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Avoidant personality disorder is a personality disorder involving the avoidance of social contact and close relationships, including partnerships (intimate) with other people. A person with an avoidant disorder has a high level of anxiety about communicating with other people. Over the years, she withdraws from any situation that could put her under stress.
What is the avoidant personality?
Avoidant personality disorder is a manifesting disorder avoiding contacts and interpersonal relationships. People with this type of personality disorder have a strong need for closeness and acceptance, but also a strong fear of rejection. Usually, fear wins and the avoidant person withdraws from relationships with other people for fear of being hurt, ridiculed or rejected. This disorder makes the affected person feel very lonely, but he is unable to meet others or accept their encouragement to contact them.
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What are the symptoms of an avoidant personality?
Avoidant people have high levels of anxiety and low self-esteem. Low self-esteem causes fear of contacts with the environment, and the lack of such contacts additionally lowers self-esteem. The patient suffers because he feels a strong need for contacts with other people and the need for closeness, but due to the fear generated by interpersonal relationships, he is not able to satisfy these needs.
A person with an avoidant disorder (sometimes also called an anxiety disorder) withdraws from various types of social activities and avoids contacts with other people, does not take life challenges, prefers not to come, not write back, not to call, rather than risk failure. Such a person feels of little value and not attractive enough, in his opinion he is not an interesting company for anyone, nor does he deserve praise or respect. She expects acceptance from the environment, but only unconditional acceptance could satisfy her – and, as you know, it is difficult to find this kind of attitude in social contacts. It is similar in close, friendly and intimate contacts. The avoidant personality usually hesitates a long time before taking the first step or responding to another person’s invitation to contact. Often this has the effect of making those around him turn away because he or she interprets his hesitancy as resentment or excessive suspicion. The avoidant personality is also characterized by inhibition in the expression of emotions and feelings and frequent episodes of depressed mood (depression).
People with this type of personality constantly feel tension and embarrassment in situations related to contact with others, are sensitive to criticism, subject their own behavior to constant analysis and control, are very restrained in showing feelings, socially isolate themselves, are cautious and rather reticent, willingly give back dreams and escape into the world of fantasy. They may even develop a social phobia, which effectively hinders or even prevents interpersonal relationships.
Reasons for the development of the avoidant personality
Psychologists see the causes of an avoidant personality in a specific set of traits related to the temperament and character of a given person. They determine the way in which a child, and later a young person, reacts to stimuli coming from the outside world and how he copes with stressful situations. Psychologists include among the character traits conducive to the development of a personality avoiding introversion, shyness, sensitivity (often hypersensitivity) and a tendency to negative interpretation of events. These features, when confronted with often difficult life experiences, result in the development of a set of personality disorders known as the avoidant personality.
The reason for the development of an avoidant personality may also be the lack of acceptance, understanding and love in the family home, as well as problems in relations with peers resulting from the child’s dissimilarity or its family situation. However, not every child experiencing such difficulties will develop an avoidant personality, hence the theory of coupling of social, biological and psychological conditions.
Also read: Basic personality types
What is the treatment for the avoidant personality disorder?
The most effective form of treatment in the case of avoidant personality disorder is group therapy, during which a patient with an avoidant personality learns to interact with other people and experiences acceptance from them, which allows him to overcome anxiety. The most common forms of therapy used in the treatment of avoidant personality disorder are psychodynamic psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Alternatively, pharmacotherapy can be started, at least initially, by administering anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications.
Psychotherapy aims to replace thought processes motivated by fear with new, healthy attitudes and beliefs, which will allow the person suffering from anxiety disorder to establish satisfactory relationships with other people.
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