Avoiding personality disorder: causes, symptoms and treatment

Avoiding personality disorder is known to science as "evasive." Up to one percent of the entire adult population of the planet are affected by this pathology. The greatest attention is paid to its study by American medicine. If a patient is addicted to anxiety, agoraphobia, social phobia, one can suspect that he has avoidance of personality disorder. These terms denote the fear of open spaces and interactions with people.

Avoiding personality disorder: symptoms

For people who are characterized by this mental disorder, the following features are characteristic:

• Extreme shyness;
• Heightened sensitivity to criticism of society or to a situation of refusal;
• low self-esteem;
• Feeling of own inferiority;
• The desire for close relationships with surrounding people, which is impeded by the complexity of creating attachments, relationships (a possible exception is close relatives, but often problems are even observed with relationships within the family);
• The patient with IRL seeks to exclude interaction in social sphere whenever possible, and this concerns not only casual acquaintances, but also necessary working contacts or, say, communication in school, university.

Psychotherapy as a method of help

If a person is supposed to avoid an individual personality disorder, symptoms of pathology are usually compensated by psychotherapeutic practices. It should be taken into account that patients are usually fearful and are extremely shy, therefore the simplest social interactions are difficult for them. Communication within the society for such people is a serious obstacle. As a consequence, it is impossible to resort to one of the most effective methods of modern psychotherapy - group interaction.

Avoiding anxious personality disorder can be treated by resorting to the theory of a cognitive-behavioral group. This is due to the fact that the methodology is well manifested in working with shy people. It is aimed at developing new social skills and abilities, which has a significant impact on human behavior, simplifying its functioning as an element of society.

And what about the drugs?

Traditional medicine suggests that virtually any mental illness can be treated with medicines. Nevertheless, the evading personality disorder is recommended to be treated, possibly postponing the stage of taking medications.

In general, medicines show a good result, due to which they are used often. But the help on the part of the preparations is only temporary, is associated with numerous side effects, persists, while the course lasts, and is addictive.

How to identify?

Mental personality disorder is usually noticeable even with the naked eye. A person is literally "fixated" on their shortcomings, thinks about them too much, often raises this topic in conversation. At the same time, such an individual seeks to avoid interaction with other people whenever possible and only comes into contact when he subconsciously feels confident that he will not be rejected.

Rejection, any loss in mental disorders is so painful that it is preferable for a patient to remain alone, rather than risk his unstable state, trying to build contact with others.

Symptomatic of the disease

Mental personality disorder can be diagnosed by the following symptoms:

• Strong desire for close relationships with other people, which is prevented by excessive shyness;
• The desire to exclude any physical contact as much as possible;
• Dislike, self-disgust, disgust;
• Distrustfulness;
• Self-isolation, the desire to completely exclude relations with society (hikikomori);
• Shyness, modesty, reaching to the extreme;
• The sense of belonging to people of "second class", "lower level";
• Inability to work normally, accumulate professionalism, improve;
• Increased self-criticism, primarily in matters of social interactions;
• Shyness, embarrassment;
• loneliness;
• Conscious exclusion of intimate relationships;
• Dependence (mental, chemical).

Information is still not enough

As part of determining the presence of the disease, a personality disorder test is conducted. Since the disease was isolated by doctors as an independent relatively recently, methods of diagnosis and treatment are still under development. Most of the techniques used today are experimental technologies.

Emotional personality disorder is in many ways close to psychopathy (specifically - to the sensitive subspecies). According to the current classification in Russia, such a disease and today do not consider it necessary to allocate as an independent, but only refer it to a schizoid personality disorder, rank as asthenic. Much will depend on the attending physician and his own views on medicine, psychiatry.

Until now, no clear account is taken of people suffering from this type of personality disorder. There is no information about the prevalence of the disease, nor about its dependence on sex. It can not be said whether multiple personality disorder is associated with a genetic predisposition, whether it is inherited. You can only say that people who later diagnose the disease are shy from early childhood.

Pathology is not dangerous to others ...

If the test for personality disorder has shown the presence of the disease, we can say that the diagnosis is made. It is noted that in everyday life a person who has been diagnosed with pathology behaves in a way that his inferiority complex is noticeable to surrounding people.

As a rule, patients are introverts. This is largely due to too low self-esteem. At the same time, patients are not asocial individuals, and they have a strong desire to have normal social contacts. The problem is that the entry into the relationship with the surrounding people for the patients is real only when they are sure of a positive acceptance that they will not be criticized. As a rule, the requirements of guarantees are so overstated that their implementation becomes unrealistic.

... but extremely problematic for the patient

Multiple personality disorder affects a person so much that he constantly feels that society rejects him. As a rule, the patient has an idealized idea of how to be treated in society. As soon as reality disagrees with this idea, as a person flies in fear, "closes into a shell", withdraws into itself, fences itself off.

It is fear - the leading factor in the formation of communicative behavior. Patients usually:

• Constrained;
• Are unsure of themselves;
• Modest beyond measure;
• Unnatural;
• Are demonstrative in their avoidance of society;
• Petition to humiliation.

This behavior is due to the fact that the patients are sure beforehand that the society will reject them, and try to take measures in advance, so that "it does not hurt so much".

Perception of the world is distorted

If there is a person in your life who has avoided personality disorder, the reasons for communicating with him may be very different, but the continuation of contact is possible only with a clear awareness of one fact: these people exaggerate the negative perception of others and distort the social interactions and appraisal of society.

For patients with this type of personality disorder, very weak communication skills are usually characteristic. This provokes incompetence, awkwardness in various situations, familiar to those who feel in society, like a fish in the water. Because of this, patients are perceived by the people around them cautiously, and often they are repelled, which only strengthens the gloomy assumptions about what can be expected from other people.

Development is disappointing

Over time, avoiding personality disorder becomes the cause not only of negative expectations from communication between people, but also in general from life. Man begins to exaggerate everyday dangers. He faces serious internal contradictions, if necessary, to turn to someone. If it is necessary to speak in front of the public, horror rushes, which it is impossible to cope with without medicines.

In a career, a person who avoids personality disorder can not achieve anything, since no one trusts him in responsible positions. These people are almost invisible to others, and the distinctive feature of their behavior is the helpfulness that provokes society to use patients without any impact. Patients with this type of personality disorder in most cases do not have friends, can not build a trusting relationship.

Visiting a doctor

For the first time, having found a psychologist, psychotherapist or psychiatrist, patients can behave quite unpredictably, but they all have the same goal - to please the doctor. At the same time, one can clearly see by eye that often people are in very strong tension, which increases, if there is a suggestion that the sick physician "does not like".

Many of them say that they are afraid of ridicule on the part of the surrounding people and are afraid that they will start to dissolve gossip, and therefore shut themselves off from the society. In this aspect, all patients are highly suspicious. But when they try to explain something to them, they perceive the information "with bayonets", immediately assessing it as criticism.

Is a mental disorder for life a sentence?

At the modern level of development of medicine in general and psychotherapy, psychiatry in particular, there are not so many methods of eliminating mental development disorders. Similarly, the situation is also the case when an avoiding personality disorder has been diagnosed. Treatment rarely shows real effectiveness for a long time without constant therapy (drug, psychological).

At the same time, the manifestations of the disease are largely related to the social niche that a person belongs to. The happiest can be called those who were fortunate enough to successfully marry a person who corresponds to the idea of the ideal. In this case, the relationship becomes stable, both people accept each other with all the positive qualities and disadvantages, but social interactions are closed to the family and it ends.

As soon as social support collapses, a person literally "falls into the internal swamp": suffers from depression, anxiety, he has a dysphoric symptomatology.

Differential diagnosis

The difficulty in determining the personality disorder is that the manifestations of the ailment are similar to those observed in the following diseases:

• Schizoid disorder;
• Anxiety disorder.

In the first case, the patient seeks to be alone as long as possible. Also doctors allocate so-called matte affect. But in the case of an alarming personality disorder, people tend to communicate, but they can not afford it because of a haunting fear and constant insecurity.

All described species have much in common in the clinical picture. The most intimate are the anxious type and the dependent one, but if in the first case the cause of fears lies precisely in the stage of establishing contact, then the people of the second group are afraid of parting.

Modern medicine sets itself the task of identifying clear, definite signs of each of the known types of personality disorders so that an unmistakable diagnosis can be established.

Similar manifestations are also characteristic of hysterical, borderline patients. But people of these types are prone to manipulation and irritable, their behavior is often impossible to predict. To determine whether the disease belongs to an anxious type, or to a subspecies bordering on it, is very problematic, as well as in the case of the distinction between schizophrenia and schizotypy. Nevertheless, it is important to determine the most effective therapy in each case.

What can help?

Choosing the optimal treatment option, doctors form an integral model of behavior, on the basis of which a program is formed that takes into account the individual characteristics of the patient. At the same time, attention is paid to such components:

• Cognitive;
• Behavioral;
• Psychodynamic.

The most significant stage of treatment is when the personal changes achieved during treatment are fixed. It is important that a person begins to apply the acquired skills outside of the simulated situations in the hospital, in real life. However, here it is impossible to predict the development of the situation, since much depends on the environment of the patient. A small failure can cause repeated damage to self-esteem, which further worsens the situation. In this case, all the achieved success is immediately reduced to naught. But the success of social interaction activates the cyclical process of self-affirmation, with each new coil leading a person to a new stage of self-awareness and self-confidence.