Avoidants gets a bad rap

I have dealt with having Avoidant Personality for a long long time. There are certain things that I know to aviod. These things are triggers to make things worse and cause flare ups. I know this, but my wife does not. She has learned a lot about me and deals with it very well.

But there are just some things that I fear she may never get or really understand. I cant really talk to her about it because she will just tell me to get over it. The famous last words that we Avoidants seem to hear all the time. "Just Get Over it"

Trust me, and us, if it was that easy, we would have done it years ago. But the reality is that we cant just Get Over It. This would be like telling an Orange to quit being an Orange. An orange cant quit being an orange. Its just not possible.

Its also not possible for us to just Get Over It. It just does not work that way. No more than someone with cancer can just will that they are not going to have cancer anymore. The benefit, if I can call it that, of having a physical illness is that people can see it and have sympathy for you.

If one does have cancer, this has physical symptoms that others can see. They then make certain allowances for it because they can see that the person with the cancer cant do certain things.

Unfortunately, when someone, like us, has a mental issue, it cannot be seen. There are no physical symptoms that others can grab ahold of and have empathy for. So when we have issues, they are often seen as something that should be able to be got over.

Such is the case with last night. I was all set for a normal evening of maybe some computer work, maybe some outside work, and some good TV watching. Then the people down the street messaged that they wanted to come talk to us. Our daughter and their daughter are good friends. They wanted to take our daughter with them on an overnight camping trip. They wanted to come talk to us about this in an attempt to convince us that it was ok.

The Avoidant in me does not like last minute surprises. And its even worse when the surprise is company. And worse still when the company wants to sell me something. Which in this case, they wanted to sell me that they could take my daughter on a camping trip. Then worse still when it involves wanting to take my daughter with them.

So, when the company came over, the Avoidant was prepared for battle. It was not going to behave or be nice or communicative. This is exactly what happened. And as expected, after the company left, my wife was not happy. She told me what I did wrong and had this scowl on her face that I could have been better.

I dared not try to tell her why as I did not want to be told to just Get Over it. So goes the life of an Avoidant that is married to a normal. I wish there was a way to help her understand more, but I am not sure there it. Its one of those things that until you have lived it. its just not possible to really understand.

To be fair, my wife does very well. She does try I know. But its just hard for her to really get it. Avoidants have no real physical symptoms, so there is nothing for her to see as an illness that she can feel sorry for and relate to. Sometimes I wish I did have cancer so that she could actually get it and feel sorry for me.











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.