Asperger's and Avoidant Personality Disorder

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Kon
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21 Nov 2010, 5:40 pm

Here's the proposed revisions of AvPD in upcoming DSM-V:

"The work group is recommending that this disorder be reforumulated as the Avoidant Type.

Individuals who match this personality disorder type have a negative sense of self, associated with a profound sense of inadequacy, and inhibition in establishing intimate interpersonal relationships. More specifically, they feel anxious, inadequate, inferior, socially inept, and personally unappealing; are easily ashamed or embarrassed; and are self-critical, often setting unrealistically high standards for themselves. At the same time, they may have a desire to be recognized by others as special and unique. Avoidant individuals are shy or reserved in social situations, avoid social and occupational situations because of fear of embarrassment or humiliation, and seek out situations that do not include other people. They are preoccupied with and very sensitive to being criticized or rejected by others and are reluctant to disclose personal information for fear of disapproval or rejection. They appear to lack basic interpersonal skills, resulting in few close friendships. Intimate relationships are avoided because of a general fear of attachments and intimacy, including sexual intimacy.

Individuals resembling this type tend to blame themselves or feel responsible for bad things that happen, and to find little or no pleasure, satisfaction, or enjoyment in life’s activities. They also tend to be emotionally inhibited or constricted and have difficulty allowing themselves to acknowledge or express their wishes, emotions – both positive and negative – and impulses. Despite high standards, affected individuals may be passive and unassertive about pursuing personal goals or achieving successes, sometimes leading to aspirations or achievements below their potential. They are often risk averse in new situations."

http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/P ... spx?rid=20



swbluto
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22 Oct 2011, 8:18 pm

Flismflop wrote:
Most of the people with Avoidant PD were probably more likely AS but, no one knew of such at the time.


Yes, I'm also guessing that Avpd is a common comorbidity for aspergers/autism.

I originally suspected I had Avpd during high school and shortly after high school, and that 'getting better' socially speaking was simply a matter of "getting over it" and putting my foot out there, but yet I still had the same kind of communication difficulties as I had previously which was primarily people mistaking my intentions and vice versa, and I still appear to have these problems with most people even though I definitely don't have Avpd today. Right now, it's kind of a toss up between something autistic or schizophrenic in nature and the evidence seems to be pointing to both. :? Yeah, I know, it's a mystery.

(or a simple language disorder... my testing results should tell me if this is the case.)

Or maybe it really is a matter of underdeveloped "Social skills"? Someone I know swears all I need to do is practice, haha.

Or maybe I still have Avpd, as my last statement suggests I still have a negative sense of self? Hmmmm.....



Catamount
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22 Oct 2011, 8:55 pm

A lot of these so-called personality disorders seem to be just a slightly different way of "spinning" the same thing. Avoidant Personality Disorder, Schizoid Personality Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder ... I mean why do shrinks have to apply the word "disorder" to anyone who doesn't spend their entire life yacking needlessly.

I appreciate and understand the neurology behind Aspergers and autism and feel it provides a clear explanation of differences in the brain that go beyond one's ability to socialize. I suspect I could probably be diagnosed with any of these other "disorders" but to me they are simply symptoms of something bigger and far more interesting.



tentoedsloth
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22 Oct 2011, 9:12 pm

I love this thread, especially the humor.

It's hard to tell which came first--Asperger's, Social Phobia, Avoidant Personality, even Schizoid Personality--even if you could pick one from so many similar things.

Having some characteristics of each, I plan to find a message/forum board and listen to the REAL PEOPLE who have these things, and see which group I feel I fit in with most. To me, that's worth more than all the uninvolved doctors, diagnosing without really knowing me, in the world.



swbluto
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22 Oct 2011, 9:32 pm

tentoedsloth wrote:
Having some characteristics of each, I plan to find a message/forum board and listen to the REAL PEOPLE who have these things, and see which group I feel I fit in with most. To me, that's worth more than all the uninvolved doctors, diagnosing without really knowing me, in the world.


Great idea! I think I might do the same. :D



socalaspie
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24 Dec 2011, 7:20 am

I think schizoid personality disorder is likely misdiagnosed Asperger's.


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DreamSofa
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24 Dec 2011, 7:47 am

Thanks for the link, ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo. It was very interesting.



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24 Dec 2011, 11:00 am

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
From what I understand, having an autistic spectrum disorder rules out the possibility of having a personality disorder.


I do not think that is the case at all.....actually, there is no reason AS would rule out a personality disorder. unless all the symptoms seen as a personality disorder can be explained by the autism.


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24 Dec 2011, 11:04 am

Orbyss wrote:
I'm learning more and more toward believing the diagnosis of 'avoidant personality disorder' is bunk, along with 'schizoid personality disorder'. I would put money on (and toward funding of research of) these being misdiagnosed AS or some other PDD.


Well AS and other PDD's start in childhood right?.........personality disorders tend not to start till later on in life, so I do not think avoident personality disorder or scizoid personality disorder are nessisarly bunk. However there is some overlap with those and AS as some of the symptoms are simular. I do not think Autism is the proper diagnoses for everyone with Schizoid or Avoident PD.


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Crypticthecat
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16 Sep 2016, 1:25 am

Don't mean to be funny, but the idea that one wouldn't be traumatised by the various forms of psychological abuse that people with unacknowledged high-functioning autism are exposed to seems fairly absurd.

Absolutely I am habitually avoidant. Nothing very crazy about that. And yes, when I got severely bullied at work and at home, by the same manipulative person running an awful campaign, was originally renting a room but this guy followed me to work & hired himself over my in order to 'conquer' a boundary he felt he was being denied, of having a job which requires a decade of experience, which he did not have. Within weeks it ended up incredibly abusive and manipulative with this guy stalking me and recruiting half the local psychopaths to take turns psychologically abusing me. First ended up not being paid and starving... then after leaving this giy followed me & coerced me into freelance projects "to cover the rentire arrears"... got robbed & discredit of the proceeds & ended up homeless etc...

Serious mobbing, sleep deprivation, psychological abuse and starvation on top of 80% blindness and a whole raft of neurological problems as a result of fluoroquinolone toxicity syndrome (AKA gulf war syndrome), would recommend anybody avoids it. Horrible experience.

I got subjected to a sufficiently unpleasant form of sadistic psychological and physical torture, 1001 sorts of humiliation & sabotage, on top of starvation and having to work through work related tendinitis injuries, culimating in severe mobbing and social exclusion, I am genuinely not surprised that at this point I have some highly avoidant habits / PTSD / anxiety-fear. I am not by default an over emotional person, so quite frankly it takes more than the average amount of psychological abuse to ruffle the feathers.

At the time the mobbing / stalking was all going on, the information on fluoroquinolones was not publicised. It is a *huge* and currently-breaking scandal. I honestly thought that I was dying of a brain tumour, and half the time I couldn't even see people's faces through the TV static let alone distinguish a facial expresssion. In the acute phase I honestly thought I was having a heart attack and a stroke at the same time. It was that painful.

The medical profession had... no help for me! "It is a mystery". That is because the disease was man-made, and a well-concealed side effect known about since the original research in the '30s. In fact the drugs were deemed "too toxic even for conentration camp interns".The information had been suppressed by a highly corrupt chemicals company called Bayer, whose list of murderous malpractice is long indeed. These chemotherapeutic and highly toxic drugs were pushed through and prescribed as an 'antibiotic', as a result of the postal anthrax scandal, after having been 'successfully' used on soldiers during desert storm, with the "mystery syndrome" being blamed on an "unknown chemical/biological weapon".

https://corporatewatch.org/company-prof ... ate-crimes
^ toxic corporation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_ter_Meer
^ if I told most people on the street that the guy who ran the human experimentation wing of auschwitz was given his job back, controlling one of the world's largest chemicals and drugs companies after a few years of 'good behaviour' in the jail for high ranking nazis, having been prosecuted for crimes against humanity (ie mass murder & enslavement) at the nuremberg trials... a lot of people would say I am quite mad to think that. However, that is what happened. The company's human rights record is not a lot better afterwards... but it is pretty hard to do worse than chemical weapons in WW1 and death camps in WW2, that's a high bar for abuse, but it would seem that their later work is most unpleasant.

_________

I agree entirely with the potential hazards of labelling and disorders, it has to be based on a proper causal and dynamic model with full objectively measured evidence, something those who would study living brains have found to be either impossible or requiring highly unethical human experimentation. 20th century both happened.

Thankfully we are a way further along than diagnosing "mania", "hysteria" "schizophrenia" or "catatonia", and no longer accuse those who hear voices of actually working in concert with Satan and his demons. There is more progress to be had, for sure.

A lot of medical science has concentrated on the idea of disease or disorder as a distinct process from trying to undetstand the nature of biomechanics and health.

Chinese medicine does not see things with the same diagnostic patterns at all, in that system there is function and impairment. I got a lot of the fluoroquinolone problems sorted out using TCM, and I would be lying if I suggested I know exactly how it works... bit it really does work (if you get the right person).

Running about through life without any diagnosis or support, and being personally blamed for the curious combination of intellect and social/emotional impairment, then on top of symptoms more inline with a stroke victim (and still no diagnosis) that puts one in line for getting tortured in various ways, and not being given the benefit of the doubt. This results in a lot of psychological abuse, particularly from people with toxic mentalities and/or deep neurological problems. The BPD/NPD sociopathic / psychopathic corner. It all got incredibly heavy.

Those sorts of deceit-loving emotionally-manipulative-volatile-boundary-blind people are not fun, especially if one has trouble reading people in the first place.

Being *confused* with those sorts of people is not fun, either. Not the same deal at all.

However, is is quite likely that a lot of the seemingly separate disorders have similarities in cause and effect, and that new language will be developed to describe the various ways that nerves of different sorts can develop performance issues and how that can cascade out to manifest as an externally observable behavioural or cognitive abnormality.

It is also quite likely that it will be discovered that when it comes to the human brain, with all the neuroplasticity and scale, it will be discovered that many people who act relatively normal actually have markedly different ways of using their brains 'under the hood'.

_________

Regarding the various discussions of what medical science is able to handle objectively, the software-hardware interrelationship of a chaotic and massively complex system such as the human body and consciousness, the newtonian-materialistic dogma built into the sciences via the early works of the royal society, these non-dynamic and non-quantum ways of understanding biological systems are relatively unhelpful.

Thus psychiatry throughout the 20th century has been the quackiest of all of the quack medical sciences.

Physiology is not only the foundation but also the actual neurological operation of thought.

Now that we can actually *investigate* the living brain, using all sorts of computer-modelling of enzymes and dna, FMRI, and the ability of the scientific community and public to share the information, I have a reasonable belief that by 2050 we will have a good structural understanding of the brain and nervous system, and that a lot of disorders will be better understood.

One of the most interesting features of nerves is that they have to perform incredibly fast chemical processes, and require a huge amount of resources to run. Nerves that are starved of resources can and do develop sophisticated intermittent problems.

The sooner neurology eats psychiatry the better, as far as I am concerned.

I personally put a good few of my problems down to a combination of toxic load and stress, and it all likely happened before I was born. When I was tested as a little kid, I was very high in lead. Pb. I would not be surprised if I had the postmodern toxic works, frankly. PCBs, bisphenol A/S, the full lot (please note that the toxic hazards BPS/BPA/PCBS/organophosphates etc are also the work of Bayer corporation).

_________

This is worth watching.

Psychological stress *alone* is physically toxic and can result in neurological injury, potentially of a permanent nature.