#our aspd makes some of our avpd symptoms not show up when we feel like we're in control over the people around us

[cluster-b-culture-is]

Questioning AsPD culture is fitting the DSM criteria but not relating to everybody else with it?? I guess I also don't check the box for no remorse or guilt (I still fit the criteria for that section tho) so maybe that's why?? I'm so confused??? Starting to wonder if I'm over exaggerating on accident or something.

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[fqirycollective]

How AVPD impacts us as a system

This is one of the posts we have planned. We also have how BPD affects us, but I thought this one may seem more insightful because other systems have posted how BPD affects them. (/lh) Reminder, these are only our experiences with AVPD. Yours may differ and that's completely valid.

What is AVPD?

AVPD is Avoidant Personality Disorder, not to be confused with ASPD (Antisocial Personality Disorder). It is characterized by a low self esteem, avoidance of social situations, few close friends, and a high fear of rejection. To name a few symptoms, of course. It is a disorder developed through environmental things such as trauma and genetics. Ours developed from trauma, which is one way it directly links to our system.

How does it affect us?

How doesn't it affect us? (/lh /hj) Let's see.. What to go into first? I'm going to start with the low self esteem. The low self esteem impacts how the trait holders seem themselves. (I mention them because I personally don't have many symptoms, but others do.) With their lowered self esteem, they are more likely to have more breakdowns of how they see themselves. Sometimes, these breakdowns get to the point where a soother can't calm them down and we either split new alters that will be able to soothe them or that alter fully splits into completely new alters. This heavily impacts our headcount. This can also be aided by not having as many friends. Some of them feel as though having few friends mean no one cares about them.

On to the avoidance of social situations. This isn't just social anxiety. With social anxiety, you're anxiety is purely in social situations. We often panic around social settings, or when we're forced into social situations such as a call. This is hard to describe as being different from social anxiety, but it is. I guess it's because we avoid them at all costs, if possible. We'll often stress split if there's a big social event coming up. It causes so much stress that we've actually had alters fuse with symptom holders in attempts to make them less stressed. You can probably see why this impacts us as a system. (/lh)

And finally, the high fear of rejection. This is probably one of the worst symptoms for us. Not only do we have a high fear of rejection in person, but when we're safe too. This goes anywhere from acting almost as a robot around people to avoiding everything possible to avoid a rejection that likely isn't coming. This includes avoiding our emotions. We avoid phone calls, any and all conflict, being the centre of attention, and like I said, even our emotions. This is where AVPD differs from social anxiety for us. In social anxiety, you may avoid everything to help your anxiety, but if you're alone, you likely won't avoid your emotions. We bottle everything up to avoid messing with them. It's almost like a thought of "If they see me showing emotions, they'll reject me." I know I keep saying we on this when before I was talking about symptom holders, but it's a thing we all do. So, we bottle all of our emotions up until we can't anymore and all of the emotions hit us like a landslide. This causes severe distress and oftentimes causes alters to be needed who can handle those emotions. So again, you can probably see why this impacts us as a system.