Avoidant Personality Disorder Behavior

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Individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder behave in a fretful, restive manner. They overreact to innocuous experiences but maintain control over their physical behaviors and expression of emotions. Their speech is hesitant and constrained. They appear to have fragmented thought sequences and their conversation is laced with confused digressions. They are timid and uneasy (Millon & Davis, 1996, p. 261).

Kantor (1992, pp. 36-41) notes that individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder, as with all of the personality disorders, have a tendency to live in the past or in fantasy -- they receive too little input from the here and now. This diminished ability to pay attention results in mild memory disturbances and a characteristic immaturity. These individuals are distracted by their own extraordinary sensitivity to subtleties of tone and feeling; they are hyperalert to the meaning of emotive communication. Their thought processes are interfered with by flooding of irrelevant environmental details (Millon & Davis, 1996, p. 263).

Individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder behave in a stiff, shy, and apprehensive manner that is disquieting to others. The very rejection they fear may be the direct result of other people becoming impatient and uncomfortable with their unremitting tension and inability to accept that they can be a part of interaction without special guarantees of safety. In fact, people with Avoidant Personality Disorder, overtly or covertly, are seeking others to take the interpersonal risks for them; they are not able to be responsible for their own well-being socially and become a burden on the nurturing and care-taking capacity of those around them. For those who experience severe avoidant symptoms, no amount of protectiveness or gentleness can ease their fear; they will withdraw without explanation and leave behind a general bewilderment about what went wrong.

Affective Issues

Shame is one of the central Avoidant Personality Disorder affective experiences. Shame and self-exposure are intimately connected -- which leads to withdrawal from interpersonal connection to avoid experiencing shame (Sutherland & Frances, Gabbard & Atkinson, eds, 1996, p. 993). These individuals are anguished. They describe their emotions as a constant and confusing undercurrent of tension, sadness, and anger. Sometimes this relentless pain results in a general state of numbness. They posses few social skills and personal attributes that can lead them to the pleasures and comforts of life. They must attempt to avoid pain, to need nothing, to depend on no one, and to deny desire. They try to turn away from their awareness of their unlovability and unattractiveness (Millon & Davis, 1996, p. 265).

Feeling capacity is normal for individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder; it is their affective expression that is limited. Insight is present but superficial and not useful; it is seldom used for change (Kantor, 1992, p. 108). Their main affect is dysphoria, a combination of anxiety and sadness (Beck, 1990, p. 44). They are apprehensive, lonely, and tense (Sperry & Carlson, 1993, p. 332); they can experience feelings of emptiness, depersonalization (Sperry, 1995, p. 36), and excessive self-consciousness. Occasionally, individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder lose control and explode with rage (Benjamin, 1983, p. 297).

Defensive Structure

Individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder utilize fantasy to interrupt their painful thoughts. They seek to muddle their emotions because diffuse disharmony is more tolerable than the sharp pain and anguish of being themselves. They also depend on fantasy for some measure of need gratification. Other Avoidant Personality Disorder defenses include avoidance and escape. Their paramount goal is to protect themselves from real or imagined psychic pain. Fantasy and escape are all that is left because they cannot gain comfort from themselves or from others (Millon & Davis, 1996, pp. 264-265).

Dorr (Retzlaff, ed., 1995, p. 196) also notes that individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder can deal with their emotions only through avoidance, escape, and fantasy. When faced with unanticipated stress, they have few internal strengths available to them to manage the situation. Energy is misdirected to avoid rather than to adapt. While these individuals seek isolation out of fear of humiliation or rejection, they desire relationships and connection. That leaves them with fantasy as their primary defense; here, the use of fantasy can be seen as a variant of the general defense of denial (Kubacki & Smith, Retzlaff, ed., 1995, p. 167).

Individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder take rejection as an indication of personal deficiencies; they engage in a string of automatic self-critical thoughts that are extraordinarily painful. The resultant Avoidant Personality Disorder social avoidance is readily apparent. What is less obvious is the concurrent cognitive and emotional avoidance. Their dysphoria is so painful that they use activities and addictions to distract them from negative thoughts and feelings as well. They engage in wishful thinking, e.g. one day the perfect relationship or job will come along; one day they will be confident and have many friends. The patterns of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral avoidance are reinforced by a reduction in sadness and become ingrained and automatic (Beck, 1990, pp. 257-265). Meanwhile, individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder lower their reality-based expectations and stay clear of involvement with real people (Beck & Freeman, 1990, pp. 43-44).

next: Diagnostic Criteria for Avoidant Personality Disorder

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Reviewed: 04/2006