AvPD vs. SA

vj288

not actually Fiona Apple
Is AvPD just a severe case of SA or are they different. I mean I know 99% that I have AvPD but not really as much for SA. I've never had a anxiety attack (or at least not a big on as far as I know) and I'm not sure if I feel that anxiety on a everyday basis. I'm so good at avoiding things I almost feel comfortable in everyday life. What does every one else think?

Avoidant Personality Disorder - Social Anxiety Disorder and Avoidant Personality Disorder
"If left untreated, APD can lead to impairment in functioning in most areas of a person’s life"
What's that supposed to mean?

Avoidant Personality Disorder
"we can see that the person has given up altogether on facing situations that generate fear and does not undergo anxiety attacks simply because she avoids any anxiety-generating situation that is possible. Additionally, she does everything possible not to be noticed."
Yup, that sounds like me most of the time

Avoidant Personality Disorder and Social Phobia - Personality Disorders
"Different studies looking at how many people with Avoidant Personality Disorder meet criteria for Social Phobia, according to Lynn Alden and colleagues, range from 42% to 100%"
So all people AvPD have SA according this study?
 
I have the same confusion. I personally feel that they are different- like you, I don't feel much anxiety in my life because I avoid or don't even consciously invite the things that would make me most anxious. One source I've read explains it in such a way that AvPD can lead to having things like SA, depression, panic attacks, OCD, etc.- that it's an actual personality disorder that's on a whole other level. One way I've come to think about it is that SA is more situational- having anxiety about public speaking, at a party, speaking up in class at school, etc., while AvPD is more about your ability to form relationships with other people. It's more pervasive, and the anxiety/feelings of being judged/inferior persist even when you're not in a "social" situation.
 
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AvPD vs. SA
AvPD will win and consume SA. AvPDSA.

Can't seem to beat Avoidance. If I stop thinking before I do what has to be done I can get it done. Keep saying forward.
 

coyote

Well-known member
Is AvPD just a severe case of SA or are they different. I mean I know 99% that I have AvPD but not really as much for SA. I've never had a anxiety attack (or at least not a big on as far as I know) and I'm not sure if I feel that anxiety on a everyday basis. I'm so good at avoiding things I almost feel comfortable in everyday life. What does every one else think?

Avoidant Personality Disorder - Social Anxiety Disorder and Avoidant Personality Disorder
"If left untreated, APD can lead to impairment in functioning in most areas of a person’s life"
What's that supposed to mean?

Avoidant Personality Disorder
"we can see that the person has given up altogether on facing situations that generate fear and does not undergo anxiety attacks simply because she avoids any anxiety-generating situation that is possible. Additionally, she does everything possible not to be noticed."
Yup, that sounds like me most of the time

Avoidant Personality Disorder and Social Phobia - Personality Disorders
"Different studies looking at how many people with Avoidant Personality Disorder meet criteria for Social Phobia, according to Lynn Alden and colleagues, range from 42% to 100%"
So all people AvPD have SA according this study?

I really like what the last one said so I copied it here for everyone to read:

Based on the definition in DSM IV-TR, the main characteristic of Avoidant Personality Disorder is to think of oneself as inadequate, flawed and inferior to others. People with APD tend to believe others don’t like them and are afraid that others will criticize or ridicule them. This fear of disapproval, rejection, and criticism often causes people with Avoidant Personality Disorder to stay away from social interactions, and to avoid work or school activities that involve getting into contact with other people. This frequently results in missing out on social and professional networking opportunities, and leads people with APD to have a rather small social circle in which they only interact with people of whom they are sure that they are liked. People with APD are extremely sensitive to rejection and criticism and they usually don’t like trying out new activities that might put them at risk of being embarrassed or ridiculed.

Social Phobia can look very similar to Avoidant Personality Disorder. Social Phobia has to do with being extremely anxious in social situations. Examples would be fear of public speaking, or fear of eating, drinking or writing in from of other people. It could be fear of addressing authority figures, fear of attending parties, or fear of initiating conversations. The fear is mostly about being embarrassed, or of others recognizing that they are anxious. When a person with social phobia finds themselves in their feared situation, they develop intense anxiety with some really strong physical symptoms, such as intense heartbeat, breaking out in a sweat, or hands shaking and shortness of breath. Taken to an extreme, these physical symptoms of anxiety can develop into a full-blown panic attack.

Avoidant Personality Disorder very often overlaps with other personality disorders, for instance, schizoid or dependent personality disorder, and with anxiety disorders, such as panic disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder. What has been widely studies is the overlap between Avoidant Personality Disorder and Social Phobia. Different studies looking at how many people with Avoidant Personality Disorder meet criteria for Social Phobia, according to Lynn Alden and colleagues, range from 42% to 100%.

Alden and colleagues in their review paper on this topic make a good point: If you look at the definitions of these two conditions given in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, the overlap between teh two conditions makes sense: The definition of Social Phobia focuses on performance situations, but it includes difficulty with dating and friendships. These latter difficulties are a core feature of Avoidant Personality Disorder. It is not surprising, then, that there would be significant overlap between two conditions that are defined in similar ways. This is the reason that some expert believe that the two disorders reflect the same underlying problem, with Avoidant Personality Disorder merely constituting a more severe and persistent form of Social Phobia. This is why some believe that the two disorders should be combined for future incarnations of the DSM into a category of Social Anxiety Disorder.
 

awkwardamanda

Well-known member
Yeah, I think it's more likely I have AvPD than SA, but then maybe it's both. A lot of the situations that are difficult for people with SA are a problem for me too, but the thing is, I don't get a lot of the physical symptoms of anxiety. Sometimes I do feel quite nervous, and maybe over something seemingly minor, but for me it's a lot of worrying, avoidance, and just feeling uncomfortable. It doesn't feel like an extreme case of social anxiety. I thought it was more mild. But like AvPD sufferers, I tend to avoid close relationships. I'd like to have friends, but I'd rather they be people I enjoy spending time with and not people I connect with on a deep and personal level. I'm not comfortable with people knowing too much about me. I keep a lot to myself and that includes things that don't need to be secrets at all. And I've always had pretty low self esteem. But I may never know what's actually wrong with me. I'm unlikely to ever go to therapist or a psychiatrist because I'm pretty stubborn. I also suspect I've either got OCD, or more likely OCPD, and well, a key symptom OCPD is being very stubborn. I've got some issues, but it's just how I am. It sucks, but I'm not sure how willing I am to change.

See also:
http://www.socialphobiaworld.com/avoidant-personality-disorder-27870/page-2/#post334206
 
It may be that social anxiety disorder's criteria fear of acting in an embarrassing or humiliating way could refer to just that. Fear of acting in a humiliating or embarrassing way. People with SAD could be more fearful of making a fool of themselves.

It is interesting that SAD's criteria doesn't mention anything about fear of OTHERS embarrassing or humiliating them. It could be that AvPD involves more of the latter. This could mean that AvPD are more fearful of others embarrassing or humiliating them for any reason. So it may be this feature is much more pronounced in AvPD. Plus you have to look at coping responses. Some people might overcompensate or avoid or surrender, which will result in a wide range of differnt manifestations of behaviour for the same uderlying problem.
 

Minty

Well-known member
Well, what happens when you face what you avoid? Do you feel anxiety? If not, why do you avoid it?
 

JamesSmith

Well-known member
I think it's so funny how people have created these special names for anxiety. All these disorders center around anxiety. It doesn't matter what some fancy name a doctor gives you, you have anxiety. If you can find out how to get rid of anxiety by relaxing, you won't have anxiety. Whoever is making up all these disorders is just confusing people and giving them more anxiety because now they are worrying if they have this and that. They are taking a simple thing like anxiety and making it complicated.
 

DespairSoul

Well-known member
AvPD here i like this what was sayed in this book i wasnt read it that book but i found this articel and i think is pretty interresting:

from Martin Kantor's "Distancing: Avoidant Personality Disorder":

"In the realm of the mode of expression of the social anxiety, patients
with a Social Phobia express their social anxiety not directly but indirectly,
that is, symbolically. They pour it into interpersonal terror that appears
strictly in response to specific trivial social cues. Social phobics do not
withdraw from interpersonal relationships so much as they withdraw from
interpersonal situations—from discrete trivial prompts that symbolize interpersonal relationships—neatly packaged, tangible happenings that are
stand-ins for interpersonal upheavals. These upheavals are condensed
and externalized to become outwardly expressed holographic representations
of intense inner conflict. For example, a patient who fears urinating
in public or a patient who fears signing her name to a check while others
watch is expressing what are dynamically deep interpersonal fears of criticism
and rejection clinically in a condensed and displaced fashion. Examples
of social phobias each with their underlying meaning follow: A
phobia of blushing that signifies being criticized for turning red hot; a
phobia of eating in public that signifies being criticized for using the
mouth in situations where observed; a phobia of speaking in public that
signifies being exposed and vulnerable to humiliation; a phobia of urinating
in a public men’s room that signifies exposing one’s genitals to the man standing in the next urinal, in turn signifying vulnerability and castration
anxiety; and a phobia of signing one’s name to a check while others
watch and wait in eager anticipation that signifies a fear of cooperating
and thus of being called submissive. In short, social phobics wall off and
contain their interpersonal fears of criticism and humiliation, in effect relegating them to short-lived pseudointerpersonal encounters that simultaneously refer to, and obscure, the real thing.

I believe that social phobics do this for a specific reason and purpose.
Unconsciously they make a choice to be less interpersonally shy, remote,
and withdrawn than avoidants, that is, to remain more interpersonally
outgoing and related than patients with AvPD. They desire and hope to
keep their whole personality out of it. So they involve only part of their
personality, doing so intentionally in order to leave the rest of the personality
intact. As a result, unlike many patients with AvPD, social phobics
are by nature outgoing, and able to form close and lasting relationships,
and even to do so easily. They tend to be happily and permanently attached
or married to someone, and they are often professionally quite successful. Their problems tend to consist merely of troublesome islets of
panicky withdrawal. This insular expression of social anxiety in turn
spares the rest of their lives, permitting full and satisfactory relationships
to take place on the mainland.

In contrast, patients with AvPD wear their faint avoidant hearts on their
sleeves. They present clinically with mild to severe generalized relationship
difficulties. They fear closeness and intimacy and commitment itself,
not a substitute, stand-in, or replacement for these. As a result, avoidants
are clinically more socially anxious and withdrawn than they are phobic,
that is, they present not with an encapsulated fear on the order of a fear
of public speaking but either with a generalized shyness that consists of
difficulty meeting people, or with an ambivalence about relationships that
consists of difficulty in sustaining relationships with people they have
already met. As a consequence, they are either painfully tentative about
seeking out relationships in the first place or, if not tentative, then ambivalent
about the relationships they find, so that they start relationships only
to then pull back from them."
 

DespairSoul

Well-known member
I have one question: If i have a lot psychosomatic symtoms outside like shaking hands, beating heart,sweating and short bread is mean i tend have not AvPD but more SA?Are these symptoms only by SA? Because AvPD fit on me more as SA next to my opinion. I find out a lot of common symptoms what i feel.
 

mictsekk

Well-known member
"AvPD is essentially a problem of relating to persons; social phobia has been formulated largely as a problem of performing in situations."
 

Minty

Well-known member
So...I constantly read about how AvPD people think they are inadequate. I don't think I'm that way but I've been told I probably believe myself to be inadequate on the subconscious level.

I'm confused though because isn't CBT, the type of therapy that works on avoidants and social phobics the best, isn't that about changing your thinking patterns? About using affirmations and being all around positive? Until it sinks to the subconscious and begins to change your behaviors? Well, I am generally positive and it's really helped in eliminating the bouts of depression I used to have but...it hasn't touched my anxiety or desire to avoid.

Is it possible that I'm just miswired and because of that my conscious thoughts can't sink deeper to affect my subconscious?
 

DespairSoul

Well-known member
vj288 u are welcome, no problem i like to help and i think Martin Kantor explains this diffrencies perfectly. Im looking forward read more about it in his book. U can also thank to him but i dont know if he isnt to much busy :D I know that if read it i was feeling thats just me but as u said 42 vs 100 have actually SA. Do you feel psychological symptoms on you by AvPD this i cant figure out if is possible?
 

philly2bits

Well-known member
I think it's so funny how people have created these special names for anxiety. All these disorders center around anxiety. It doesn't matter what some fancy name a doctor gives you, you have anxiety. If you can find out how to get rid of anxiety by relaxing, you won't have anxiety. Whoever is making up all these disorders is just confusing people and giving them more anxiety because now they are worrying if they have this and that. They are taking a simple thing like anxiety and making it complicated.

No. You're wrong. It's not as simple as brushing it off as just anxiety. Read up more on Avpd and you'll see the difference. The biggest clue to the difference is in the naming.

Social Anxiety Disorder vs. Avoidant personality disorder
 
So...I constantly read about how AvPD people think they are inadequate. I don't think I'm that way but I've been told I probably believe myself to be inadequate on the subconscious level.

I'm confused though because isn't CBT, the type of therapy that works on avoidants and social phobics the best, isn't that about changing your thinking patterns? About using affirmations and being all around positive? Until it sinks to the subconscious and begins to change your behaviors? Well, I am generally positive and it's really helped in eliminating the bouts of depression I used to have but...it hasn't touched my anxiety or desire to avoid.

Is it possible that I'm just miswired and because of that my conscious thoughts can't sink deeper to affect my subconscious?

yes but changing your avoidant traights through CBT is going to take alot longer then what it takes to change your mood levels the same way. many years of CBT therapy would be needed to overcome it.
 

JamesSmith

Well-known member
No. You're wrong. It's not as simple as brushing it off as just anxiety. Read up more on Avpd and you'll see the difference. The biggest clue to the difference is in the naming.

Social Anxiety Disorder vs. Avoidant personality disorder

People avoid things because they have anxiety in the first place. These are just fancy names people come up with to make money. Don't be fooled by the medical field. They are here to help you, but the main thing they are here for is to make money. It's a business just like any other business. And anxiety is not something you just brush off, it's a serious condition that ruins lives.
 
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