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 struggling with this disorder or another like it.http://www.AvoidantPersonality.com

It has been a while since I have posted anything here. The main reason why I am returning now is that I was sent an email saying that I won an award. Can you believe that? Me, an award for my blog? The email came from this company called Blogging awards. Im flattered, but curious.

Anyway, on with some thoughts and updates for today.

I am about 2 months into my college life. I love college and I wish that I had started it years ago. But the reality is that I have not been ready until now. My marriage has been a mess for a long time. My personal life has been a mess for a long time. I fought with God for a long time. So, now is the only time in my life that I can say I was open and ready to receive God and what he has for me through college.

All the instructors at Boise Bible College are great. Though I did struggle quiet a bit with this one class. Mr Faber has been teaching for a long long time and knows what he wants. So living up to his expectations was very challenging. But hey, that’s college life, right?

Those of you that do follow my blog want to know (Hopefully) how my Avoidant personality has behaved itself in college. Well, I there is good news and there is not-so good news.

The good news is that I love college. I have learned more about God, who he is, why he did the things he did, in the last 2 months than I have in the last 30 years of going to Church.

The not so good news is that socialization has been difficult at best. Though I cant entirely pin that on the Avoidant personality. I work 40 to 60 hours a week still. Which means that as soon as class is over, I immediately come home to go to work. I work until 7 or 8 every night. Then the rest of the time is divided up among school work and family life. So I have little time to get to know my fellow students.

As I expected, its not too bad because most of my class mates are very young. So I don’t feel like Im totally inferior to them. But that feeling has not gone away. True to the nature of being an avoidant, I still do not pursue relationships. I know I probably come off as being stuck up, or knowing more than they do, or being more “Spiritual” than they are.

But I cant help that. I am none of the above. I think of myself like Paul thought of himself. I am the chief of sinners. I am probably one of the most unworthy people at Boise Bible College.

I have made a few friends since being at school, but it’s a huge struggle. I don’t understand why God does not take this thorn from my side. Im sure he has a good reason, but it still stinks that I have to live this way.

I find myself doing the same old things that I have struggled with all my life. I don’t participate in class like Id like to for fear that I will say the wrong thing. I fear that what I have to say will not be right and will be of no value to anyway.

I go to chapel and I am not free there either. I cant worship God like I want to out of fear that I will do it wrong. Im afraid that people will not except me or like me.

So, life goes on in college and Im doing well. But my Avoidant Personality has not changed a bit.

Whats up with that God???

Danger Will Robinson...Danger!!!

Its been a while since I have written in this blog. Not sure why. Perhaps I have been hoping that this problem would magically get better. But that is silly thinking isnt it? I have had this for my entire life. Why would it magically disappear? Well, I guess that is possible.

I have had things poof before. In fact, I cannot count the odd things that have happened in my life including physical things, that were there one day and then gone a day, or a few months later.

When I was a kid, I had Epilepsy. It was the mild kind. My doctor told me that my brain had a scratch on it. It jumped, like a broken record. When I grew up, I went to see another doctor to find out what was happening with me, as I was experiencing losses of time.

The doctor did an EEG and it came up clean. No sign on this scratch on my brain anymore. So weird things do happen in my life.

Now I am thinking that part or my issues are Depression related as well. Which came 1st, the chicken or the egg? Was the Depression caused by trying to deal with being an Avoidant? Or was the Avoidant caused by Depression?

I think the reason why I went into denial for so long, is that this is what us Christians do. We live in denial. As a Christian, we are taught that Jesus has provided our healing. So if we follow that logic; then to live as a Christian is to live a healed life. If I am not healed, then I must not be a Christian.

Yet I know that I am a Christian. But I am not healed of my being an Avoidant. How to I reconcile this?

The point is why have I been in denial? I convinced myself that since I am a Christian, I should be healed. I can live in denial for a little while, but sooner or later, reality is going to slap me back in the face. This is perhaps why we have so many Christian leaders that have fallen, and fallen hard.

Now I am not only dealing with by being an Avoidant, but also depression. My wife started me on Saint Johns Wart. Its supposed to be a natural way of enhancing ones mood (ie... dealing with depression)

No idea if it will work or not. Stay Tuned.

College starts in just a few weeks for me. I think it might be interesting to be a Depressed Christian with an Avoidant Personality that is studying the Bible at a Bible College.

There must be a book in there somewhere!




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

My mom and her battle

Its a little odd I think. My mom has her own battles she fights. I mainly take after my mom. She has a disease that she has had for about 30 years now. No doctor she has seen so far has any idea what it really is, much less how to treat it. She says that its Peripheral Neuropathy. I think that either there is more to it, or the doctors she has seen so far as wrong.

Please take a look at the blog I started on her fight. I'm going to get the blog to as many doctors as i can find in the hopes that some doc will have seen this before and will be able to offer my mom some hope and perhaps even a cure.

Blog for my moms's desease





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

It has been a while since I have written in my blog. College is a couple months away now. When I start in late August, I will probably be writing in here more often. It might be helpful to keep a journal of my challenges in College. I suspect that they will be many.

My first challenge is to figure out how to take notes in my classes. I have nerve damage in my hands, so I cannot write out notes. I am searching for a good computer program that can take dictation without needing to be trained for speech patterns. Since all my classes will be different, there will be no way to train the program to be able to understand all the different instructors voices.

Other than this, all seems to be going well for College. We are very excited to see what God does there. I admit though that I am nervous about it. It might be good though as my classes will probably be all to mostly kids. So I might have an advantage in that since I'm older, I wont fell so inferior.

At least that is my hope.


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

Surviving or overcoming?

I am an avoidant personality. Looking back on my life, I guess I always have been. I was probably born this way. It was probably genetic exacerbated by my upbringing and surroundings. I think that everything in my life was a set up to make my condition worse. But who set me up? I assume that it was Satan. It sounds like the old saying, ‘The devil made me do it.” While I don’t advocate taking things to this extreme and blaming every little thing on the Devil, it would seem that he is to blame for a lot.

I am a logically and technically minded person. I am always looking for reasons. Reasons why things happened, or did not happen. I don’t believe in coincidence. I look at my life like a huge jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces just have to fit together.

I could write a novel on all the things that have happened to me in my life that have seemed to be this set up. In fact, I am considering just that. I can see it all fairly clearly. At least as clear as anyone trapped in a physical body can. It seems that my life was written before I was even born. Of course God says this in His word. But did Satan know my life as well?

Perhaps he knew the potential and arranged things in my life to derail me from what God intended. At least this is my theory. When I was a child, I was full of fear. I remember cowering in the corner when no one was home afraid to even move until they got home.

Over the years, I have come a long way in over coming being an Avoidant. But its still there. Now, I can go to the mall and now be overwhelmed by the numbers of people there. I can be in groups of people and survive. Socialization for me is still very clumsy, but I manage as best I can.

I take a vitamin supplement that seems to help. They are expensive, but I would pay most any amount to feel some relief from my social ineptness. Now, I have enrolled in College. I start in the fall. I am scared. Even when I attended Youth With a Mission, I was an outcast. (YWAM is one of, if not the largest, Christian Missions organization in the world) I did not participate any more than I had too. I kept a low profile and never really did plug in as I should have.

I think of it much like any other fear. I refuse to let my fears master me. I will face them as best I can. So, off to college I go. I only hope and pray that God will help me in this. I need to be fully delivered from being an Avoidant. However, I have also thought of it like a thorn in my side. Paul had a thorn in his side that God refused to remove. We dont know what this thorn was, but it may have been something like this. God refused to remove it because he wanted Paul to stay dependent on him. If it was not for this thorn, Paul might start thinking that he was preaching out of his own strength.

God says that when we are weak, He is strong. What better weakness for a Pastor than to be an Avoidant Personality?

Challenges

Its been a little while since I posted here last. Im still not working yet. Though I am working on putting together a computer and internet business.

Right now, Im the chief cook and bottle washer at home. I take care of my daughter that is in Kidergarten. But Kindergarten at public school is only from 12:45 to 3:45. So I take care of her the rest of the time. I also have another kid that came along. His mom needed someone to take care of his as well. So I said I would.

Not sure what I was thiniking when I said that. Im not that much of a kid person anymore. Cept for my own of course. I find that I dont have the patience to handle them both. I even get short with my own at times. But its a little income right now and something to do.

Im looking forward to Boise Bible College in the fall. Though this is still very scary to me. The thought of being in a classroom setting every day, all day, with so many strangers is scary to me. Im hoping that the fact that most, if not all of them, will be much younger than me will help. Since I am older, this will give me a feeliing of superiority. Of course, I am no where near superiour. But since Im an avoidant, I need some sort of advantage.



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

Well, at least my thick head helps me not get hurt

When I was laid off last month, my wife and I had to make some descisions. I think that every time a life changing event like this happens, we need to stop, think and pray about it. There may be a very good reason why it happend. If we just react to it and dont stop to try to figure out why it happend, the same thing may happen again. And then again and again.

At least this is the way it has been in my life.

After I got laid off, I thought to myself....Déjà vu!!! This same pattern has happend in my life way too many times to be a coincidence or just bad luck. I have had countless jobs in my lifetime. Every time I get a job, it seems to be going pretty well. Then, out of nowhere, something happens.

In this last job, I was laid off after being with them for 2 years. Now you might think that things like this just happen. Businesses fall into financial problems and they have to lay fols off. Well, if this was an isolated incident, thats what I would think as well.

But Ive seen this pattern over and over and over in my life. Want a few examlpes? I managed a movie rental store called "Movie Gallery" for a while. All went well for several months. Then all the sudden, the corporate office decided that they wanted our store to rent some porn. They were going to have me set up our back room for it. I refused to let the stuff in the store, much less rent it. We were after all a family store, which saw lots and lots of kids. Long story short, they fired for my stand against porn.

I worked at HP for about 2 years. In fact, it was the job that God gave me when I left Texas to move to Idaho and marry my wonderful wife. I was laid off when HP started outsourcing Tech work to India.

I could go on and on with such examples from my life. Some might say that all these jobs ended from circumstances that just happened. Others might say that I should have got the message a long time ago. After all, Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over again expecting diferent results was the definition of insanity.

So after all these years, I finally woke up and smelled the perverbial roses. Or perhaps it was my loving wife that had to shove them up to my nose.

I think of stories in the Bible where a group of people was made to suffer because God's servent would not do what he was told. Remember that story of Jonah and the whale? The poor folks on that boat were about to die because Jonah was not doing what he was supposed to. There are other stories like this one as well. Stories where people were caused trouble to encourage a servent of God to do the right thing.

I feel like that.

Many years ago, God called me into the ministry. I severed for a while, then left it. Every since I left, Ive had lots and lots of trouble. Well,. I finally got the message and Im going to be attending Boise Bible College in the fall. After I graduate, I will go on to serve as a Pastor or in ministry in whatver capacity God calls me to.

As an Avoidant, I am scared. It will be the toughest challenge I have ever faced. The 1st obstatcle though is money. Since Im not working, I need to have all of school paid for.

Stay Tuned.



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