What made you Avoidant?

For me it was the kids in school in Los Angeles, mainly from the 4th grade to the 6th grade. They harassed me a lot every day. Plus my father was abusive and my mother didn't show me any love or attention. I had no support at all. Just constant harrassment and terrorizing and denegration. It made me feel suicidal. So that's when I started being avoidant, to try to avoid all these people that were making my life hell. I was sensitive, so I guess this stuff bothered me more than the average person. Then in junior high there were some very pretty girls that liked me but I couldn't talk to them. Over and over I couldn't take advantage of chances to have a girlfriend. This made me depressed. Then the depression led to overeating. These things started a pattern that ruined my life. I wish I could go back and kill all those kids that bothered me in grade school. They ruined my life. One time I punched out my father. He ruined my life too. Hitting his face a few times was good but not enough to make up for a lifetime of abuse. Sometimes it seems I shouldn't have any caring or sympathy for the human race because these kids ruined my life just for the fun of it. If I won a million dollars, I wouldn't give any of it to charity. By the way, it seems that the kids who acted worse tended to be stupid, and my IQ is about 135. I think 135 kind of sucks, because it makes you less able to relate to average people while at the same time not smart enough to make you able to do as much as the people that have really high IQ's, like 150 or higher. I notice somebody here said they don't like idle small talk. Neither do I. I hate it, but I see everyone doing it a lot. I can't understand why they like that so much. I like to talk about subjects.

Hello, Manahan,

I feel I have APD also (among other things), and can relate to years of experience of (apparent?) peer rejection. I am also hypersensitive, and was probably moreso, as a child.
In addition, my Dad was very critical, and sometimes rageful. I consider his behavior to have been verbally/emotionally abusive, though he never, to my recollection, called any of us names, per se...it was more of a condescending attitude toward those "closest" to him. He seemed "disgusted" with me (and other family members) - in fact he used to use the word (disgusted) a Lot. And it wasn't always What he said, as much as the the nasty way he said things to us.

I have had a few close (or so I thought) friendships with other females that ended drastically...it seems I was heartily rejected, and I had (and still have) no idea why. I was devastated each time - at least one time, feeling suicidal. I had 3 or 4 cats at the time, and remember envisioning my red cat, and coming up with a reason to stay alive - Who would take good care of my "babies", if I were gone? (At least They loved me...of that I was sure - Thank God for critters!)

I am glad to have a place to "be", where I don't have to fear rejection, in these forums.

Thanks for being there (here), everyone!

Offbeatgrl53

Manahan,

I, too, wonder what causes AvPD. I think it's complex and different for everyone, but I've come to believe that it stems from some sort of stress or trauma - most likely early (childhood trauma) - something or things that you may or may not even remember.

I've read other messages on this board where people with AvPD had been teased at school and other things, so I suspect experiences like this play into the development of AvPD. It's a coping mechanism. All I can surmise from my own experience is that my parents were extremely critical of me (and my siblings) my entire life. My father was never around - working 7 days a week, to this day still don't know him (I'm almost 30). I think my mom suffers from mental illness (as do I and others in the family) and took a lot of her issues out on her children. Even though consciously I know it's not true, to this day I don't feel that my parents love me.

For the first time I have also begun to consider abuse, as a great grandfather was a known pedophile (eventually sent to an asylum, which I found out only recently). He abused practically every child in the family (and other unknown children) throughout his life. I was 2-3 when I would have been around him and have some vague unusual memories, which I ignored, until I read a pamphlet (while in a "facility") about a girl who had experienced abuse and it really scared me and made me wonder.

I have long had a theory that some early negative experiences teach us (subconsciously) while we are still young/children that the world is not a safe or friendly place and every experience is a threatening one, never knowing what to expect - so it's easier to just avoid potential threatening situations. I definitely think being a sensitive person means we experience the world slightly differently than most, so hard circumstances take even more of a toll on us.

I have such a hard time with people, I could almost live without them completely. I think maybe from my parents, I learned that interactions with people will always be negative ones, where you will be rejected or criticized. At work and school I have always tried to do everything perfectly so that no one would ever have any reason to criticize me, but this has made no difference. It also leads to extremely low self-esteem. I hate myself and I don't even know why. I am so convinced there is something wrong with me. I personally feel so different from other people I might as well be an alien. I think there are very few (except avoidants) who could possible understand how terribly trying getting through life has been for me. I can remember as young as 5 years old worrying about what others thought about me and thinking if I said or did the wrong thing that the other kids wouldn't like me. Where would this come from?

Most avoidants (I've read - and is true for myself) don't like idle conversation or chit chat. I personally enjoy a good stimulating, meaningful conversation one-on-one or in small groups, but most people don't seem interested in engaging in anything more than what was on tv the night before. (Relates to IQ, I think, mentioned below)

What you said about IQ I think plays a HUGE role. I have said this elsewhere in other messages in this forum, but one thing is that highly intelligent and creative lack the filtering system that blocks out unimportant stimuli from the environment - that other people have. This means we are bombarded and overstimulated more by the outside world (Harvard study). Also, I read an article that said 98% of people (I'm making up the figure off the top of my head, but it was something like this) have IQs that fall withing the range of 80-120. Literally for every point beyond that you become more and more of an anomoly. I have about the same IQ as you and according to different studies I've read I am like .1% of the population. One article related this to being Gulliver among the Lilliputians. In other words, you are so much more intelligent than the average person it is the equivilent of a normal person living surrounded by nothing but mentally challenged people. I know that sounds horrible, but it explains a lot to me - why I have trouble talking to/relating to most people. We are almost living in different worlds. I view most things entirely differently from the majority and I've just learned to keep my mouth shut and never say what I really think. Most of my life has been an act to appear normal to other people and that is DRAINING - so I just avoid, avoid people, avoid going out.

It sounds pompous, but I enjoy my own company over most people's. Or maybe I just feel safer being alone, because there is no threat of rejection or embarassment. But I do LIKE and NEED a lot of time alone, though that's not to say I don't want any human contact ever - it just has to be the right kind if person. Cultivating meaningful, satisfying relationships is SOOOO much harder for avoidants, but I think it can happen when you find similar people (often with similar issues that they can relate to).

Why?

Perhaps genetics? Possibly.

I was also verbally abused by my grandpa alot... No love at all. My mom was with her boyfriend all the time and he didn't like kids. I remember crying for her under the table... I wouldnt know if she was dead or alive and she would come through the back door and i'd be happy, but i'd keep it in because I never expressed my feelings like that. Then she would eventually leave again... Usually when I wasn't looking. Nowadays she's always around and we argue alot.

School. I was picked on so much and beat up on a regular basis. I mean everyday I was messed up and it's my fault I just wanted to do my work and be a good student? Then I get messed with so I get to a point where I could care less about school work, so i'd just concentrate on avoiding being bullied and it's like they purposely knew i'd get violent so i'd be put in sped classes and evaluated.... That's why I dropped out... Well, not that.. In hs I wasn't bullied, just a real loner. Lonely loner.... But yeah, this girl would flirt with me and everything and then she got a bf so I just dropped out. I just got sick of hs to tell you the truth.

What made me avoidant? I think this is a great question and one that i ask myself quite a bit, but really i dont know the answer(if there is one). Sure i was abused as a child as many people were, but that doesnt cause everyone to become AvPD. I often wonder why i choose this path or maybe its that this path choose me.

Honestly for me i think i was predisposed to AvPD. See even as a young child(about kindergarten or 1st grade) i noticed just how different i was from my classmates. I was always very shy and timid and other kids can easily pick up on this. Of course i was made fun of(like every child is) because i was an easy target and didnt offer much resistance. I never fit in and didnt really care to. I was content to be a loner but the problem is that other people cant except that.

All of this happened before i was even abused so its hard to say how i would have turned out if i wasnt molested. I know it negetively affected me but to which extend i dont know.

I also tried to understand what makes me so anxious and avoidant. I think it is most likely genetics. What happened to you is probably in your childhood is probably not the cause, but a symptom.

Good luck to everyone.

I don't know if its genetics or not. If it is, it must skip a generation in my family. My parents and brother are very outgoing and successful. I'd swear I was adopted if I didn't begin to look like them.

I too have been trying to figure it out. I can't say i've known of AvPD for that long though. I recently discovered it online. Can't say for sure that I have it but like many undiagnosed, the symptoms are a mirror image of my social problems.

Shyness is a harsh mistress. For too long I did nothing about it. Now i'm 22. For the last 5 years I have been trying to kick the habit of anti-social behavior, believeing its just that: a habit. Now things have become so lonely. I don't have a lot of friends and never really had a girlfriend. Not to say that girls never tried to get close to me, I just pushed them away without even thinking about it.

I was never really picked on or abused in school or life in general. If someone at my elementary school tried to bully me it usually ended in a fight. I was never willing to stand down to a bully, perhaps, because I didn't want to talk to any teachers about it. I think those days before high school established me as a middleman. Not hated/not liked. I just simply "exsisted". Thats how it was all through high school too.

My two friends who go to university in Toronto asked me to move up there with them after I graduated college. I've never moved out of my hometown before and Toronto always seemed a little intimidating to me but I did it anyway. We got a small house together, I got a job and everything was working out great. But then those familiar feelings of loneliness and anxiety started coming back.

I believed that moving to the big city would let me to start anew. Meet new people and whatnot. Well, I haven't really met anyone yet. Not even at work. I sit at a desk for 8 hours a day doing data entry on a small laptop. 5:00 comes around and I always believe that the rest of the day will be great. Then I get home to the familiar sights of my two friends with their significant others and it makes me feel even worse. But, as always, I just slap on a smile and make everything look normal.

It will be no different today: Go to work, have a coffee, do "work" until 1:00, one hour for lunch (by myself), back to work for 3 hours, go home, find something to entertain my mind for the night, go to sleep. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Sigh.

I wish I could zero in on why I am like this. Maybe I should talk to my friends about it. See what they say (my one friend is a psych major). Even if she doesn't know what to say, she might be able to point me in the right direction.

hello

not sure if i am an avoidant but the symptoms are very familiar to me and a lot on what has been said here i can relate to.

offbeatgrl53, your father sounds like my father. he is moody and anxious and takes it out on the rest of the family and blames us. he has never harmed us but similarly to your father he makes you feel worthless just by the way he is saying things. and it all comes up suddenly over teh most banal things, as if he is bearing a grudge....whenever i hear him coming up the stairs, for instance, i get a little nervous. recently somebody stole the saddlebags off my bike and i'm procrastinating letting him know about it..
my mother and i have been growing closer lately, but when i was a child she was so consumed in pleasing my dad that she didn't pay any attention to us children and also didn't show affection. when i think back they hardly paid any attention to us...they were always at work and had left us when we were very young, when i was 6 i think. they never talked to us about feelings, when i voiced my anxiety about certain things they ridiculed me.
well, to sum up my family background, on the surface we looked like a typical, well-to-do family but that was all a farce.

adna, i feel like you where i need to be with the right kind of person, i just need to feel safe. but once i do meet someone and form a friendship it usually is for life. i get teh impression most people here prefer being on their own. does anybody have that conflicted feeling of desperately wanting to be with people, to be accepted, but feeling apprehensive once the opportunity arises? there are a lot of conflicst in me...wanting to have an interesting stimulating discussion but at the same time thinking i can't contribute anything anyway because i'm stupid.

nadine wrote: i get teh impression most people here prefer being on their own. does anybody have that conflicted feeling of desperately wanting to be with people, to be accepted, but feeling apprehensive once the opportunity arises? there are a lot of conflicst in me...wanting to have an interesting stimulating discussion but at the same time thinking i can't contribute anything anyway because i'm stupid.

I definitely perfer to be by myself. Not that i like to be lonely it is just when i am around others it is just too much for me to handle. Just a simple conversation could drain me emotionally. In my head it feels like i am over analyzing everthing.

I feel conflicted all the time. I want to have friends/relationships, a full filling life but in the end I always take to easy way out and avoid, avoid, and avoid some more. Anytime an opportunity to reach out to someone has arised i have always slowly pushed people away. Its so engraved into my brain i dont think its possible for me to change.

Anonymous wrote: In my head it feels like i am over analyzing everthing.

Its so engraved into my brain i dont think its possible for me to change.

yah! that's how i feel most of the times.....i overanalyze everything...the way people behave towards me, the way they say things, what the say...it's kind of hard to describe. doesn't everybody do this to some extent though?

i also feel like this state will never change...i might improve a bit but i have always been like this...