it has to be at the level of chronic abuse, and they need to be predisposed to get the PD.

Yes, but what is their parents reaction to that? Or does these children hide that from their parents? If they do, why?

I'm not sure parents can do much to counteract it, other than removing the child from the bullies, and at that point the damage is done.

Avoidant people - and children who grow into avoidance - are usually introverted by nature, so perhaps they are less likely to speak up if they are being abused. I know, as adults, they seem to be able to take a lot more abuse than than average folks, probably because they've been trained to their whole lives. I think it's possible that parents who are very involved in their children's lives could be unaware of the degree of bullying and abuse they receive on a daily basis.

I also think - gut feeling, probably way off - that avoidant people are less resilient. It is believed that resilience is a genetic thing, that some people are born more able to bounce back. My gut says that the genetic component of AvPD, the thing that is triggered by chronic emotional child abuse, has something to do with a lower amount of resilience, which is nature not nurture, so again, parents can't impact that.

I am not sure my family is entirely normal, but there was not anything scandalous going on. My mother mayebe has some schizoid and ocd type traits and my father schizotypal traits. Generally i respect them, and admire them in various ways, they have quite a lot of wisdom especially my father. However i do beleive that my mother was not a person who was entirely cut out for having children, which is something she knows. She used to tell us that sometimes, and also wanted to leave home sometimes because she could not cope with us.

I am in some ways the most functioning of the family and in some ways the least. In terms of education and career ec i am the "successful" one but i am also the one who can not really deal with people at all. I think that my mother, never able to deal with emotional expression or nediness, basically had got tired of babies when i was born and did not want to have much to do with me. In such a situation the infant withdraws outward neediness and focusses on internal objects. Guntrip in his book talks about the ego withdrawing inwards in the hope of experiencing some rebirth later in life.

-- Mon Mar 30, 2015 11:44 pm --

I also think that there is a part of this that is innate. Jung talked about two factors: treatment by parents or equivalent and also the infants natural capacity for fantacy. I am very fantasy prone. This may be related to lack of resilience i am not sure.

Sensitivity plays a part. i was always extremely sensitive to remarks and behaviours of other people, ever since i can remember. When my mom was sad (and this was often), id feel sad as well. And then i would blame myself for not being able to make her happy. Because of that i often blamed myself for other people's faults and later, had no idea i was being abused because I thought everything was my fault.

If it's not an external force causing the disorder, i'm sure it's an internal force. PD's don't appear for no reason (well, if it does, it remains to be seen).

Pretty much. At home at least. But when you combine: a so called predisposition to the disorder + shyness/HSP + disdain, blaming, rejection and bullying (whether sly or obvious) throughout my whole life from my peers + and an insecure attachment as a child, I can see that being a cause for potentially having developed this.

I have a very normal background. There's nothing really wrong with how I was raised. Normal family, no abuse, no bullying, no hate, no alcohol, no drugs, no money problems or anything. It's funny, having a normal family who still do things right makes me feel so much more distant from everyone else. It feels like I can't relate with most people because almost every person my age has a broken household, and it makes me sad and feel lucky.

There aren't any real triggers from my home life. My family doesn't cause any trouble for me, but they don't seem to fix any of my problems either. I seem to just have been born a little broken and every mistake I make drives that crack wider and makes my disorder grow. I think I just dealt with things the wrong way when I was very young, and it cemented a lot of issues and habits. It feels like I'm a half-breed now. I say that because I'm avoidant, but I don't have any constant triggers and when I do have one, it is often minor. Anything that triggers me is usually a result of my inexperience or plain weakness, not a stroke of black luck or fate. Nearly everything outside of my control seems to be good. It feels wrong to be this lucky, I feel like I don't deserve any of it. I feel horrible whenever I hear all of your stories with family troubles or abuse.

Mithos wrote:I have a very normal background. There's nothing really wrong with how I was raised. Normal family, no abuse, no bullying, no hate, no alcohol, no drugs, no money problems or anything. It's funny, having a normal family who still do things right makes me feel so much more distant from everyone else. It feels like I can't relate with most people because almost every person my age has a broken household, and it makes me sad and feel lucky.

There aren't any real triggers from my home life. My family doesn't cause any trouble for me, but they don't seem to fix any of my problems either. I seem to just have been born a little broken and every mistake I make drives that crack wider and makes my disorder grow. I think I just dealt with things the wrong way when I was very young, and it cemented a lot of issues and habits. It feels like I'm a half-breed now. I say that because I'm avoidant, but I don't have any constant triggers and when I do have one, it is often minor. Anything that triggers me is usually a result of my inexperience or plain weakness, not a stroke of black luck or fate. Nearly everything outside of my control seems to be good. It feels wrong to be this lucky, I feel like I don't deserve any of it. I feel horrible whenever I hear all of your stories with family troubles or abuse.

Hi,

AvPD often makes things hard to look at objectively. Especially in situations where you feel you don't deserve the "luck" you have. If you feel bad about something, I recommend going to a therapist, as talking things out can help (you seem like high functioning AvPD)

For a while I felt immensely guilty about feeling bad because I knew my problems weren't as bad as others. But sealing away the negativity just made me more anxious & avoidant. I suspect many high functioning AvPD have similar thoughts & never seek help and thus live life in a miserable but technically functioning way.

I think I have a normal background. No abuse, no broken home, no neglect, mommy didn't hold me too tight or not tight enough (not that I recall, anyway), I had neighbourhood kids to play with...

...I just turned out wrong, despite it all.