“I was essentially a ghost within my own life.”

Despite its name, at the core of Avoidant Personality Disorder is a debilitating fear of abandonment, much like many other personality disorders. My symptoms affect near-on every part of my life.

People think that it’s just ‘social anxiety but worse’, but it’s more than that. Social anxiety is the fear you might say or do something wrong, where as AvPD is the deep, ingrained belief that you are the something wrong.

I can make friends, but I can’t keep them for longer than a month or so, and I’m known for replying only once every couple of days and often ghosting people I love completely until they forget about me, because the weight of talking to people and being perceived is too much, so it feels better to leave first rather than be abandoned.

I have no real friend group, and my university grades suffer because I only speak when spoken to, which makes me basically useless in any sort of group project. As for work, holding down a job is near-on impossible.

I’m 19 and I’m yet to hold a job for more than a couple of months. Making friends with colleagues/ managers is out of the question, as is anything that involves talking to people significantly- which rules out almost every field of work. Combine the AvPD flight tendencies with my co-morbid BPD, and you begin to see the struggle..

In all honesty, I’ve been a heavily anxious person due to trauma all my life, and lived with avoidant symptoms since I was 12 or so. It was only last year that I realised that there was a name for that, and that somewhere along the line it had gone from trauma-based anxiety to a full-blown personality disorder.

For me, I think the thing that triggered this realisation was the aftermath of running away from my abusive family members. This caused a huge flare-up of symptoms, and I was a mess. I didn’t speak to my housemates unless spoken to, I apologised for everything non-stop, I kept myself out of the way and tried my best not to occupy any space, for surely someone else would want it, or be more deserving of anything I had. I was essentially a ghost within my own life, and in a way I feel that that describes a life with AvPD. As long as I can remember, I’ve been a witness to everything I am, second-place to even myself.

Even as a child, I would ask my mother how much a birthday gift cost, and be perceived as rude when really all I wanted was to re-compensate her so that nobody had to spend any time or effort on me. If you live like that long enough, a life of neglect and trauma and no reassurance given that you’re enough, eventually you start to believe that the only connecting link is you, that you’re the problem.

To this day, I am often still in denial about my AvPD, resolute that I’m just an inherently useless person, rather than the sufferer of an underrepresented disorder.

I’ve been able to confide in my partner a lot thankfully- they also have AvPD, and we work hard to make sure our relationship is healthy and to manage our PDs together. They are my only safe person- the one person that I am convinced won’t leave me, doesn’t hate me, and stays around because they genuinely want to be around. They’re my rock, and I’m honestly unsure what I’d do without them.

I’ve also found a small online community, but support and spaces for people with AvPD are so rare that it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s a catch-22 situation: Most of us AvPDers crave a space with people to relate with, but none of us are able to make that space happen because that would mean being seen, being vulnerable, initiating contact with the outside world and assuming that our presence isn’t inherently burdensome or cringeworthy.

There is definitely some degree of stigma and misconceptions around AvPD. While I’m thankful that the disorder does not fall prey to the levels of stigma faced by Cluster B disorders, there is so little knowledge of AvPD, and since this disorder revolves around avoidance of and isolation from the outside world, that lack of awareness and understanding is a lonely experience.

To me, the lack of information and awareness reinforces my AvPD beliefs that I am not worth knowing, that my struggles are not worth compassion, and that I am not worth being. Many times, I have heard AvPD being described as ‘just social anxiety’ or ‘just being a little anxious’ or as just an inferiority complex, when it is so much more than that. It is deep-set, trauma-based beliefs woven into the fabric of my mind, affecting who I am and everything that I do.

Diminishing the symptoms feels like a slap in the face- it feels like people don’t understand me, and that I’m just weak for having this disorder, when the truth is that AvPD is an all-consuming disorder, screaming out to be known while being terrified to even be looked at, compressing myself into a smaller and smaller space of existence and being regretful of every particle I take up, for I see everything about me being on this earth as taking away from somebody else- somebody else’s potential room, food, the works. Being isolated in this makes it so much worse.

I wish people knew the debilitating reality of AvPD, and that people with it aren’t bad friends/ lovers/ colleagues, it’s just that reaching out and being a part of the social world relies on that basic presumption that you deserve to be a part of it, and when that is missing, every small interaction is an effort that drains everything from us. We are constantly analysing, constantly mirroring others in what we hope is a passable demonstration of a human being.

Just because we more often than not need the other person to make the leap and reach out to us, doesn’t mean we aren’t worthy of the effort, or interesting people in our own right. It makes us strong, brave people doing everything we can to stay afloat when everything in us screams to cut ourselves off completely. Honestly, I just wish more people knew about us and about the disorder- especially in the medical field, and in the media. We are so isolated, and I would do anything to see any story of AvPD.

Many AVPD sufferers would do literally anything just to know we aren’t alone, that we’re seen and there are others like us. That basic knowledge, awareness, and compassion would make the world of difference.

I’d just like to take a second to paint a picture of what AvPD is like for people. You’ve lived a life of various trauma, never told that you are enough or that you didn’t deserve it. Throughout your life, bad things keep happening, and it seems like the only linking factor is you, that you’re just inherently an awful person.

So now you live a ghost of a life- you go to the grocery store and stop before picking up a product: could someone else use this? Do I deserve this pasta? You take the worst apartments, seats at a table, so that others can have the best ones. You don’t speak unless spoken to in new settings, so these strangers don’t have to subject themselves to you. You stare at your phone and watch days, weeks, months go by while those you love drift away- you want to talk to them, but you’re scared. So scared. You tell yourself it’s for their own good, to shake you off before they can get too involved in your train wreck of a life.

You close off from everyone, build walls so high that even you can’t see where they end, because surely everyone will hate what they see inside. The core of your being. Anytime anyone sees you, asks about you, you become the embodiment of shame- your very existence is embarrassing to you, so why would you want to subject others to that same burden?

You need reassurance, but nothing is ever enough. All you ever needed was to be loved as a child, to be told that you were enough.