Can one be antisocial and avoidant?

For some personality patterns, such as the avoidant and the dependent, anxiety tends to build and build without limit. In contrast, antisocials are not disposed to ruminate or reflect on their feelings, much less express feelings verbally. Instead, they find anxiety to be an intolerable poison that must be acted out, usually in some impulsive and thoughtless way. In fact, the aggressive drive that often seems to define antisocial behavior can be seen as anxious energy redirected toward the manipulation, confrontation, or domination of others. Feelings of helplessness are thus discharged by making others feel helpless before the wrath of the antisocial. As such, chronic feelings of anxiety are rare. When they do occur, it is usually because the antisocial finds that some insuperable barrier cannot be knocked down, making discharge impossible. Antisocials may experience intense dread at the possibility of being controlled by others or by circumstances, dread retaliation by those they have damaged, or dread an inevitable prison sentence, for example. Increases in sustained acting-out behavior, therefore, are likely to signal some enduring life circumstance or external constraint not easily overcome through impulsive physical action.

Some antisocials exhibit a long history of depression. Vague feelings of helplessness and futility make such individuals even less likely to reflect on the consequences of their actions. Constructive courses of actions are irrelevant, because life cannot be changed, has already been wasted, or presents too many barriers to be overcome in the face of too few resources. Rejection by significant others or residual remorse for past actions may feed into an already irritable mood, exacerbating relationship conflicts and further lowering the threshold for hostile or aggressive action. The net effect is a link between depressive feelings and an increase in the acting-out behaviors that typify the antisocial pattern.