Calling all professionally successful avoidants!

There is a description of avpd where I read people with avpd could be professionally successful. I really don't see how someone with any more than a mild case of avpd could be very successful. Promotions are too hard as they produce too much preformance anxiety. True avpders turn down promotions. I did take one and rose to the exultant position of food service manager. Now I regret it. I wish I was scrubbing toilets somewhere (i wouldn't even need a brush!)

I have heard from people who were studying to be doctors and claimed to have avpd. did they really have avpd? Did they actually become doctors?

Come on successful avpd people - tell us your story and give us poor slobs some hope!

you deal with it and progress. i started out washing dishes and not talking to anyone all day. i even skipped lunch break so i could avoid people in the staffroom at lunch. my job now is a night and day change from that, you just have to build yourself up and break out of your bad negative thinking habits. it aint rocket science but it aint gonna happen unless you put the effort in at your end either. im not sucessfull but comparing how i used to be with my first job ive made some good progress.

I really like how Krag is so positive all the time and is determined to overcome the problems he faces in his struggle to be happy.
I really admire that.

I'm not successful. I aways sell myself short, or aim low so I'm not disappointed.

I've never accepted jobs with responsibility and higher pay because it would mean interacting and overseeing other people which brings confrontation and/or teamwork. I've never been good at that obviously. I purposefully am a serious underachiever. I KNOW I'm very intelligent and could be doing something much more demanding and even all kinds of things that are artistic in nature as well. I suspect lots of us are actually quite creative in various ways. I dropped out of college and have never had a "serious" job even though I am very capable of one. I've often thought my dream job would be for someone to put me in a room by myself with an mp3 player and tell me what needs to be done and then go away for the whole day and leave me alone. I would freaking EXCEL at a job like that! But, I don't ACTUALLY want that sort of job. It will not help me. It just perpetuates this stupidity. While I still do not have a "real" job I do have one that make me be sociable so that's a tiny step in the right direction. My favorite jobs have been ones that had nearly no interaction with other humans. I worked as a projectionist in a movie theater when I was a teenager and that was the best avoidant job ever. I was completely alone, running movie projectors all day. It didn't help my problem but it was safe. I don't think that way anymore. I hate this nonsense and I intend to overcome it no matter what it takes. I suppose I may not be as bad with it as others but it HAS been a very ridiculous obstacle in my life and I'm done with it. It doesn't work.

As for someone becoming a doctor or lawyer or whatever... I have no idea how that's even possible. That goal seems completely out of reach. You'd have to be somewhat reasonably extroverted to pull that off I'd think.

I'm a decent inside salesman and I have an engineering degree.

I'm going to end up with about 1 million dollars in sales this year.... wooooooot!!!

Work is my escape... or one of them at least

My father was an engineer - electrical. That career never appealed to me because it seems to have to relocate for jobs all the time. The pay was good, but the idea of moving made me anxious. My father was able to stay in te same place long enough for me to get through school. He felt secure enough in the job at one point to finally buy a house. Then a few years later he got laid off. Figures.

I got a chemistry degree. That would have been a good profession if I could have broken into it. Couldn't. Worked my way up through foodservice. Accounting might have been a better choice. They need accountants everywhere, so I would not think you would have to relocate a lot. And you sit at a desk and add up numbers a lot.

A million in sales sounds pretty good shhhshhh. What if they offere you some kind of promotion? I took one to supervisor and it worked alright for 7 years before it came crashing down on me.

I couldn't become a professional until after 7 years of therapy so I guess I'm not that severe anymore other than the fantasizing. If I would have had to do this job before therapy I wouldn't have been able to. One thing though is office work in a professional setting is way easier than food service in my opinion. I still couldn't cope with food service. I love my cubicle even if lots of people stop by it and talk to me though out the day.

The good thing about that food service job was that it got me to meet lots of people. I actually made 2 whole friends in 13 years. Now with an office job I will never make any more friends. That's what I have lined up after my layoff from the food job. it's a lower pay grade too. yippee. Climbing down the ladder of sucess.

I worry about how im gonna to make a living constantly. Im nervous around people, socially inept so i feel my options are limited, so that makes me even more scared. Im studying accounting atm but even then i would still have to be able to interact with others so i dont know if it is a good choice. School is hard enough as it is, i cant even imagine interviewing for a job and trying to "sell" myself. Its all hypothetical anyway because first i would actually have to get my ass through college and graduate.

Really just feels like a pipe dream to be honest. Iv been down this road before, tricking myself that i could actually make it in the Army what a joke. I mean it took me to 27 to get up enough nerve to start college full time. So who the ###$ am i kidding?

I wouldn't completely give up on the idea of making friends in an office job just yet. I made one. I even went to the company picnic *gasp*, I couldn't believe I did it! Plus I noticed that a lot of the people who work at my job are just as socially inept as me . I guess that's why we like engineering. Machines don't judge, and when you're not working with machines you get to hide in a cube. Anyway, its easier to make friends if they aren't in any place to judge me as odd. At least for me it is.