Avoiding personality disorder is also known to science as "evasive." Up to one percent of the entire adult population of the planet is susceptible to this pathology. The greatest attention is paid to his study of American medicine. If the patient has an increased tendency to anxiety, agoraphobia, and social phobia, one can suspect that he has an avoidable personality disorder. These terms denote the fear of open spaces and interaction with people.
Avoidable Personality Disorder: Symptoms
For people who are characterized by this mental disorder, the following features are characteristic:
- extreme shyness;
- hypersensitivity to criticism of the society or to the situation of failure;
- low self-esteem;
- feeling of inferiority;
- the desire for close relationships with others, which is hampered by the complexity of creating attachments, relationships (a possible exception is close relatives, but often problems are observed even with relationships within the family);
- a patient with an IRL seeks to exclude social interaction if possible, and this applies not only to casual acquaintances, but also to necessary working contacts or, say, communication at school, university.
Psychotherapy as a method of care
If a person is expected to avoid a personality disorder, the symptoms of pathology are usually compensated by psychotherapeutic practices. It should be borne in mind that patients are usually shy and extremely shy, so the simplest social interactions are difficult for them. Communication within society for such people is a serious obstacle. As a result of this, it is impossible to resort to one of the most effective methods of modern psychotherapy - group interaction.
Avoiding anxiety disorder can be treated if the theory of the cognitive-behavioral group is used. This is due to the fact that the methodology works well in working with shy people. It is aimed at the development of new social skills and abilities, which has a significant impact on human behavior, simplifying its functioning as an element of society.
What about the medicine?
Traditional medicine suggests that almost any mental illness can be treated with medication. Nevertheless, evasive personality disorder is recommended to be treated, possibly postponing the stage of taking medication.
In general, medications show a good result, so they are often used. But the help on the part of the drugs is only temporary, it is associated with numerous side effects, it persists for as long as the course lasts, and is addictive.
How to recognize?
Mental personality disorder is usually noticeable even with the naked eye. A person is literally “obsessed” with his shortcomings, thinks too much about them, often raises this topic in conversation. At the same time, such an individual seeks to avoid interaction with other people as much as possible and makes contact only when he subconsciously feels certain that he will not be rejected.
Rejection, any losses in mental disorders are so painful that it is preferable for the patient to remain alone than to risk his unstable state, trying to build contact with others.
Symptoms of the disease
Mental personality disorder can be diagnosed by the following symptoms:
- a strong desire for close relationships with other people, which prevents excessive shyness;
- the desire to exclude any physical contacts if possible;
- hostility, hostility, disgust;
- incredulity;
- self-isolation, the desire to completely exclude relations with society (hikikomori);
- timidity, modesty, reaching the extreme;
- a sense of belonging to people of "second grade", "lower level";
- inability to work normally, to accumulate professionalism, to improve;
- increased self-criticism, primarily in matters of social interactions;
- shyness, embarrassment;
- loneliness;
- conscious exclusion of intimate relationships;
- addiction (mental, chemical).
Information is still not enough
As part of determining the presence of a disease, a personality disorder test is performed. Since the disease was identified by doctors as an independent relatively recently, methods of diagnosis and treatment are still under development. Most of the technologies used today are experimental technologies.
Emotional personality disorder is largely close to psychopathy (specifically, to the sensitive subspecies). According to the current classification in Russia, such a disease today is not considered necessary to distinguish as an independent, but only ascribe it to schizoid personality disorder, ranked as asthenic. Much will depend on the attending physician and his own views on medicine, psychiatry.
There is still no clear record of people suffering from this type of personality disorder. There is no information about the prevalence of the disease, nor about its dependence on gender. It cannot be said whether multiple personality disorder is associated with a genetic predisposition, whether it is inherited. We can only say that people who subsequently diagnose the disease are shy, timid from early childhood.
Pathology is not dangerous to others ...
If the test for personality disorder showed the presence of the disease, we can say that the diagnosis is made. It is noted that in everyday life, a person whose pathology has been identified behaves in such a way that his inferiority complex is noticeable to those around him.
As a rule, patients are introverts. This is largely due to too low self-esteem. At the same time, patients are not asocial personalities, and they have a strong desire to have normal social contacts. The problem is that entering into relationships with people around them is real for patients only when they are confident in a positive acceptance, that they will not be criticized. As a rule, the requirements of guarantees are so overstated that their implementation becomes unrealistic.
... but extremely problematic for the patient
Multiple personality disorder affects a person in such a way that he always feels that society rejects him. As a rule, the patient has an idealized idea of how he should be treated in society. Reality hardly disagrees with this idea, as a person runs away in fear, “closes himself in the sink”, leaves himself, fenced off.
It is fear that is the leading factor in the formation of communicative behavior. Patients usually:
- constrained;
- unsure of themselves;
- modest beyond measure;
- unnatural;
- demonstrative in their avoidance of society;
- asking for humiliation.
This behavior is due to the fact that patients are sure in advance that society will reject them, and try to take measures in advance so that it is "not so painful".
The perception of the world is distorted
If a person has appeared in your life who has an avoidable personality disorder, the reasons for communicating with him may be very different, but continued contact is possible only with a clear awareness of one fact: these people exaggerate the negative perception of others and distort the social interactions and the assessment of society.
Patients with this type of personality disorder typically have very poor communication skills. This provokes ineptitude, awkwardness in various situations, familiar to those who feel in society, like a fish in water. Because of this, patients are perceived by others with caution, and often repel them, which only strengthens gloomy assumptions about what to expect from other people.
Disappointing development
Over time, avoiding personality disorder becomes the cause of not only negative expectations from communication between people, but also from life in general. A person begins to exaggerate everyday dangers. He is faced with serious internal contradictions, if necessary, turn to someone. If it is necessary to speak to the public, a horror breaks out, it is impossible to cope without medication.
In a career, a person who is characterized by an avoidable personality disorder can achieve practically nothing, since no one trusts him in responsible positions. These people are almost invisible to others, and the distinguishing feature of their behavior is the helpfulness that provokes society to use the sick without any return. Patients with this type of personality disorder in most cases do not have friends, cannot build a trusting relationship.
Visiting a doctor
Having first appeared at a psychologist, psychotherapist or psychiatrist, patients can behave rather unpredictably, but they all have the same goal - to please the doctor. At the same time, it is literally seen by eye that often people are in very strong tension, which increases if there is an assumption that the sick doctor "does not like".
Many of them say that they are afraid of ridicule from the people around them and are afraid that they will begin to dissolve gossip, and therefore they are being fenced off from society. In this aspect, all patients are highly suspicious. But when they try to explain something to them, they perceive the information “with hostility”, immediately evaluating it as criticism.
Is Mental Disorder For Life a Sentence?
At the present level of development of medicine in general and psychotherapy, psychiatry in particular, there are not many methods for eliminating mental development disorders. The situation is similar in the case when avoiding personality disorder was diagnosed. Treatment rarely shows real effectiveness for a long time without constant therapy (drug, psychological).
Moreover, the manifestations of the disease are largely related to the social niche, the stratum of the person belongs to. The happiest are those who are fortunate enough to successfully marry a person who is consistent with the ideal. In this case, the relationship becomes stable, both people accept each other with all the positive qualities and shortcomings, but social interactions close on the family and end with it.
As soon as social support crashes, a person literally “falls into the inner swamp”: suffers from depression, anxiety, he has dysphoric symptoms.
Differential diagnosis
The difficulty in determining personality disorder is that the manifestations of the ailment are similar to those that are noted with the following diseases:
- schizoid disorder;
- anxiety disorder.
In the first case, the patient seeks to be alone for as long as possible. Doctors also highlight the so-called matte affect. But in the case of an anxiety disorder, people tend to communicate, but can not afford it because of haunting fear and constant self-doubt.
All described species have much in common in the clinical picture. The closest are the anxious type and the dependent, but if in the first case the reason for fear lies precisely in the stage of establishing contact, then people in the second group are afraid of parting.
Modern medicine sets itself the task of identifying clear, definite signs of each of the known types of personality disorders so that an unmistakable diagnosis can be established.
Similar manifestations are also characteristic of hysterical, borderline patients. But people of these types are prone to manipulation and irritable, their behavior is often impossible to predict. To determine whether the disease belongs to the alarming type, or to the subspecies bordering it, is very problematic, as is the case with the distinction between schizophrenia and schizotypy. Nevertheless, it is important to determine the most effective therapy in each case.
What can help?
Choosing the optimal treatment option, doctors make an integral behavior model, on the basis of which they form a program that takes into account the individual characteristics of the patient. In this case, attention is paid to such components:
- cognitive;
- behavioral;
- psychodynamic.
The most significant stage of treatment is the one when the personality changes achieved during treatment are consolidated. It is important that the person begins to apply the acquired skills outside the situations simulated in the hospital in real life. However, it is impossible to predict the development of the situation, since much depends on the patient’s environment. A small setback can cause repeated damage to self-esteem, which further worsens the situation. In this case, all success achieved is immediately nullified. But the success of social interaction activates the cyclic process of self-affirmation, with each new turn taking a person to a new level of self-consciousness and self-confidence.