welcome to the hell brain

join me in fallling down the rabbit hole of whatever the fuck's up with my brain (in other words, this is a blog for me to dump mental illness/neurodivergence stuff) | [he/ey] | avpd-specific blog: @avpdpossum

[unstablevalley]

i made an avpd-specific blog, avpdpossum!

i'm going to be reblogging all my current avpd-related posts to there, and from now on that's where i'll be posting avpd-related stuff

i don't have many followers, but most of the few i do have came from my avpd posts, so i thought y'all would like to know!

[t-mbourine]

microdoses on emotional vulnerability by Imagining talking to my friends about my feelings instead of actually talking to my friends about said feelings

[unstablevalley]

i’m honestly getting super frustrated by the way avpd resources and spaces (when they exist at all) seem to be like...super polarized between either being literally nothing but misery or a bunch of people going “wow i must have that!” after hearing the most basic info about it without any further research

i want spaces where we can have productive conversations about the actual experiences of it beyond what the DSM says, where we can throw around theories and sympathize over specific experiences that we didn’t know were even avpd things before, where we can discuss how comorbidities and intersectional identities affect how we experience avpd, where we can talk about avpd being a neglected disorder research-wise and advocate for treatments that are more conscious of how ableism/sanism taints psychiatry with a “cure it at all costs, make them seem normal” approach, where we can educate people on what makes it different from social anxiety disorder or shyness/introversion, where we can make the language we use (things like “safe person”) more well known and discuss what new vocabulary could be useful for us, where we can talk about how a lot of avoidant behaviors are super stigmatized even though avpd is so unknown that people don’t think it’s even possible for it to be stigmatized, where we can discuss how to balance the need for self diagnosis in some cases because it’s a neglected disorder with the fact that the symptoms can be easily misinterpreted as much more mild and/or common than they actually are, where we can talk about its connection to things like childhood emotional neglect and teasing that a lot of people assume aren’t traumatizing, where we can brainstorm ways to help those of us who struggle with therapy because of generally avoiding it altogether or because of certain therapies (*cough* cbt *cough*) coming off as invalidating and triggering our avoidance

like why are the only two choices “my life is meaningless and hopeless and anyone with this awful horrible disorder should want to die because it’s the worst thing in the world” or “oh my god i know i’m so socially awkward! wow i match all seven criteria this is so me!”

honestly blogs on here are some of the only things i’ve found that dip into the deeper stuff i want to see talked about and i’m super grateful for that, i just wish it wasn’t so rare especially given how many are inactive now

i know it’s probably because we’re generally less likely than other communities to like...be able to create those spaces for ourselves given the nature of what avpd does but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating...i wish my own internalized shit didn’t make me feel like i’m not qualified to make a space like that myself because i don’t have the resources for a professional diagnosis yet

ah, the avoidant urge to desperately want a community that meets your needs but be too afraid to create it yourself because people might judge you for it...

[unstablevalley]

does anyone else with avpd get anxiety tics?

because i know people keep saying anxiety doesn't cause tics, and that might very well be true for anxiety in general, but given how understudied avpd is, it wouldn't surprise me if that statement doesn't necessarily apply to us

there are a few specific things - twisting my neck / throwing my head back, blinking really hard, biting down really hard, humming - that i do a lot when i'm in a social situation and i feel like i did something "wrong", and i think at first they started as regular stims to deal with the anxiety, but now they're getting more frequent and they're not really in my control anymore, like my brain latched onto them as a way to cope with the anxiety and now i have to do them even though they used to be voluntary

so they look like tics, they feel like how other people describe tics, they specifically come up when i'm anxious (particularly when i'm anxious about something people-related), and they've been getting more frequent and harder to control as my avpd symptoms have been getting more obvious

so it feels like there's a connection there...anyone else experience this? i'd be curious to see if maybe avpd in particular could cause anxiety tics, but because it hasn't been studied enough, people just dismiss the idea altogether

(also, if you're just gonna reply that they're not real, don't. just don't. don't bother. k thanks)

[unstablevalley]

starting to realize my depression might actually be a combination of autistic burnout, emotional distress from avpd, and depersonalization/derealization, not the major depressive disorder i’ve been diagnosed with

not sure what to do with that fact since i know none of my doctors would believe me, but i sure wish they would since that feels very relevant to treating the depression and that’s, yknow, the whole point of me going to them for it

it makes complete sense though - the emotional piece, the suicidality, all that is pretty much always associated with something social, something i’m trying to avoid or something i wish i could stop avoiding; the practical piece, the making it harder to take care of myself parts, definitely follow a pattern of burning out from things like school, work, and the stress of navigating a fun variety of untreated disabilities; and the sort of general shitty feeling, the detachedness, the struggling to enjoy things, that’s all stuff that happens when my dissociation is more prominent

it’s weird to realize that the MDD, the first diagnosis, the thing that made me go to these doctors in the first place, might never have been that at all, but just my first experience with autistic burnout, the early signs of my avpd starting to rear their ugly heads, and worsening dissociation all coming together at the worst possible time

no wonder these seven years of treatment haven’t worked...we’ve probably been treating the wrong things all along

and that almost gives me hope, because maybe once we treat the right things it’ll actually make things easier, but that would require the doctors believing me...at least i’m on the right track i guess

[masaotheheckindog]

anyway getting therapy with avpd is really hard because your therapist is like has anything difficult happened this week?’ and you like pathologically have to say ‘what no I’m fine!!!’ despite the fact that you’ve had three (3) breakdowns

[unstablevalley]

reading about how avpd tends to be caused in part by subtle trauma over time rather than really big moments of trauma is weird because like...

on the one hand, it means that my theories about my childhood being traumatizing and what kind of trauma it was are probably right because the descriptions i’ve seen are pretty much exactly what i experienced

but that also means i can’t hide from the fact that it was traumatizing anymore because it was clearly traumatizing enough to affect literally everything about me and my life

[void-cloud]

AVPD culture is having a positive social experience and then isolating yourself again cause your brain refuses to learn anything positive from it

[flimflops]

Having a vengeful urge for someone with a passive personality disorder is so funny you just

[ AGGRESSIVELY DOES NOT SPEAK TO YOU ]

[ VIGOROUSLY TALKS SMACK INSIDE HEAD ]

[ ABSOLUTELY DEMOLISHES YOU IN BLOG ]

[pdtonystark]

the worst thing for me at least is that never-ending cycle of… I am completely incapable of doing this thing because of my avpd and the thought of having to do it makes me want to die, but if I don’t do it the other people involved will get angry at me again and the thought of dealing with that also makes me want to die, but I can’t do it because it will be terrible, but not doing it will also be terrible, but I can’t do it-

[avpdsnail]

i don’t think people understand how excruciating it is when i embarrass myself…. it’s not just “haha whoops lol that was awkward” it’s deadass wanting to kill myself in the most brutal way possible because i fucked up yet again…… it’s unbearable….

[avpdsnail]

what people think i mean when i say i can’t handle criticism: i am completely unwilling to accept the fact that i need to work on my flaws or improve myself in any way. never tell me what i need to improve on. also fuck you

what i actually mean when i say i can’t handle criticism: my personality disorder makes it hard for me to distinguish between constructive criticism (because you wish to help me improve as a person) and a personal attack (because you are rejecting me). the possibility of rejection will often trigger an episode. i am very willing to work on my flaws and am trying to do so every day

[thatavoidantfeel]

That avoidant feel when you lowkey hope a friend will fuck up so that you'll have an excuse to avoid them

[starbvte-deactivated20161004]

stresses me tf out when someones like “dont expect me to message first all the time if you cared enough youd message first for once” like!!! i have avpd my guy!!!! no matter how much i care thats never gonna happen!!!

[neilljosten]

little avpd things: convincing yourself that you actually like being alone rather than confronting the fact that your avpd has ruined all of your relationships and that you are very very lonely

[schizoidprince]

tavpd/stpdfw not feeling like you fit in at all, that “hello” you said? too weird for them, youve already messed up, somehow

[avpdconcepts]

I can’t make new friends because they already have friends that they like better than me and have known longer so why would they need me they already have friends