How were you as a child?

I see a lot of myself in your descriptions. I was very shy as a child and full of fear. I clung to my mother. I was very sheltered. Still am. I always had a least one close friend who was my everything. I remember feeling totally lost on the days that my best friend wasn't at school. I just needed one person, like I needed just my mother, and I was okay in a lot of ways with that.

I was extremely compliant and always fearful that I'd get into trouble. The times I got into trouble, I remember vividly and in great detail. They traumatized me.

I was very creative and loved my play and reading time alone. I could play by myself for hours. I enjoyed playing with others, but I loved to play by myself because my imagination would run wild.

I remember hearing "People Who Need People" and the lyric "are the luckiest people in the world" and wondering how they could be. Now I understand it. Back then I didn't.

I still believe the other shoe is about to drop. I'm always thinking I'll lose my job or when the phone rings, tragic news awaits. I try to torment myself less these days. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I was normal as a child. I had friends, I was social. I was fairly spoiled, never had anything traumatic happen. I don't know what the ###$ happened to me.

I was shy as a child. I played outside. I wasn't good in sports, and frequently would get picked last for a game, but I wasn't awful. I was good in school. My parents mostly treated me OK, except for teasing about the opposite sex.

I had one very close friend. Other kids I hung out with were through acquaintanceship with my one close friend. I often felt that when I was included in some group activity, it was because of my friend and that I would not have otherwise been included. When my schoolmates and I were around 11-13, some kids became friendlier with opposite sex children. I never felt like anyone liked me that way. I remember being at a birthday party. When someone turned down the lights and played "spin the bottle," I moved over to the side of the room and just watched. I didn't feel like anyone would want me to kiss them. I continued feeling like I was just to be an observer and not a participant until I was about 26. I still feel that way often, but not always.

I was a very happy kid, most of the time. I had a pattern of having one "best friend" at any given time, with whom I would bond and be terribly anxious of losing. I think this anxiety and neediness was a result of my first good friend moving out of town. I distinctly remember believing that he moved because he hated me, and it hurt deeply. Then I made another "best friend", and this time my family moved out of town, so I lost another friend. It hurt equally the second time I lost a friend.

Even though I appeared happy and energetic, looking back I can see how I was very dependent on a "best friend" in order to feel secure and happy. I was very threatened by anything or anyone that might take my friend away.

I'm pretty sure that I became this way at least partially due to my father's substance abuse problem and subsequent lack of involvement or expression of love or concern for me. That coupled with being uprooted very few years all under the age of 8 left me feeling unloveable and rejectable (I know these aren't real words, but they sound good).

When my last best friend started hanging out with another kid more than me, I felt like I needed to take control of what seemed like a logical progression of rejection. So, I rejected my friend point-blank. I demanded an ultimatum - have him as his friend, or me as his friend, but he cannot have both. He chose (rightly enough, really) the other kid. So I went home devastated and remained basically friendless for the next 10 years. Really, all my own doing, my irrational thoughts had a foothold that I've only recently been able to eradicate.

If only I could go back in time, and talk to myself and tell myself how illogical and desperately dependent I was being... I could have had so much less anxiety and probably would have had friends. My life would be so much different up to now.

I was born with a cleft palate, so I was always very shy, the friends I thought I made, used me for a joke..
I really don't know anyone, i'm 21 and i've never really conversed with my parents or with my brother and sister, i've never made a true connection with anyone.
to me communication seems complex, and it seems its alot more invovled than it seems, not sure if that made sense or not...

so yeah very very shy as a kid, very shy now, not much as changed

Basically I was shy, distrustful, and largely disinterested in people until I was 16. My parenst would try everything they could to make me more outgoing, but gave up after awhile. I was awkward in behavior/personality, and appearance, so I got bullied all the time. I only kept close friends on three different times, but each only lasted 1 school year then we'd be seperated for some reason or another. I'd sit with other kids during lunchtime and during any other time of forced togetherness just to have place to go. I never intereacted with them much at all unless it was necessary, mostly sitting there silently.

In middle school things changed and my family began growing apart. Somedays I'd go to bed having not spoken more than 10 words that day. My social life revolved around a forum. I had no close friends there either, really, just sort of hung around with everyone. This carried on until 10th grade for the most part, then I realized my life was pathetic, lonely, and empty. I practically had no personality by that point. I felt like an alien around everyone, and a blank piece of paper. I had to learn how to be like everyone else and throw off social anxiety and do other things. I was so socially ignorant. I had no idea what to do and say, not much to talk about at all (blank piece of paper with few interests, almost no stories, or thoughts to sum up). I've gotten much better at socializing that and can BS my way through conversations pretty good. If anyone needs help with that, I might be of assitance.

It was an interesting time for me.... I learned to be funny by mimicing humor styles of people I found funny, even though I already had a slight humor style of my own (but it wasn't that good). I learned to get around my blankness in my own methods, but I also took examples from others on that one. Basically I observed (lol) others and tried to do as they did for almost everything. I still do all this, since my social journey is far from I consider satisfactory.

Umm, wow I got really into that, didn't I? There's nowhere to tell a story like that without feeling like a freak. This is the only place I've ever told it.

Anyway, I blame my distantness and the bullying for most of my AvPD. It all started with one trauma in childhood which set crap that just led from one thing to another. Everything I am started with one incident. Wow. It's kind of hard to take in. >.< Wtf man....

Sorry you had to go through the same. I think in an earlier post you said it was because you were foreign? Part of my own harrassment was for the same reason. I came from a place with a horrid image, and my accent always gave it away. The kids where I moved were ignorant and hateful as soon as they saw me (I was ugly back then) and it increased a lot if they heard my voice, so I got your story all to well. x)
My accent's gone and some weight changes and braces have made me cute now. Everyone's matured now anyway so I don't get anymore trouble. Hope you have the same.

You're right about bullying. Bullying can be very traumatizing (in terms of psychological impact, whether or not you are hanuted by memories). Schools don't give a xxxx about it either. Some kids can be making another kid's life hell (it felt like that for me sometimes) and they just brush it off. They don't care to stop it, nor care to understand what it does.

Oh well, painful situations can be used to make a person 'better'. We'll have wisdom and personal qualities others will lack but value us more for, you know?


BTW, post you're story when you're ready. I'd be happy to read it. Thank you for reading mine.

Hey, how exactly were you abused in England? It is just that my brother has been living there for over one year now but has reported no abuse or anything like that. I'm sure it is much different in school though. Anyway, you should have mentioned to Sun_Girl that the situation in Northern Ireland has now vastly improved (We don't want people to forever be thinking that we are still in a civil war here! ). Northern Ireland now has its own stable government, which is made up of political parties whose supporters were, in the past, literally killing each other.

Anti-English feeling is evaporating fast here too. In Dublin, thousands of English party-goers come into Dublin each weekend and there is never any trouble. As is typical, as generations move by, memories of the wars fade.

Kevin.

Another_Shinji:

I'm sorry, but I had to laugh while reading about moving from one place to another, only to be abused for being foreign. The irony was funny was all, in that sort of "Oh God, that sucks!" kind of way.


Well, it's good relations are improving. Too bad it's not probably not going in the youngest of society. Yet another part I can relate to. Kids will never welcome another kid with a funny accent, no matter how at peace their countries/regions are! Well, in most cases anyway.
Oddly enough, I want to go back to my original home, but that means bringing my new accent there where I may be harrassed. xD Whatever. It's home.

I was very outgoing and loved to be the centre of attention up until about the age of 12 then I started to slowly realise that others were also competing for centre stage. Over here in Ireland we have primary and secondary school. Secondary school lasts six years from the ages of twelve to eighteen.
Halfway through secondary school I had a sort of a breakdown and thought that my whole year were laughing at me and had ostracised me. I begged my mom to let me quit and so began my life as an avoidant. Ido suspect that something has the potential to make me feel like a weirdo loner reject I'll avoid it like the plague, in fact I just did it this evening. I flaked on attending the church choir where I play drums because I'm depressed right now and my confidence is in the toilet so meeting people is just not an option right now. It's my own feelings that scare me the most, not the situations, the situations will prompt the thoughts which lead to the feelings.