PERSONAL

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Disconnection & Avoidant Personality Disorder

8 years ago1,972 words

Do other people think or care much about how well they can connect with others? Things I've read suggest it's a common concern, but I haven't got the impression that the feeling of disconnection dominates the minds and lives of others as it does for me. It feels - to me, at least - that connecting with others in a meaningful way is the purpose and meaning of life... But it's the thing I've always struggled most with, and... well, I've written about this many times before, but here I am impotently venting my frustrations again...

Most people are heavily socialised by their environment and experiences. I see groups of young males walking down the street and behaving, talking, and looking so similar to each other - and to other groups I've passed on other occasions - that it almost seems as if they've all come off the same conveyor belt at the same factory or something (which, metaphorically, is exactly the case).

Similarly, in my public speaking class thing (which I continue to cringe about), there are a handful of girls who didn't appear to know each other at the start, who now chat friendlily amongst each other using certain words, tones of voice, particularly-placed laughs and etc that are all very much in line with one another. Though they might not have met before, their social programming is more alike than not, and as such an at least superficial connection arises naturally, effortlessly.

When I was a teenager, I saw people like this as 'normal'... People who fit their gender roles strongly, who'll never struggle to find like minds because their own minds are so generic. I know now that nobody's so simple, that everyone has their nuances, but I also understand that there's truth to the idea that some people are more 'normal' than others in that they all wear the same brand of mask, so to speak.

While I used to see it in a frustrated, negative sense - oh, those bland sheeple! - this kind of social homogeneity is probably the biggest life skill that anyone can have. When I talk about this, people in the past have reassured me that the eccentrics and deviants are the ones who change the world, who transcend the 'mainstream' and establish rather than follow trends... or whatever. While that may in a few rare cases be true, the idiosyncrasies of mere mortals like me act as a huge barrier whenever social interaction in necessary... So in all aspects of life, basically.

I know I'm not the only one who's odd and who struggles socially; I see people who fit that mould out on the streets too. They're usually alone though, or if they're lucky they've got a person to be odd together with (and I do count myself fortunate - when my mind is able to escape the cloying self-pitying at least - that I have a friend I'm sometimes with in that way). I do wonder how each of them will struggle once they get out into the wider world, though, if their atypical programming clashes with the expectations of properly-socialised employers and colleagues and the like and causes discomfort that closes doors.

Or perhaps they'll do fine, and it really is just me? Years ago, I discovered 'Avoidant Personality Disorder', and branded myself as having it since it seemed a clear fit. I posted about it on the deviantART forums, actually... and was torn to shreds for the grievous sin of self-diagnosis and (apparently) attention-seeking. Or something. Lovely. After that, I preferred to say I had social anxiety.

But as my psychology course is currently covering personality disorders, my interest in Avoidant Personality Disorder was rekindled. I looked it up on Wikipedia! Surely the best of diagnostic tools, that. Here's the list of symptoms from that page:

- Hypersensitivity to rejection and criticism
- Self-imposed social isolation
- Extreme shyness or anxiety in social situations, though the person feels a strong desire for close relationships
- Avoids physical contact because it has been associated with an unpleasant or painful stimulus
- Feelings of inadequacy
- Drastically-reduced or absent self-esteem
- Self-loathing, autophobia or self-harm
- Mistrust of others or oneself; exhibits heightened self-doubt
- Emotional distancing related to intimacy
- Highly self-conscious
- Self-critical about their problems relating to others
- Problems in occupational functioning
- Lonely self-perception, although others may find the relationship with them meaningful
- Feeling inferior to others
- In some extreme cases, agoraphobia
- Uses fantasy as a form of escapism to interrupt painful thought

If for some incomprehensible reason you've been following my ramblings for a while, you should be able to clearly see me in there. I don't have issues with physical touch (only because it never comes up at all) or intimacy (with the right person, anyway), and I wouldn't describe my feelings towards others as 'mistrust', but the rest together all paint a clear picture of my struggles. It and social anxiety disorder may well be different labels for much the same thing - all labels are just attempts to cleanly define a nebulous cloud of fuzzy traits anyway - but whatever it is, I certainly have it.

I have to write an essay about a particular personality disorder and how it might be treated, so it seems a good opportunity to research the ways in which this can be overcome. I'm incredulous about whether it can be, though. Personality disorders are issues with the fundamental wiring of the brain, and can't really be 'cured'; you can't make someone who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder just not have that anymore. It's similar to things like autism; there's no 'cure' for those either. Only coping methods that might push us closer to what's considered 'normal', temporarily, with effort. Mental clothing to hide our malformations while out in public.

I imagine that 'treatment' for Avoidant Personality Disorder would involve various forms of 'confidence-building', as if the issue is mere 'shyness' and that by making someone 'feel better about themselves' they'll... what, magically have friends? When the issue is a lack of connections, how can any treatment actually help with that? Perhaps it might help you cultivate a mental state that'd lead to seeking out opportunities to connect with others... But what if there are no such opportunities even if you want there to be, even if you feel ready? What if you're so so ready to be an Olympic-level swimmer and you've read loads and loads of books on it, but you live in the middle of the desert with no water or pools to be found? While the mind is certainly an obstacle, so too is circumstance.

It's this thought that makes me sigh with despair. I know that there are technically other human beings around me, but I just can't connect with most of them because I feel that we're essentially from different worlds. Rarely do I meet someone I feel I really want to get to know better, and I become overly attached when I do, but for the most part I feel I have to 'endure' contact with others and get nothing out of it other than a feeling of being drained. So the issue isn't finding people. It's finding the right people. And that's been a lifelong struggle.

I wonder what it's like to be the sort of person who can see value and interesting things in the majority of people that they meet... Who doesn't just see them as Others, as Aliens, as from such a different world that we'd have nothing to talk about... Besides, they'd likely just look at me like something they'd scraped off their shoe anyway. Not because I feel I'm 'worthless', but because the palpable feeling of 'otherness' makes others uncomfortable and makes them want to get away. Some people are objectively undesirable or off-putting to most; I think that to deny that would be naive. While I don't exactly hate myself, I've been met with discomfort often enough to know that there's something about me that's unappealing to most people I meet. Perhaps people can simply sense when someone's not been programmed right. Perhaps my own feelings about myself come across and colour how I'm perceived; that's a thing that can happen. Perhaps everyone is met by others in this way but I'm not able to compare to that because I've only lived my life? I don't know. I do understand why I'd be off-putting to the well-socialised though, since I'm not one of them.

It feels as if just going over all of this and branding myself with labels, being self-pitying, is only keeping me trapped where I am... But I don't know what else to do. My mind is inherently 'broken', operating on faulty programming, and while I can be aware of that, and attempt in some way to transcend it, those attempts feel hollow, fake, pretend, and they never seem to stick. If it was just a matter of building something deficient, like confidence, that wouldn't be too hard. If I saw someone from a distance every day and thought "I wish I could talk to her!", I feel that's something I could work on, a goal to aim for. But when the issue is seeing others as aliens - no matter how much I realise 'we have more in common than not because we're all human!' and such - then it's much more difficult to change that.

I've been 'reassured' by various sources that everyone longs for some perfect connection they'll never find, and they have to make do with the forced and superficial bonds with work colleagues and an often-disappointing spouse... But I don't know if I want to live in a world where I just feel cut off from everyone all the time. If I could find someone to be with, a single ally to be different with, then life would feel so different...

Anyway, I'm going around in circles, getting nowhere. Saying the same things year after year without any real change. I suppose that's mental illness - or personality disorders - for you: a permanent inner demon who you can at best quiet temporarily until it wakes up and the cycle repeats.

Speaking of repeating patterns, I started writing this because my Chinese flatmates - who all get along well with one another due to shared language and culture and circumstance - were all eating and talking (in Chinese) and laughing together in the kitchen, and I wanted to get something to eat... I avoided going in there though; avoiding people, as I always have. It's so sad to think I'm ostensibly an adult, hiding away in my little bedroom at this obscure university and starving myself to avoid human contact. Again, though, it isn't a matter of confidence; I didn't want to go in because they wouldn't have wanted me awkwardly barging in. They might not have minded much, but the thought of being a bother to others puts me off as much as anything. Talking to some laddish everyguy would bother me mostly because he wouldn't want to be stuck talking to someone like me. And while I could 'stop caring what other people think', I like caring what other people think. Hmm.

I feel as if the connection I had with my friend, which had made me feel so much better about everything, is wearing off now - as the novelty of new bonds always does - and these thoughts are resurfacing more often again. Which only confirms that even if I found another partner, I'd still end up feeling like this eventually.

I should probably look into what I can do about it instead of just venting about it... though it does help to get it out.