Week 4 - Threat Assesment

When I started this blog, I had a couple goals in mind. #1 – Describe how the avoidant personality manifestx in my life. #2 – Describe what its like to live on a day to day (or week to week) basis with the disorder. My hope was that in writing all this down, perhaps I can learn how to cope better. Maybe I can learn something about how I work and perhaps others can learn how they work. Everyone if different, but I think for the most part, all Avoidants all work pretty much the same. The differences probably come when our unique personalities and personal make up interact with the disorder.

Whenever I am thrust into meeting a person, or people, or I’m put into any social or potential social situation, there is a very complex “Threat level Assessment” that I do. Weather I do this consciously or subconsciously, or a combination of the 2, I have no idea.

This assessment is extremely complex and takes up a great deal of energy. In computer speak, Id call it processing power. If my processing power, or energy level, in doing this Threat Level Assessment is expended, I freak out. Freaking out could take the form of having an anxiety attack, becoming physically ill, shutting down emotionally and even physically, and just plain unable to function.

Since I work with computers in tech support, I compare a lot of things to how a computer works. Putting this into computer terminology, expending my energy level would be like running out of system resources. Once your computer runs out of system resources, the computer becomes unstable. Unless the condition is corrected, the computer will shut down and will no longer function.

Putting that computer analogy back into how I function, the only way to correct a system failure is to be immediately taken out of the situation that caused the overload and wait for my body to calm down.

Whenever I meet a person, or persons, or I’m faced with a potential social situation, I immediately go into Threat Assessment Mode. In this mode, I must gather as much information as quickly as possible about the person, persons, situation, place or thing and come up with a very quick rating as to how much of a threat is posed.

Let me give a quick example of this before I go into the details of the Assessment Rating System. When I go to the mall, I’m faced with 100’s to 1000’s of people at the same exact time. My Threat Level Assessment kicks in. I’m scanning potentially 100’s of people that are within my range (area) in order to come up with my Threat Assessment as quickly as possible. For every single person in the mall, I must come up with as detailed as possible of an assessment of the potential threat they pose to me. So take a Single Person Assessment, which must be very detailed ( I will get to the rating system in a moment) and multiply that by the potential 100’s within my range at even give time. That assessment is dynamic. In other words, it’s constantly changing as people move in and out of my range and new ones come into my range as new folks come into the mall.

I may be scanning every one of these hundreds of people to come up an individual threat assessment rating, which must be resolved into a group threat assessment rating. Since the people inside my range is constantly changing, I’m constantly re-scanning, re-evaluating individual threat assessments, and coming up with a Group Threat Assessment. Then I must take into consideration the surroundings, my current emotional and physical state to come up with an Overall Threat Assessment.

All of this brain and emotional power takes huge amounts of energy and body resources. Is it any wonder that Avoidants avoid these situations like the plaque, and when forced into them, can even become physically ill? At the very least, an Avoidant can only keep up this level of processing power for a short period before shutting down, becoming ill, or running from the mall like a complete mad person.

The only reason I can put all this down on paper is because I’ve been in this situation many many times. Its only recently that I have figured out, at least for me, how it works.

Ok, next we move on to the Threat Level Assessment Rating System. This is the most complicated part and is probably much more complicated than even I can imagine. When I meet someone, or a group of someones, there is a very complicated process of ratings to determine how much of a threat that person, or persons, is to me.

This Ratings System will determine if I can relate at all to this person, or group of persons, or if I need to turn around and run as fast as I can in the other direction. The ratings system is huge and very complex. Since it is going to be very long, I am going to give it its on blog entry. So stay tuned and I hope to have this rating system up soon……………..










This is my log of my day to day issues with living to Avoidant Personality Disorder. My hope is that in writing this, it will help myself and perhaps others that are also srtuggling with this disorder or another like it.

http://www.AvoidantPersonality.com