What is Avoidant Personality Disorder?

By Cristiano Antonino Last updated Jun 20, 2023

The essential features of Avoidant Personality Disorder are a pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to judgment from others

Patients with avoidant disorder have a strong desire to establish intimate relationships with others accompanied by a constant fear of being criticized, disapproved, or rejected.

They consider the negative reactions of others as justified, without being able to formulate alternative hypotheses.

Patients with avoidant personality disorder have no internal criteria by which to judge themselves positively

On the contrary, they trust only in the perception of the judgments of others. They interpret the rejection as solely caused by their inadequacy and this would confirm their belief that they are not lovable.

The prospect of rejection is so painful and unacceptable that they prefer to keep their distance from people who, by getting closer, could discover their real (negative) nature.

It follows the tendency to avoid and flee relationships with others, especially if they involve a certain emotional involvement.

Avoidance, if on the one hand it alleviates negative moods linked to the fear of feeling embarrassed and humiliated in the presence of others, on the other it leads to withdrawal into a solitude experienced with sadness.

The patient with avoidant personality disorder often suffers from depression

Once alone, he engages in activities that momentarily gratify him and protect him from interpersonal contact.

However, when he realizes that this is a sign of inability to live a life like the others, he becomes deeply depressed.

A central emotion of avoidant disorder is shame: social situations are to be avoided because it is there that their inadequacies are exposed for all to see.

Patients with an avoidant personality may act with inhibitions, have difficulty talking about themselves, and withhold intimate feelings for fear of exposure, ridicule, or humiliation.

Often the diagnosis of avoidant personality disorder can be confused with that of social phobia, but the avoidant personality involves a generalized feeling of anxiety in all interactions with others and a strong sense of estrangement from the outside world, which generally does not concern social media phobics.

Patients with avoidant personality disorder feel like aliens on earth, different from others, unable to share their feelings, distant, inferior; it is as if they see the lives of others flowing behind a glass, but they realize that they will never be “inside” that “normal” life.

Avoidant personality disorder does not have a very good prognosis, but responds quite well to medium- to long-term (1 to 2 years) cognitive behavioral therapy.

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