Life for me is all about patterns and routine. I have learned what works and what does not work. I have had to learn these things. I think for an Avoidant, its critical to learn these things. Way more so than it is for a Normal person. It seems a bit, or maybe a lot, like RainMan. If you remember that movie, Rainman was a Savant. A Savant is a type of Autism.

To an Autistic person, life is a constant routine. Routine represents safety and comfort. Anything that is outside of this routine is danger and the unknown. If you recall in the movie, anytime something happened that was not a part of RainMan's normal daily routine, Rainman became extremely agitated and difficult.

It was only the routines in his life that provided him any sense of comfort and safety. Avoidants are not all that different. In order to survive life, people, and this world, we must develop ways to cope with our surroundings. These cooing mechanisms are critical to develop and maintain.

Even normals develop these, but in the life of an Avoidant, they are critical!

Over the course of my life, I have learned some of these patterns and ways of coping with things. For example, yesterday, was one of my not-so-good days. In the past, such a day would have taken me completely out. Now, I know what to look for and how to cope when these days happen.

In Addition to being an Avoidant, I have a bad diet. I eat no veggies at all and little to no fruits. Though I do love Strawberries. I have no idea if its the Avoidant, or the poor diet, or a combo of both that is the issue with this.

I probably need to back up just a bit. I searched for a long long time to try to find something that would help me with the Avoidant in me.

I segment my life in various pieces. Not unlike our calendar. We have BC (Before Christ) and AD (After Death). Non-Christian revisionists are trying to take God out of the picture by going with BCE (Before common Era) and CE (Common Era).

The divider in our history is Jesus.

In my life, I have the similar time periods. There is my life before my wife, then after my wife. Then there are other segments as well like "Before Pills" and "After Pills". My life before the pills was terrible. There would be days when I could not even get our of bed. Especially Mondays.

There was days when I was so depressed, that I wanted to chuck it all.

I tried many various pills. I even went to see a Chinese doctor once that told me the problem was due to my eating too much spicy food ( I love hot stuff). I tried many other things many of which I cannot even remember. One day, my wife suggested these vitamins. I do not know if she suggested these because of my diet or what.

I decided to give them a try. My wife calls them my Happy pills. Weather the diet, or the Avoidant, or both, they do the trick for me. They do not eliminate the Avoidant issues, of course, but I say that they Take the Edge off. Yesterday, I did not take them.

I found myself in a depression all day long. I should have jumped up and taken them as soon as I recognized this. But I did not. The main success that I have found is to recognize this pattern. When depression happens, I know that tomorrow is a new day. The next day, I take my pills and everything is different.

I have learned not to make any big decisions while in these depressed states. Every single time, without fail, the very next day, all is better. For example, yesterday, I wanted to end the Church, end Wednesdays Movie nights and just go back to a normal life.

I have made this mistake before. I just re-started ministry. A few weeks back, everything looked black. The Church was not getting anyone coming to it, the Avoidant services were not getting anyone responding, and it all just seemed futile. I had sunk into a depression. So I sent out an email saying that I was quitting ministry.

I had failed to recognize the pattern in my life and made a hasty decision. I hope that everyone will forgive me for giving in to depression.

These patterns in my life are that the following day would always be better. Even Jesus knew this. Not to say that Jesus suffered from being an Avoidant, but Jesus knew that we would suffer from this and other things. Lamentations 3 says that His mercy's will be new every morning.

So anytime I suffer from Depression, or anything else like this, I know to just wait till tomorrow. Because tomorrow is a new day and things will look better in that new day.













This is my log of my issues with living to Avoidant Personality Disorder. My hope is that in writing this, it will help myself and perhaps others that are also struggling with this disorder and others like it. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1tyKSgW-IeaK851gvIjjthije0kOwg3tZxVqKXSC1xXg/viewform I am trying to get more information on this disorder so that we can find commonalities. Perhaps if we can learn more about this, we can figure out how to combat it and get better lives for us all.