Today I was talking to my daughter and explaining to her what Avoidant Personality Disorder is and how it is normally developed in people who are shy as children and feel rejected by a parent. She told me she knew and that she felt exactly the same way. She told me she felt rejected by two parents.
Her dad left us when I was just 3 months pregnant so he was never in her life. It made me sad to think that she felt rejected by me as well, even though I could understand why. Our conversation made me think back through the years to when I was pregnant with her.
I was barely 17 when I became pregnant. Not once during my pregnancy did I ever think about aborting my baby or giving it up for adoption. I remember that I constantly thought about how wonderful it was going to be to finally have someone in my life to love and who would love me back unconditionally, someone who would always accept me for who I was and not judge me or make me feel like an outcast. I thought about holding it in my arms and rocking it and giving it all the love I felt inside my heart. I had felt so alone my whole life, felt rejected and unloved by my parents, judged by my siblings because I was so emotional and "different" than everyone else in my family. Here was this baby to love and love me back. I could hardly wait till it was born.
When I went into labour, there were slight complications and I remember the nurses kept putting the oxygen mask on my face. They had one arm strapped down with an intravenous needle in my arm. I am not sure why, maybe I was bleeding more that normal. The doctor had to tear me because her head was too large to come through. When she finally came out, they didn't hand her to me right away. They took her away to clean her up and when they finally put her in my arms, I was so high on the oxygen they were giving me, that I felt detached and all I remember thinking was that she had no hair.
After that they took her somewhere and put her in an incubator because she was jaundiced and I didn't get to hold her for 2 days.
When I brought my baby girl home, reality sank in and nothing was the way I had imagined it during my pregnancy. There was not the instant bonding and hours of cuddling and rocking I had anticipated during my pregnancy.
She was a collicky baby and she cried continually for hours on end, her face red, and her poor little tummy hard and extended, her legs stiffened. I would hold her and feed her a bottle, only to have her throw the whole thing up, crying again in hunger, so I would have to feed her all over. I remember walking with her at night while she screamed and stiffened in my arms. I remember laying her on her back and gently pushing her little legs up to her belly to try to relieve some of the pain she was feeling.
I finally went to the doctor who had delivered her and he was no help. He told me I was spoiling her and that I should stop picking her up and let her cry and that she would be fine. He didn't bother to look into any possible reasons for her discomfort. I knew I wasn't spoiling her. I felt so helpless and alone. I felt detached and depressed. When she was 3 months old I took her off the formula and started her on whole milk and the collic ended.
I remember the nights when she slept and how I would lay awake and listen for her breathing and how I would get up and put my hand on her chest till I felt her heart beat. Once I knew she was safe I could fall asleep. I remember taking pictures each and every month of her first year so I could record all the special moments and keep them in my memory. I remember the love that would swell up in my heart each time I looked at her beautiful face.
I can't remember all the early months and years clearly. I know that I loved her but she was not an easy child. She was high strung and demanding and because I suffered from severe chronic depression, it was difficult for me to pick her up every time she cried and screamed for my attention. I would often just sit there feeling detached. I remember crying a lot.
When she was 10 months old we moved from my parents home into a little mouse infested motel. I remember sitting on the steps and just crying and crying for hours on end, thinking about her dad, feeling all alone and lonely.When I looked at her my heart would swell with all the love I felt for her. Then she would whine or cry, demanding my attention, and I just felt detached and overwhelmed. I was so young and messed up and I had no idea how to give her what she needed.
When I wasn't crying or depressed, during the times when I was in my hyper manic state, I would go out drinking with friends and leave her with my parents or my sister to babysit.
I know my parents and my sister knew what a struggle it was for me, and they often told me I should give her up because they could see that I was not mature enough to deal with the hard parts of being a parent. My sister was 5 years older than me and was married with 2 children of her own. She had problems of her own with a husband who went out drinking and left her all alone with 2 small children. She came from the same family as I had and had the same miserable upbringing, so she had her own issues, and taking on another child was not something she could handle.
My sister and her husband were friends with a couple who could not have children of their own and who were looking to adopt. She put the idea to me that I should let them adopt Jennifer, my daughter. They had spent time with her and really wanted her for their own. Part of me knew it was best for her but a part of me didn't want to just give up. I couldn't bring myself to give her away. I knew inside that it was a selfish decision but I couldn't do it.
When she was 18 months old I married and became pregnant with a son.
I know from the time she was two to five years old, I continued to go through broken relationships, depression and emotional issues in my own life. Maybe I showed more affection or attention to my son, even though I didn't love or favour him more (contrary to my mother's accusations). He was just easier. Whereas she was demanding and cranky, he was calm and easy, always smiling, never crying. I don't remember that I especially picked him up more or went out of my way to show him affection, but where she would whine and demand, he would just gently come up and climb on my knee so that I had no choice but to hold him. If she had been the type of child that would just climb on my knee I could have shown her the attention she needed. But she wasn't a quiet child. She spent the first three months of her life curled up in pain from a collicky stomach and it was the only way she knew to be heard. I was just too immature and screwed up myself and, even though I felt love for her in my heart, I wasn't able to deal with the loud demands to get my attention and would recede inside myself.
When she was five, during one of my depressive modes, I sent her to live with my parents. I was still incapable of dealing with the emotional demands she put on me and the hardships of being a single parent. When she was six I moved back home to be with her but the emotional scars were deep by then. I always felt guilty and sorry but that could not change what we had gone through. We were never really close but I think things got better between us for the next few years. She got older and I matured a little and it wasn't so hard. She had a closer relationship with my mother and I guess she got the love from her she never felt from me. So thankfully she, at least, had that.
So this is why I say I should have given her up and mental people shouldn't have children. Because of my lifelong issues with depression and feelings of inadequacy, feelings of being unloved and unlovable, I turned my daughter into the same emotional, psychological wreck that I am.
If I had had the courage and selflessness to give her up to two parents who were mature enough to know what they wanted, and would have loved and cherished her and given her all the things she needed to grow into a happy child, she would have had a completely different life, been a completely different person. She might have been an emotionally balanced, stable person with the ability to have and keep a healthy relationship instead of this person who has spent her life trying to deal with the rejection of two parents.
I can't change things but I do love her and I'm sorry for how things turned out and how she feels. I am especially sorry for scarring her the way I was scarred.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to understand the parenting experiences of women with mental illness from the perspectives of mothers and case managers employed by the state department of mental health. METHODS: Six focus groups of mothers and five focus groups of case managers met to discuss the problems facing mothers with mental illness and to recommend solutions. Focus-group transcripts were coded and items grouped by themes in qualitative analyses to explore the conflicts mothers face in meeting the dual challenges of parenting and living with mental illness. RESULTS: Mothers and case managers identified sources of conflict in four thematic categories: the stigma of mental illness, day-to-day parenting, managing mental illness, and custody of and contact with children. CONCLUSIONS: Many of the issues of mothers with mental illness are generic to all parents; others are specific to the situation of living with mental illness. Mothers with mental illness must play a role in developing standards for clinical care and the research agenda in this area.....read more here
From the time I was very small I felt inferior to other people. I always felt, and still feel, that people don't like me. I have always been afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing for fear that others would see how ridiculous I am. I do ok in one on one conversations but rarely speak out in a group for fear of looking stupid and embarrassing myself.
When I was a child I remember that whenever anyone said anything nice to me, like I was pretty or smart, I would burst into tears as if I was completely in awe that someone could have such a high opinion of someone as insignificant as me.
Even now, in social situations, I feel uncomfortable around people, feeling inferior, feeling small and alone. I rarely initiate the conversation. Of course, because I am bipolar 2 and, if I happen to be in a hyper manic state, I can be quite witty and charming at times. But there is always that underlying fear of saying or doing something stupid.
Often, when I do speak to people, I feel ignored and it seems like, in many conversations, they talk over me and manipulate the conversation. In my mind, this is further proof of the unimportance and insignificance of anything I may have to say.
For a while last year, I lived with my son. He has a fairly active social life and would sometimes have friends in for dinner. I would mostly stay in my room, feeling unwelcome and like I would be intruding. If anyone spoke to me I felt they were just being polite. I would feel nervous and uncomfortable and hurry back to my room so they could get back to the conversations they were having before I invaded their space. I am sure no one else in the room was thinking anything negative about the fact I was there but, in my mind, I felt unwelcome and out of place.
Even at work I get my job done and get out, avoiding contact as much as possible, wondering what negative things they are thinking about my clothing or my hair or my teeth. Realistically, deep inside, I know that they are likely absorbed by their own lives and don't give me a thought, but that underlying feeling of inferiority is always there.
As I get older I spend more and more time in solitude and avoid any social or group situation because I feel so uncomfortable. These days my bipolar 2 is usually in the depressive state so, that in combination with with the APD, makes a pretty lonely secluded life.
Evolutionary psychology (the study of why behaviours evolve) explains in part the behaviour of those who suffer from APD. Our ancestors developed the ‘fight or flight’ response to things that they feared, and, as individuals with APD, at root, fear other people, they can become hostile to others (reflecting the ‘fight’ response), or do their best to avoid others (reflecting the ‘flight’ response). However, research suggests that ENVIRONMENTAL factors play a larger part in the development of APD than genetic factors (Millon and Everly)....read more.
I am laying here feeling like a complete moron. I started this blog a couple of days ago out of sheer excitement. I found out that there was actually a name for the way I was all my life. Suddenly thoughts and memories came flooding through my mind and I couldn't write them down fast enough.
After weeks of low grade depression from my bipolar 2, suddenly I am doing something again, feeling again, finding some kind of purpose. I must be in a hyper manic state because I was so excited at having an answer to the mystery of me that I actually shared my "exciting" news, the news that I am even more messed up than anyone ever knew. Wow everybody, I've got Avoidant Personality Disorder. Yahoo! Look at me! Now the whole family knows that I'm crazy.
What was I thinking? I can only imagine what they're saying. "Yep aunty Laurie, that whacky nut job, can't believe how excited she is about having a personality disorder". "Those guys in the white suits will be picking her up any day now taking her off to the padded cell in the loonie bin."
This is typical inferiority talk from someone with AvPD and sharing embarrassing stories is not something they do for fear of ridicule.
Damn bipolar hyper manic me couldn't keep her big mouth shut. Oh well it's done. I guess they'll think what they want. I can see it's going to be a roller coaster ride. Come along for the ride.
Dilusions, Hallucinations, and Psychosis
I remember as a small child that my dad had an aunt Dot. I remember hearing stories that she had delusions that she was being followed by the FBI or CIA.
My paternal grandma, who was also Dot's sister, and my dad's mom, also suffered from this psychosis in a milder form. I remember that she planted a hedge on the one side of her property because she thought the Dutch family across the gully were spying on her. Other than this one delusion she seemed quite normal. My grandma also had a brother who visited at times named Alfred. I remember that he often visited us and helped my dad build a house. He was a quiet man who never married. I don't know whether he suffered from any psychoses or delusions during these times but I remember once, when he was much older, that he was hallucinating that there were little people amongst the bean plants while we were out picking beans one day. I also remember a time when he told my dad that the people above him were sneaking into his apartment in the middle of the night and spilling glue all over his floor. He would scrub and scrub but, according to him, the glue would keep coming back each morning.
My grandma had another brother named Arnold who I never met. He had been alienated from the family long before I was born due to the theft of a family business or some such thing. Neither brother ever married. She also had 2 sisters. I met Dot on a few occasions during family dinners. Dot never married. There was another sister named Eleanor that I met once. She lived a few hundred miles away and was married with a family of her own. As far as I know she was fairly normal.
Kissing Cousins
I heard stories that my grandmother's parents use to beat their children or, at least the boys, with a 2x4 as punishment for the smallest things, or even for no reason at all, if they felt so inclined. It was my understanding that there was a marrying of cousins but I am not sure if the marriage was between my great grandparents or my great great grandparents. I don't know anything else about these 2 previous generations but something tells me that if they were beating their children with 2x4's just for the heck of it, they obviously suffered from some sort of mental illness, as well, that they ultimately passed down to the younger generations.
My grandmother had 3 children, Elmer (my dad), Lawrence and Leona Shirley. I don't know if there were any mental illnesses in this generation. They all appeared fairly normal to the outside world and none were diagnosed with any type of mental illness. My dad and Lawrence both married and had families but Shirley has remained single.
I know that Shirley had issues but I am not sure if they were caused by mental illness or just personality flaws. I remember that she and my dad were close and they often had heated discussions that made me believe she was bigoted. I believe she did suffer from frequent episodes of depression so she may have had a form of bipolar (again undiagnosed).
I know nothing about Lawrence but he appeared normal to me and the outside world. Perhaps my cousin can elaborate because she lived with him and saw the side of him that the rest of the world doesn't see.
I know from personal experience that my dad was very immature and was jealous of the love my mother had for her children. I also know that my parents argued constantly over the smallest thing. I remember my dad being a perfectionist while building our home and I remember tools and swear word flying when things didn't go the way he wanted.
My dad was one of those guys that was the life of the party, singing, playing the harmonica, telling jokes and making everyone laugh. Everyone seemed to love him.
Did he suffer from bipolar disorder?
Nobody knows, but the side he showed to his family was completely different. To his family (us) he was sullen and verbally abusive. He provoked my mother into arguments, was jealous of any friendships she formed with women in the neighbourhood till she just stopped socializing altogether, was jealous of the love she had for her children, showed very little, if any, affection to us. One particular thing that stands out in my mind from my childhood, was my dad's unwillingness to share with us. He would go to the store and buy a bag of candy, come home and show us the candy he had bought, put it in the cupboard, and proceed to tell us that he was going out for the evening. He would tell us that we had better not eat any of the candy and, that if any were missing, we would all get the belt. To me now, I think of this as a type of emotional abuse that was inflicted on us, as what children can resist a bag of candy, especially for a whole evening? Of course we would try to resist but would eventually sneak a few. The person that didn't lie, and actually admitted to taking a candy or two, got the strap. (To this day I cannot buy a bag of candy without eating the whole thing in one sitting).
All the goodness in him was given to friends, co-workers, and other relatives like one nephew in particular, and later to his grandchildren He saved his negative side for us. I remember once at the age of about 15, a young man that worked with my dad came up to me and said, "You're Elmer's daughter.Your dad is so great. He's such a nice man. All the guys love him". And I remember thinking he must be talking about someone else because that was not the man I saw every day.
So perhaps he suffered from some type of mental disorder like bipolar but was never diagnosed. When he was in a good mood I remember long drives, camping trips, lots of parties with friends and family & drive in movies. So life at home wasn't all bad. The bad stuff just sticks out in my mind and was the beginning of my own mental problems and all the insecurities and stigma that come with it.
- The exact cause of avoidant personality disorder is unknown.
- The disorder may be related to temperament and personality traits that are influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Specifically, various anxiety disorders in childhood and adolescence have been associated with a temperament characterized by behavioral inhibition, including features of being shy, fearful, and withdrawn in new situations.
- Genetic factors have been hypothesized to cause avoidant personality disorder and social phobia. A twin study of Norwegian young adults found a 35% genetic effect for avoidant personality disorder; most (83%) of these genes are also related to other personality disorders.
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Although the cause of Avoidant Personality disorder is unknown, in my case, I believe it was the emotional trauma caused from an emotionally unavailable father and an overprotective mother. Life at home was difficult for me. I was constantly traumatized by my parents arguing. I felt separate from my two older sisters and my younger brother. I felt out of place in my own family. The things and situations that upset me seemed to have no effect on them. I often felt that I was adopted and that this was not my family. I felt like an outcast and I remember that I avoided close contact with anyone in my family. When I was about 8 years old I remember that I rejected my mother. I think that was because of the feeling of rejection from my dad at a young age. Perhaps I rejected her as a protection from being rejected, once again, by someone I loved so much. I had always let her bathe me and brush my hair, rub my legs with ointment when I suffered from growing pains. Then I rejected all her attempts at affection. I don't think it was a gradual rejection. Although my memories of my childhood are very vague, it seems to me that the rejection was sudden and final. As I grew into my teen years and I had arguments with my mom, whenever she would say anything negative to me in anger, it was reinforcement to me of my unworthiness of love and proof that even my own mother couldn't love me.
When I was in elementary school, I never put my hand up in class. I was terrified of giving the wrong answer and being embarrassed and ridiculed by others. I remember all through elementary, sitting paralyzed when the teacher would ask a question in case he or she picked me for the answer. Even when I thought I knew the answer I wouldn't put my hand up. If the teacher did call on me to answer the question and I was forced to give an answer, I would put my hand in front of my face and cry silently into my hand out of sheer embarrassment. I knew all the kids could see that I was crying but I couldn't control it. I remember my grade 6 teacher, a man I admired greatly, would get impatient with me and make me stand in the hall until I could compose myself. Kids would often ask me why I cried and I didn't know why.
All these years later I finally get it.
Avoidant personality disorder is a clinical diagnosis based on history combined with direct behavioral observation and mental status examination. According to the DSM-IV-TR, criteria for diagnosis of avoidant personality disorder in adults are met when a patient exhibits 4 or more of the behaviors below. No formal modification has been made for children.
- Avoids occupational activities that involve significant interpersonal contact because of fears of criticism, disapproval, or rejection (For children, theDSM-IV-TR reference to occupational activities can apply to school. Children with avoidant personality disorder often have marked difficulty, especially with new classes, presentations in front of the class, and less-structured times such as recess or lunch.)...read more
You can go through your entire life, in my case 58 years, over half a century, and never hear a phrase or a term. Then suddenly you hear or read 3 little words and your whole life flashes in front of your eyes and you suddenly have an explanation for all the ways you acted or behaved that seemed abnormal to you or others. Suddenly you understand why you are different or react differently than most people. You read the explanation of what those words mean and you can almost pinpoint the exact moment your life changed. For me those words were, Avoidant Personality Disorder.
Avoidant personality disorder (AvPD), also known as anxious personality disorder, is a Cluster C personality disorder recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders handbook as afflicting persons when they display a pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, extreme sensitivity to negative evaluation, and avoidance of social interaction. Individuals afflicted with the disorder tend to describe themselves as ill at ease, anxious, lonely, and generally feel unwanted and isolated from others.Continue reading here...
When I was a very little girl, my dad worked away from home in logging camp. I was a very emotional child as well as being extremely shy and I remember loving my dad with everything I had. So I was always very happy when he came home because I thought he would return the love I so freely gave. Unfortunately my father was very emotionally unavailable to his children. So because of the rejection I felt, it scarred me emotionally. I remember one particular time when he had come home from logging camp. I tried to crawl up on his knee for a cuddle. He pushed me away and told me to get off. I remember screaming and crying hysterically that I hated him, my small heart shattered into a million pieces. I think that was the moment that everything changed for me.
People with avoidant personality disorder are preoccupied with their own shortcomings and form relationships with others only if they believe they will not be rejected. Loss and rejection are so painful that these individuals will choose to be lonely rather than risk trying to connect with others. They often view themselves with contempt, while showing an increased inability to identify traits within themselves which are generally considered as positive within their societies.Childhood emotional neglect—in particular, the rejection of a child by one or both parents—has been associated with an increased risk for the development of AvPD, as well as rejection by peers.
