#avpd success

[avoidantrecovery]

just zoomed with my professor to ask final questions about my oral exam and she told me she liked my work and that i had essentially already passed 🥰 she gave me pointers on how to best structure my defence/presentation, and the call went really well.

you guys have no idea how wracked i was ever since i handed in my thesis a couple of weeks ago. i was sure it was pure shit and it was not 🥹 it took me so long to complete this degree, but i can't actually believe i did it. i got my internship last fall and it's where i'm still working part-time, can you imagine?? like this is huge for me.

i still have to prepare for the oral exam, but other than that i'm done. if you had asked me if i would be able to do this two years ago, i would have said no lol. "nobody would take me as an old ass intern, i have nothing to offer, bla bla bla" (inner demons👹) and yet here we are!

maybe i can do other hard things too? 🤔💪🏾

[urfavhasavpd]

Vera Misham from Ace Attorney has avpd :)

Vera Misham from Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney has AvPD!

THANK YOU FOR THE SUBMISSION I AGREE SO MUCH I CANT DO THIS ......

[takemetodragonstone]

help. i ended up explaining wayy more because someone else asked and my voice did that horrible thing where it got all shaky because i was too excited and then the even more horrible quiet trail off because i decided nobody wanted to listen to what i was saying and then i ended with a “thanks for coming to my ted talk” that nobody laughed at 😭

just got the “wow how do you know so much about that??” question after actively trying to come across like i only knew a much smaller, casual, normal amount about the topic in question and had to do the awkward shrug “idk it’s just an interest” and act like i wasn’t burning up inside to reveal Everything i actually know about it all at once…

[olivianyx]

A FEW UPDATES ON MY JOURNEY 🎀

Sooooo there's still more I've manifested!

🎀 money, money, money, must be funny in a rich mans world~ lmaoo just more and more money everyday!

🎀 I stopped listening to subliminals for a while and I saw major results like my hair growing over an inch, my lashes getting longer and prettier, my weight going down, and I grew an inch again y'all 😭 I'm 173cm rn 😩 I wanna be tall as my boyfriend gojo hehe 🦋🦋 but not exactly tall as him but a lil shorter lol then I can't wear heels 😭 or my boy be looking like my son instead of my bf lmaoo

🎀 minimalist skincare products!

🎀 my skin tone lightening up a bit 🍃 like I didn't notice it until my family members and peers complimented me.

🎀 my grades going high again!

🎀 okay this one's a bit personal, but lemme get this straight. I mentioned in my last success story post that I got closer to crush... When in fact I wasn't even in love with her 😭 that was just admiration, not love. I realised my worth, and I stopped putting efforts, now the ship has sunk. She isn't bothered anymore, and me too since I was the only one obsessed. No offence but she wasn't worth my time. So I decided to spend it on satoru instead 🎀🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

🎀 my parents becoming more lenient nowadays 🙌

🎀 I've been getting more free foods and snacks! People love to hang out more with me! 🤍

🎀 my singing skills improving! I wanted to sound like lana, it's not exactly like hers but I'm getting there!

🎀 there's still more I'm just lazy to type lol

MY RESPAWN JOURNEY

So I haven't yet respawned yet since I'm too attached to this reality. I'm still scripting a custom dr that I wanna respawn and also my jjk dr too. So when I finish (idk myself when I'm gonna finish lol) I will surely respawn.

But don't worry! This account will be run by another consciousness that I replace. I know I manifested stuffs here, I enjoy and all, but deep deep down I realised that I never wanna be here. I belong to the lands somewhere far away, not in this city 😭 I'm just too attached to this reality that's making me feel guilty to leave.

I'm working on it tho. I mean I deserve everything, why would I feel guilty for having what I want, right? I've encountered the worst traumas and situations here, yet something inside me is telling me not to leave this reality, while also feeling that I don't deserve to be here, and somewhere better where I have everything I want.

I remember bawling my eyes out cus I don't wanna be here anymore, yet feeling guilty to leave. Everyone has a journey, so do I. I know this ain't gonna be longer and ik it's already done, I'll respawn once my script is done. Keeping this in my mind, I'm spending my last few days here being happy and I'm doing everything I want so I don't feel something irrelevant while I leave. I wanna leave this place in peace.

With that being said, y'all deserve everything too! Don't hold yourself back, sometimes the ego holds us back, but don't let it take control and keep going! You're the God of your reality. So why not take that chance and stop being lazy? I mean it's the life of your dreams and some of y'all aren't even putting 0.000000001% effort? It's not the physical effort but the mental work, everything is the mental work and you don't even need to lift a finger. I mean it's not that hard focusing on your 4d. I agree for some people that have mental health issues like adhd, aphantasia, anxiety, and all. Even I had them too! I had avpd, anxiety, low self esteem, depression, maladaptive daydreaming, and ptsd, but still I did it while staying with a toxic narcissistic family that cares only about themselves! They who were constantly nagging me every 5 mins, now are quiet and unbothered. Why? Because I changed the version of me who was thinking that they were toxic, and I assumed they were lenient, and now they are. Honey, it's not hard at all. You're making it hard for yourself. So just stop with the bullshit and go live your dream life!

- Olivia 🎀

[avpdvoidspace]

I feel more and more like avpd functions the opposide of social anxiety. The most potential a relationship is every going to have for me in my life is the first week. If I don't start feeling comfortable around a person pretty immediately after meeting them, it's never going to happen. There's so much potential in the small talk stage to get a vibe over whether I can feel safe around a person. If I don't feel that way at first, it's likely never going to happen. Probably part of the 'won't engage in relationships or activities without assurance of acceptance' thing. Like if it's not clear off the bat that you're going to be enthusiastically okay with me, no beans. I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I get the impression that people with social anxiety are more nervous around new people and as they get to know someone, they slowly get more comfortable. Not that there wouldn't be any discomfort in established relationships, but I'm sure it's not also like: I have to find ways to trick myself into opening up to my partner of 20+ years about something new (and relatively not a big deal probably) because I'm terrified of his reaction. The more I care about someone, the more frightening that relationship becomes, so there's a very narrow sweet spot of "I need acceptance immediately when I start to like you but before I start to care much about the success of our relationship" that means that most interactions I have with people will never go anywhere.

[avoidant-dreams]

having ADHD and AVPD is such a difficult combination

my avoidance doesn't want me to try anything or pursue things because i fear failure and then shame for putting myself out there again, so i do nothing and stay safe

then when my avoidance moves out of the way for a minute and i'm in a more positive headspace, my ADHD makes me procrastinate and just stuck on dreaming about things and never ever implementing steps to get towards the thing. my ADHD feels happy with the idea of things, like we feel success and joy from knowing we are interested in that thing and could pursue it, but then i do nothing to actually work towards it.

[trashbagcommunist]

I struggle a lot with feeling very useless as a communist because I'm a. severely agoraphobic and b. spending all of my time building skills that are not particularly useful. At the same time, I wonder if I'm just stuck in a capitalist mindset of needing to be useful, especially as a disabled person, and especially since my intense agoraphobia comes from neurodivergence (avpd, ocpd). I am terrified of interacting with people, because I'm convinced that my presence is going to harm them in some way. This is definitely a series of intrusive thoughts, a la ocpd, but it's such an overwhelming belief and I've had little success in combatting it. I guess I end up wondering--what can I actually do to collaborate in the fight for human liberation. And I just don't know. Aside from supporting the comrades immediately in my life, I just don't know.

[happyk44]

Thinking about that post I made about "would they acknowledge their PD is a thing and go to therapy about it" and, since I wrote it before I slapped Leo with AVPD, wanted to make one with him. As a reminder, my thoughts are:

Annabeth would probably go to therapy for something unrelated (depression/PTSD/whatever) but refuse to accept NPD or acknowledge that her behaviours associated with it are a problem and likely end up ditching her therapist as a result

Piper would not go to therapy or accept HPD as a suggestion from anyone because she does not see any of her behaviours as a problem and as long as she receives attention, she's fine, always forgetting quickly about all the times she's crashed or freaked out because she wasn't receiving attention

Clarisse would go to therapy specifically for her ASPD symptoms, is the only one officially diagnosed, and would actively work on it with the help of her therapist and loved ones

Percy would not go to therapy but would accept BPD as a suggestion from other people and try to work on it on his own/with help from people closest to him

So thinking about Leo and AVPD. I think he might go to therapy if forced by another person or if his problems surmounted too much for him to handle, even when isolating from other people. If AVPD was ever suggested to him as a possiblity, even outside of therapy, or just brought up, unrelated to him, by someone else, I think he'd immediately be like "I don't have that" because he perceives himself to be fun and outgoing, so he can't be avoidant of social contact. He loves social contact! But I think he's fairly introspective and so he'd notice patterns in his behaviors that align with the diagnostic criteria. Eventually he would recognize that he masks heavily to be perceived by others in direct opposition of how he feels internally.

So denial first then later acceptance. He might go to therapy sporadically for it, but ultimately tries to fix it by himself, growing frustrated because he's not a robot and he cannot rewire his own brain over night. He becomes hyperaware of his own self-destructive behaviours and grows even more agitated when watching himself engage in them. Which only feeds into his inferiority complex and self-loathing, which he knows and recognizes but is unable to really stop as it happens because, unlike Clarisse or Percy, he lacks the external support to handle it.

He can't drop the mask, no one will like him if he does (not that people like him very much with the mask), and he knows this line of thinking is part of the whole problem, but he can't do it, so he refuses to ask for help or tell anyone about it, so he never gets the external support he needs. Over time he has varying levels of success in stifling certain behaviours before they become harmful to him and others, but it doesn't always work.

Still he's distrusting of authority and doesn't like talking about his problems (like Percy) so going to therapy about it remains out of the question.

[notblue-bandit]

avpd feeling when nobody interacts with you and you think "damn i guess there really is smth wrong with me everybody was so put off by my presence today" but also "im so lonely i miss talking to and having successful interactions with people (the one singular person that i feel safe with) 😭😭"

[everbluem]

If it ever comes up, maybe I’ll tell my brother I have AvPD. He’s the only one who’s aware that it’s often how I’m spoken to and even if he sometimes jests about it, he knows I’m sensitive and get anxious. Sometimes I just get triggered and start crying and I can’t stop.

But nobody else. All they seem to think about is focusing on my lack of success and how I’m “weird,” that I’m not the perfect daughter they can brag about anymore. That talking about me makes them uncomfortable. (Hah, imagine living as me)

This isn’t something that can just go away, it’s who I am. But it especially wouldn’t go away with shaming and ridicule, I don’t understand why the message hasn’t gotten through.

Can you atleast wait until I’ve eaten first before being so mean to me, because not only am I hiding away and crying, I’m hiding away, crying, and hungry

[avpdcultureis]

avpd culture is seeing someone have a successful social interaction with other people and being like "how the fuck did they do that"

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[avoidantrecovery]

survived the office christmas party y’all ✌🏾

avpd who? 😌

(it was actually quite nice, everyone was kind and since i work remote i go finally meet some people in person whom i knew by name. i didn‘t need to be afraid.)

[miserynevermore]

As someone who struggles with mental illness and healing from my past traumas, as well as being completely broke. I've found that the best method for healing myself when I can't afford therapy, is to allow myself to feel my emotions, acknowledging the situation, and realizing how it has affected me.

Avpd shame driven flashes interrupting my day? I schedule an hour to sit down and feel the shame, acknowledge that it was embarrassing, soothe my heart, coo at myself saying yes that was embarrassing but you survived, you're so good. As though I am talking to a child or a pet.

I fully feel the emotion, the uncomfortable feeling, and picture each part of the interaction. I then change the narrative in my mind. (CBT)

The interviewer looked at me in amusement when I gave a naive answer? He's not mocking me or making fun of me anymore, no. He's looking at me with smiling soft eyes, admiring my innocence. I don't know if he was actually mocking me. My brain decided that based on what I saw and assumed. So I'm just going to change how I perceive that interaction.

I slowly do this everytime I go through difficulty. If I'm busy, I schedule it for the weekend. Ex/ this weekend I'm going to feel X emotion and cry about it for X amount of time.

I see more success when I combine this with

1. verbalizing what happened to me and my emotions surrounding it, either to friends, a therapist, in prayer, or even just recording myself and talking to my computer / audience of stuffed animals

2. writing or typing out my feelings, whichever I prefer in the moment

I repeat these coping mechanisms until I'm no longer upset by the situation.

In my experience, the time it takes to feel the emotions and process them will get faster and faster. Small instances of embarrassment take me 20 minutes to process now. Bigger things like processing my best friend of 20 years abandoning me took me three days. Now I'm able to talk about it like a funny story. It's been 3 weeks.

What are your techniques for processing your emotions?

[cosmossystem]

on separate spaces

(long post bc im a yapper & idk how to be brief)

this is just my opinion, but as someone in an osdd system, i feel like theres no real way to go "this only applies to disordered systems and non-disordered systems could never hope to understand it so get out of here because this is not by/about/for you" etc.

on a base level, i get why you would want to have different spaces to discuss your experience with the disorder and its symptoms. and i agree that we need those spaces. i WANT to talk about those things, and i do! but the "didosdd community"... does not do that. if they did, i dont think wed be having this conversation.

instead, its like theyre trying to make a space for themselves, but instead of founding it on shared experiences like they should (for instance: general plurality or how to deal with dissociation and the like), theyre founding it on the distress they go through (caused by their symptoms) and then acting like plurality is the reason for those symptoms, instead of just... treating it like separate issues. like sure, you might be plural because of your trauma, but your didosdd is your trauma response and why you have those symptoms, not the plurality in and of itself. there are non-systems who dissociate or who have amnesia, and the inverse is true. its a gray area.

but truthfully, they dont care for any of that. all they know is that theyre miserable, and they want to stay miserable.

not counting the autism (cuz its a special case), ive got two other major Big Bad disorders that make my life hell: ocd and avpd. and in all of these communities, i see the same exact thing every time. we never talk about how we can live life happily with these disorders or heal. i dont hear about ocd successes, or how someone overcame their avpd and carved a life out for themself. i hear about the struggles, and how it sucks, and the way it ruins your life.

because when you are REALLY deep into these disorders, you are pretty hopeless. i know and ive been there. the didosdd community likes to bond on their suffering, because suffering people attract other suffering people. its a cycle: the more you talk about suffering the worse you feel, and you look for comfort in other suffering people but no healing actually happens. they (didosdd) cant imagine a life without suffering-- and, important distinction: they mistake their plurality for the reason they suffer.

which, yes. you can suffer with plurality. it isnt all sunshine and rainbows. its hard! youre allowed to not like it or hate it even! but what im trying to say is that the point of therapy, generally, is to learn to live with your symptoms. mental illness cannot ever be fully healed, it is a product of your brain being abnormal, and no, even integration wont cure you. but they dont seem to get that? they think of themselves as fractured/broken/wrong somehow, their plurality is "proof" of that, and then cry about how awful didosdd is and 'why would someone ever want this?'

look, i get it. i HAVE didosdd. i know it sucks. i know its hard. its awful and i hate it. but i dont hate being plural. i dont hate my alters. we are more functional this way than we would be if we were a singlet. and, most importantly, being a system outside of your didosdd symptoms is important and valuable. your symptoms are just... the disorder itself. not the plurality. they just coexist.

because there will come a day very soon where our system no longer suffers from our symptoms to a degree that we will no longer fit under the didosdd criteria. because you can truly minimize those symptoms, function as a unit, and you wont need the label anymore. because didosdd is not "youre plural and it sucks". its "everything sucks, and youre plural in addition to it sucking". youll most likely still be plural, but it wont suck anymore.

and in all of my experiences with osdd/did/whatever we have--dissociation, a little amnesia, distress, all the works-- these are all things that non-disordered systems can have experience with. theres a ton of overlap. i dont feel like, on a fundamental level, theres really any huge difference between us (disordered) and them (non-).

yet the didosdd community seems to like to gatekeep those symptoms? which doesnt make sense either. ive never met a non-disordered system that didnt struggle in some way with a different mental illness, and those things i mentioned above are all really common symptoms of other disorders, like autism, adhd, personality disorders, (c)ptsd......

but most of all, i think a lot of didosdd systems tend to think of non-disordered systems --whether they (claim to) support them or not-- as this like, Magical Separate Thing with No Common Ground to them...?

like, you dont think endos had to go through a discovery period? you dont think theyve been judged or abused or outcast for their plurality? you dont think theyve ever struggled with switching, or communication, or headspace, or alter roles? you dont think theyve never felt invalid or unreal or like they were broken? hell, they probably feel that MORE than we (didosdd) do because of how you guys treat them!

and if the goal of having separate spaces was to talk about your symptoms and help each other cope with your stigmatized disorder (again: a very valid thing to do) like they claim to do... well, you certainly dont do that.

yall are too busy fighting over whos faking, and basing your existence on a disorder. and speaking from years of experience: basing your existence on a disorder makes for a very miserable life.

because, put it this way-- ive never met an endo/supporter that i didnt generally agree with and feel respected by. sure, i dont understand most of them, but the more they talk about their experiences the more i go "oh hey, we do that too! we arent so different after all." they listen to me. i listen to them. we help each other, and share advice on how to become functional units. we share the good and the bad. we understand we are more than a disorder. we are a community!

but on the other hand, i have met a lot of sysmeds who (as the name implies) think our existence is purely medical, reduce us down to our symptoms, and treat us like broken fragments instead of like actual living breathing people.

that isnt getting over your disorder, or learning to cope with it. thats forming an identity around your pain. and ive tried that and i nearly died from it, and im gonna tell you this: it doesnt fucking fix you. it doesnt make your symptoms better, it doesnt make you happy, it doesnt make you functional. it only makes you sad and bitter and suicidal. if you genuinely believe youre broken, then you are. and you will stay broken until you heal, which you cant do if youre surrounded by other miserable broken people.

respectability politics 101: society thinks youre broken for being plural. if you agree with them, there is no way to challenge the stigma of your disorder. you wont improve, or find people who accept you. they have no reason to-- after all, youre a freak, right? and youll stay the same. sad, bitter, broken.

[ina-nis]

Isn’t this a case of conflicting needs within a community?

People who need a space to vent and be negative (and feel, understandably, invalidated by “feel good” success stories and “try to see on the bright side” positive things) X People who need a space to share their victories and lift each other up through optimism (and find spaces where people constantly vent to be toxic and echo-chambers where dysfuctional behaviours just keep on being enabled and repeated).

People whose avoidance is manifested mainly through social/general anxiety X People whose avoidance is manifested through failure to connect.

People who feel lonely even in relationships X People who feel lonely because they don’t have relationships (because they’re too anxious) X People who feel lonely because they don’t have relationships (because they’re unable to connect on a deeper level).

Younger people who think their life is over without possibility for changing (because their current and past experiences don’t show good prospects for the future) X Older people who think their life is over without possibility for changing (because their lives up until then have been filled with pain and they eventually lost hope something good could happen).

And so on...

All of these worries are valid and reasonable, and are things that anyone with AvPD can experience even though it feels like they’re (sometimes) in polar opposites.

What makes things really, really hard, is that a lot of the treatments seems skewed to meet a certain pattern of behaviours, so this is why you’ll always see, for example, the “positive reframing” + ”social or general anxiety” + “no relationship (anxiety)” + “young” combo. Obviously, that’s not a rule but it’s hard to find any material that reads otherwise in a disorder already so understudied.

If you fall into all or some of these categories, you’ll have better chances of succeeding and achieving remission, regaining some of your functionality or control over your life. If you’re part of the others, you might be labeled “treatment resistant” or have problems with comorbidity, etc...

If the latter is the case, you don’t get the help you need because, apparently, no one knows how to help you. You become an outlier amidst others, supposedly, just like you.

Isn’t that ironic?

A few get help and do get better, thankfully; a few others aren’t so lucky. But that’s just how things are, isn’t it?

[cluster-c-pds-culture-is]

avpd (I think) culture is tentatively saying things on anon because you’re afraid of some sort of hypothetical backlash cutting you down but then when it’s taken well you’re like HEY IT’S ME I’M THE ANON! CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE I WAS THE ANONYMOUS TRENDSETTER WHO EVERYONE THOUGHT WAS FUNNY JUST SO YOU KNOW. so that you can retroactively attach that successful bid for validation to yourself and get a little boost. and if it flops? welllll it’s only an anon ask haha nbd (<- nervous laughter). it’s like when I used to hit save right before betting on the arena in oblivion and then go back to that save point every time I lost so I technically won every time

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