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Weird Wasted Week - AvPD & DPD

3 years ago2,015 words

Some venting about the Avoidant and Dependent Personality Disorders that likely hinder me, awkward phone calls with friends, embarrassment while dog walking, and how much of a mental mess I generally am.

My parents have been away on yet another holiday this week. I could barely concentrate on Monday and Tuesday because either I had thoughts about the neighbouring community hall I was tasked with looking after hanging over me, or the fussy, needy dog just wouldn’t settle down unless I sat right next to it in the rooms it’s accustomed to being in (so not my room where my PC is). Annoying.

On Tuesday night, I got a random phone call from one of my two (?) remaining friends, who I hadn’t talked to in months but who I messaged in a fit of loneliness a week or two ago - despite assumptions of her having ghosted me - hoping to reconnect. She said she hadn't reached out to me in months because she thought I’d been ghosting her, which I have some scepticism about, but whatever. We talked on the phone and it went fine; quite well, even! We talked fluently for hours, and I went to bed feeling better, like I’d been awoken from some kind of prolonged mind-rotting half-sleep, as often happens when these rare social sunbeams pierce the usual dark clouds. Or something.

I do video calls with the other friend, and we plan them in advance, though it’d been a month or two since the last. We had one planned for last Wednesday, which I postponed to this Wednesday because of an hours-long power cut. I thought since the phone call the day before went so well, this one would too.

But it absolutely didn’t! It was incredibly awkward, and I was cringing hard for the next two days; I still am now, though thankfully the embarrassment's faded a lot. Awkward pauses where we both ran out of things to say, which I tried to recover from by rambling about something I was explaining poorly and could clearly see she wasn’t remotely interested in, and… ugh. About half way in, it became obvious - or at least to my delusional demons - that I’d made some horrendous misstep - imagine you’d accidentally made a racist joke/implication to someone of the target race, for an idea of the kind of feeling I mean - and it set off this avalanche of embarrassment/self-loathing that made it difficult to concentrate on anything else either of us were saying. Eventually I just cut the conversation short out of sheer embarrassment.

We’re both the sort of people who worry about making social missteps and cringe afterwards, so I have been wondering whether we were feeling the same afterwards, blaming ourselves. But I’m inclined to believe it’s imbalanced because she lives with her boyfriend, while I’m isolated, so I don’t have the support to work through it or to resist the feelings of unworthiness or ineptitude. If she feels she’s faulty, evidence around her suggests otherwise, but if I fear I am, at least in the social domain, a look at my life situation only confirms that.

I tried to take the dog out for a walk to maybe distract myself, which felt like a big deal because I hadn’t been out in ages. It kept just stopping when I tried to walk certain ways, though, as if it knew the path it wanted to go and that wasn’t it, which was odd because I’ve taken it out before along those routes and this behaviour is new. At one point along some narrow path flanked by trees, a group of like six people - some children - with a couple of dogs were walking toward me, so I tried to turn off to the left (which was the way home that I was intending to go anyway), the dog dug its feet in the ground and refused, I tugged the collar gently to try and convince it, and the collar came off over its head! Thankfully it didn’t run away and calmly let me put it back on, but the group of strangers were obviously watching and laughed at the silliness of it. While I know they weren't laughing with malice, it was still embarrassing.

Things like this seem to happen every time I go out, and they just lend evidence to the negative thoughts that I'm some bumbling fool constantly tripping over my own feet and words in a way that’d make anyone around me uncomfortable. And it’s that discomfort of others that’s the worst thing in the world for me, which I want to avoid at all costs. I believe that I'm someone who can't survive in the real world, so I shouldn't even try. I should either just hide away forever, or off myself, so then I don't have to inflict myself on anyone else ever again.

Those warped thoughts are difficult to shrug off, and draining to the point of exhaustion; I've spent much of the week since those events just feeling beaten down, tired, heavy, headaches, avoiding messages even when there's a chance to connect (the friend I talked to on the phone expressed interest in doing more calls soon; a person on Reddit seemed eager to talk with me on Discord, but I've yet to add the account name they sent me). I just feel overwhelmed and like I can't cope.

These are the sorts of feelings people often describe in the Avoidant Personality Disorder subreddit, so they largely seem to be a manifestation of that mental condition. Though they've certainly been getting worse for me over the past few years.



My parents being away always makes me wish I had my own place in the long term, so that I might be more motivated to do something about all this... When they're in an adjacent room, I get too complacent, don't force myself to deal with stressful things - like answering the door - because they'll do it. It's infantalising, and I acknowledge that, but the desire to escape it is less powerful than the comfort it provides. There's no sufficient motivator.

I miss being away at uni, fending for myself... though that was also the worst time in my life mentally, which makes me concerned about how I'd fare if sentenced by my own demons to essentially a life of solitary confinement.

Every night, my mind fills with things I know I should do - I should try volunteering! I should get therapy! - but I don't know how to take the first step. I probably need to see my GP (General Practitioner, doctor; I don't know if the term is universal) first to get started with therapy... but the surgery is like a 30 minute drive away, and I can't drive, meaning I'd have to brave buses for the first time in years (though I used to do that without issues), or get a lift from my mum, which I feel embarrassed about at this age. I recently learned there's a GP surgery like a five minute walk away from where I live, and if I were to switch to that it'd be way more convenient to attend appointments so I'd make them more readily (I also need to see a GP about an ingrown toenail, which I've been putting off for months)... but I keep putting that off because-...

Have I written here before about Dependent Personality Disorder? That's often comorbid with Avoidant Personality Disorder, and it's likely something I have as well. ∞ The wikipedia article says ∞:



Those of you who've been munching popcorn to the freak-show-train-wreck spectacle of my deranged rantings about my pitiful life over the years should hopefully see me in that description. I do, at least.

It's interesting though how in the creative domain, I'm largely able to make decisions of my own - I've made games and websites and all sorts of things without anyone's help, and if anything I resist others trying to direct my course - but when it comes to Real World stuff, even trivial things leave me feeling like I have to at least have someone else present while I make a decision.

It's not even that I want them to make the decision for me - the idea of having some doting carer who literally wipes my arse for me fills me with disgust - but rather it's like I need someone else to share the responsibility, so if things go wrong - as I assume they will - then all the fault won't entirely rest on me, or that someone else would know what I really meant to do so I might look slightly less of a fool or monster, or something like that? Or at the very least I have someone present to rant at to take the edge off after the mistake has occurred, rather than just being trapped with the unbearable spines in me with no way to shake them off.

Either way, it's not an easy combination of mental deformities to navigate life with. I know I need to do something about it, but... most of us know we need to eat healthy and exercise, but it's so much easier to just watch ourselves get fatter and fatter. I wonder what percentage of people transcend the steady descent, and what people, personality traits, or privileges they relied on to do so.

I don't know where I should start, what I should do next week. One thought is that once I've recovered enough from the current mental fog, and my parents have taken the dog off my hands, I could maybe talk with that friend about maybe finding a place to move out to; maybe we could talk regularly and she could just be there to talk at while I try and figure out some life things. There's a big assumption that nobody would ever want to play such a role for me, though, which is an obstacle. But I don't really know what else I can do at this point.

Oh, or I suppose just making progress with Atonal Dreams is what I really need to focus on right now. I feel like I can't - or shouldn't - move on with my life until that's out of the way; I don't want to go out and get a Normal Job until I found out whether or not Atonal Dreams will succeed; I don't want another ghost of a failed project haunting me for the rest of my life. Hopefully I'll be able to get somewhere with that next week...