What kinds of things do you do to avoid people?

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Same here. If I'm not already near the door I won't answer it and even if I am near it I won't always answer. It's usually just solicitors, anyway. Most people that I know have my number so the expectation is that they'll call or text me if they're coming to my house. I really don't like having company, anyway.

I stay in bed

I keep to myself for the most part & don't really talk to people unless they start talking to me. My girlfriend is the one exception.

Gah talk about paranoia and just wanting others to stop spying on us / avoiding nosy people - I just got stopped by my downstairs neighbour who always asks me "what's with all the sex you're having in there?"
I am not having sex in here! I'm walking around, or pumping up my ever-deflating air bed, or being alive. It also makes me totally paranoid this person is overhearing everything I'm doing and the next time I see them, they'll bring it up "oh I heard you doing X last night, why would you do that?" or whatever. It makes me tiptoe around in supposedly my own place just so I won't be overheard when I want to have any privacy whatsoever. I am too paranoid to even do my speech therapy exercises because I'm paranoid they will hear it and make judgy comments next time I leave the flat.
What the hell are they doing in there, spending all their time with a stethoscope pressed to the ceiling at 3am hoping to overhear me having sex? That's not creepy at all.

I wish I had that option, you two are fortunate indeed.

I stay at home a lot, and don't answer my door or phone unless I know it's somebody I deem to be OK. I keep the curtains drawn. I live at the back of the house, and only use the front room as a storage area, as it opens onto the street. Sometimes when out walking, if I see somebody I know, I'll change my route to avoid having to go into the social chit-chat mode, even when I have no particular problem with whoever it is, I might even like them, but there are times when I just can't cope with it. I decline invitations to gatherings by default, relenting only when I've analysed the situation and figured that the benefits outweight the risks. I try to pick quiet times to go shopping.

As C2V says, I have people in my building I prefer to avoid; I feel bad about it when it's someone harmless, but less bad about the one who is a troublemaker! The nicer one -- she knocks on my door to tell me small things like something local that's happening, a farmer's market or such. She means well but I have a massive "thing" about hearing someone knock on my door when I'm not expecting anyone. I don't answer my door almost all the time. I've even missed out on postal deliveries and had to go and collect it myself, because I had not opened my door when I heard knocking.

I know it makes no sense to wind up going and collecting a parcel -- meaning even more contact with more people!

But there's something about being in my own home, my own private territory, and hearing someone knocking at my door that I just can't deal well with. At least if I have to go out and get to a post office and interact with the staff, I know it's on my own head and I have prepared myself to deal with it. The knock on the door, if it comes on a day when I had not expected the delivery, is too sudden a mystery for me.

This has been a lifelong problem and was even worse when I was a child. I used to run and hide under furniture when someone knocked on our door in my family home. I've never been able to conquer this issue. I have to be very certain it's something or someone I think I know it is before I answer my door.

When walking out and about, I tend not to look at anyone. I glance around at bodies just enough to stay aware of danger but I know I tend to avoid looking into people's faces and eyes. If someone passes by I look ahead as if they don't exist. I'm not intending to be rude or ignore them, I'm just trying to stay in my own bubble because anything more than that is taxing. On a very bad day when other stress factors have drained all my coping energies, I avoid people even more, taking deserted routes.

Have also had a long bad relationship with phones. I was asking about a product in a store recently, and the store assistant asked to take my number so that she could call me back about availability. I can't do that -- I can't stand to get a call from an unknown number. Another one from childhood -- freaked out when the phone rang, Took years for me to be able to make a call to someone I didn't already know.

Not answering the door seems to be a common one. I often won't answer the door if I can get away with it. Sometimes it's obvious that I'm home so I have to.

A big one for me is that I live alone even though it's quite expensive. I wrote about my problems with share accommodation in another thread. My guard is up around most other people, so I need somewhere I can be completely myself. Then there's also the fact that housemates can be unreliable, unpredictable and often want to socialise when I don't.

Bird-in-flight's story about hiding under the furniture when someone knocked on the door reminded me about a 'game' I used to play when I was a child. I lived almost on the corner of a quiet street. Whenever I heard a car coming and I was in the front yard, it was absolutely imperative for me to get into the backyard before the car turned into the street and the driver and any occupants could see me. It wasn't really a game though - I felt actual terror at the thought of being seen.

I try solving all of my problems on my own. If there's an urgent need for using someone's help I get depressed and terrified. I'd rather read a long manual than ask someone who knows how it works for some help.

Too many things to name them all successfully. As for answering the door, I don't care if they can see me in the window I will still not answer

I do this too, and I don't know how to ask someone for help without being awkward about it. It feels like I'm imposing on them. People with more social skills than I do ask others for help all the time, very comfortably and smoothly, and I can't work out how they do it.

Whoa - I am absolutely gobsmacked by this thread!

I've only just begun to admit some of this stuff to my therapist, and I have to say, it has brought a tear to my eye to read all of your experiences here. Both in the sense of living like a hermit, and being averse to asking for help with anything, so much of what you have all written is eerily familiar.

My primary avoidance strategy is the cover of night - I become almost nocturnal given the choice. I know that I've done it since childhood. Not that I dislike sunshine, but even as a kid the night-time was "my time". I developed an array of techniques to get away with being up late reading and playing with my Lego almost silently so that my parents and brother would not hear. I memorised where every single creaky floorboard in the house was too - so that I could slink about like a ninja without drawing attention. All so that I could do my own thing without interruption or interaction - blissful!

And I still do it - when there's a knock at the door, or the phone rings, I go into "stealth mode" - bated breath, frozen to the spot, tuned-in to even the slightest indication that the person disturbing me is still there - until I can be absolutely sure they have gone away. Then it's safe - I can breathe again, pace and stim for a while to calm down, then get back to whatever I was doing. So I still prefer the night-time. When all of the other people are tucked up in bed, I can be free to indulge my interests knowing that I won't be disturbed, and it is still blissful.

My ability to creep about almost silently has even been noticed by other people later in life - I've been called things like a "genie" many times in the past for my uncanny ability to "magically appear" beside people without them noticing how I got there (maybe I was a cat in a past life - I'm sure any cat owner knows exactly what I mean!)

One time in college I avoided people for so long, the campus police broke down my door. That kinda sucked.

I turn my phone off.

When I was in my 20s and it looked like someone was approaching me, I would whip out a Kleenex and blow my nose. People would then change course. I have done/do a lot of what other people here wrote.

Yesterday I saw one of my old bosses at a gas station, and as I was leaving, I rounded a pillar and saw him in his car so I backed up and literally hid behind the pole until he drove away. I'm pretty sure he saw me, but I didn't care, I just couldn't talk to him.