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LonelyLoner
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09 Oct 2012, 8:00 pm

I don't do this anymore because I live with my sister and I'm comfortable. But before I moved in with my sister I used to live with my dad and his roommates house. The first time I met her was when I moved into her house. Anyway, it was me, my dad his roommate and sometime (like everyday) his roommates bf were living in the house. Well my dad would work all day so I would be alone most of the day. His roommate would come home at 4pm. I would just stay in my room when she was home and I would go without eating just because I didn't want to go down stares to the kitchen to get something to eat because she would be down there. I just didn't want to see her because I was just soooo shy and anxious. It was worse when her friends or bf was there. I starved until my dad got home just so that he can go with me down stares to the kitchen and eat. I was even losing weight and feeling very weak with headaches because I didn't come out of my room. So eventually I stocked up some snacks in my room so that I would have at least have something to put in my stomach.

Has anyone else done this due to extreme anxiety to strangers?



MrStewart
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09 Oct 2012, 9:34 pm

Your behaviour in this particular situation is called 'avoidant'. Meaning you are avoiding an anxiety trigger (being in the kitchen with your father's roommate) by staying in your room. You did this because you were trying to avoid the distressing situation and prevent your anxiety from increasing. I imagine you would probably say that staying in your room and being hungry was less distressing to you than being in the kitchen with this person would be.

Avoiding the situation entirely was your coping mechanism. Let's say, staying in the room, worrying about the other person's presence in the house would be, i don't know, maybe 6/10 severity. Maybe actually going down to the kitchen to eat with this person present would have been 8 or 9/10 in severity. (1 being no anxiety and 10 being full blown panic attack).

The answer to your last question, for me, is yes. I certainly have done similar things in similar situations. Refusing to go to busy restaurants, refusing to spend Christmas with my father because I know his wife and her extended family will also be there. Refusing to go to the dentist because dentists frighten me like nothing else.

Does that sort of explain your question?



LonelyLoner
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09 Oct 2012, 10:34 pm

So this does have a name? is this kind of behavior considered avoidant? I thought I might've been overly ridiculous...



lostgirl1986
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09 Oct 2012, 10:39 pm

Yes, I'd say it's pretty extreme and I'm like that as well.



Alberto
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09 Oct 2012, 10:50 pm

I've done something similar, sometimes I'd avoid going up the cafeteria at my last job just to avoide th huge crowds and lines, sometimes I have to go through this area when walking, and to avoid all the odd eye contact I'd take a different route, this was on a ship. I ate if I was hungry wich was most of the time. One of my worst silly fears in my head was to spill food or trip over something akwardly while in the cafetria area, never did spill or drop anything, but was self concious eating all the time.



LonelyLoner
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09 Oct 2012, 11:19 pm

lostgirl1986 wrote:
Yes, I'd say it's pretty extreme and I'm like that as well.
omg I thought o was the only one...



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10 Oct 2012, 1:01 am

I have done similar things, but perhaps not to that extreme. My avoidant situation involved a friend of mine that was living with me who was an out of control alcoholic. I would try to just get away and lock myself in my room, but he would insist on me keeping him company so there was no escape. What I wound up doing is getting in my car, turning off my phone and driving somewhere, ANYWHERE until I thought he would be sleeping. I didn't have the ability to kick him out as he was always drunk when I saw him and liked to play with his AK-47 when he was blackout drunk. (He didn't have the gun when he moved in but bought it later and it became the subject of many an argument.) I was terrified of the situation because he also displayed signs of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and was quite unstable. I wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with that and even now, 6b or 7 months after he left, I am still dealing with the psychological scars from him. Additionally, I tend to avoid girls who have turned me down when I have tried to ask them out. I just feel so embarrassed that I actually tried and worked up the courage to do so when it wasn't wanted. I don't know how to deal with it so I try not to deal with it.


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KittyCommand0r
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10 Oct 2012, 1:13 am

This is how I live my life : ( Although I live with my girlfriend and one of my best friends. I have no reason to feel anxious. Just any type of social interaction gives me a ton of anxiety if its with someone who I haven't let into my own personal world. Once I get close and use to the person its usually goes away for the most part. The anxiety of not knowing what to say or if I should say hello or if its ok to just go about my business and ignore them or thinking they are mad at me is what keeps me in my room.



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10 Oct 2012, 9:27 am

Yes, I was like this for many years (much less so now, though I live by myself now so I don't routinely have anyone to avoid). I spent four years living in a university dorm with room-mates, none of whom I ever knew. In those four years, spent in four different flats, I went into the kitchen precisely twice. I found the experience of trying to make food with other people in the room trying to talk to me and look at what I was doing so terrifying and stressful, and failed so terribly at it, that I never went back in there, except once late at night to use the microwave when I thought everyone was asleep (they weren't; someone went in after me, I fled and never did get that food out of the microwave).

If you are wondering how I cooked my food, I mostly didn't, though I did invent an ingenious method of cooking tinned food by wrapping it in foil and boiling it repeatedly in a kettle.



Morningstar
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10 Oct 2012, 10:05 am

Oh...I'm like that too, so it's normal instead of extreme to me :/

But I haven't done anything like that in a really long time, so maybe I just forgot how it feels? I used to live with anxiety like that every day when I still lived with my parents.



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10 Oct 2012, 10:09 am

I do things like this too. :( You're not alone.



Jeanna
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10 Oct 2012, 10:26 am

I do this too, especially since I'm still living with my parents who are always demanding I look them in the eye when I talk to them (and then say I'm being rude when I force myself to and end up making too much eye contact). In the end it's just easier to stay away and avoid talking to anyone.


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10 Oct 2012, 11:37 am

LonelyLoner wrote:
lostgirl1986 wrote:
Yes, I'd say it's pretty extreme and I'm like that as well.
omg I thought o was the only one...


Yeah, I've done things like this too and yes this behaviour is pretty extreme.


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MrStewart
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10 Oct 2012, 4:05 pm

LonelyLoner wrote:
I thought I might've been overly ridiculous...


Nonsense. Nothing ridiculous about it. :wink: