Essay Example on Avoidance Personality Disorder

Many people find it hard interacting with other people as well as connecting with them. This is due to fear of rejection or fear of failing to meet the other people expect. An extreme case of this condition can be referred to ad avoidance personality disorder. Hence the clear definition of the disorder being the inability of a person to have any social comfort and avoidance of interpersonal contacts with others. The disorder is experienced by two people in every hundred-shy people. Most people refer to the disorder as extreme shyness. It is a psychiatric condition which is characterized by extreme social inhibitors, which means the interaction with other people is normally down to zero, it leads to the inadequate feeling of a patient and extreme sensitivity to rejection. One suffering from the disorder may avoid work activities which may result to them having to interact with other people (Denny et al., 2016). They also decline job offers due to the extreme fear of being criticized of asked the mode of work they operate on. They have extreme fear of disappointing the other people. The patient may also find themselves in situations where their self-esteem is highly affected as well due to the inadequate self-feeling.

The patients exhibit a number of symptoms which one can be used to sight the sickness. The fight of them being no friends due to their inability to interact with other people. The process of making friends involves them going out of their comfort zone and connect with other people which they are unable to do so. The other symptom involves hurt easily by criticism or any sort of disapproval getting them all broken down (Snir et al., 2017). This limits there exploration abilities since they fear being criticized or their attempts being disapproved. They also are very reluctant at interacting with other people. This leaves them being loners since this puts them in no self-assessing positions. Most of the disorder symptoms are interconnected, one avoids being involved in activities or occupations that get them into contact with other people. They also have exaggerated of potential difficulties. The patients are completely disconnected with intimate relationships. They normally feel unappealing to other people who affect their self-esteem. They feel more inferior and socially inept. The person has such a hard time trying out anything new since they have extremely scared of failing.

There are no clear causes of the disorder yet. No particular research has yet clearly pointed out the cause of the disorder although different sources believe that a genetic disorder or environmental factors such as parental rejection or peers may be the cause of the disorder. Different research has pointed out these could be the probable causes of the disorder (Koenigsberg et al., 2014). The fact that the disorder starts at a tender age some of the probable causes get disqualified although others remain. Although there are other cases where the disorder becomes evident on entering adolescence.

There are the different approach to treatment of the disorder starting with antidepressants medication which often is used to reduce sensitivity to rejection. Also, psychotherapy for particular behavior/cognitive approach has been reported to help in many cases. But a combination of both treatment has been seen more effective in many cases hence becoming the most recommendable treatment for the disorder. The disorder in extreme cases may result to violence as well as depression in other cases.

The disorder in some cases does not completely affect ones social skills. In some cases, the patients have some skills which the treatment builds on. With no treatment the disorder may result to a life of complete isolation (Weinbrecht et al., 2016). The fact that the patient can hardly share their situation this makes the disorder much worse. Early realization of shyness affecting a person's life it is important to seek medical advice.

References

Denny, B. T., Fan, J., Liu, X., Guerreri, S., Mayson, S. J., Rimsky, L., ... & Perez-Rodriguez, M. (2016). Brain structural anomalies in borderline and avoidant personality disorder patients and their associations with disorder-specific symptoms. Journal of affective disorders, 200, 266-274.

Koenigsberg, H. W., Denny, B. T., Fan, J., Liu, X., Guerreri, S., Mayson, S. J., ... & Siever, L. J. (2014). The neural correlates of anomalous habituation to negative emotional pictures in borderline and avoidant personality disorder patients. American Journal of Psychiatry, 171(1), 82-90.

Snir, A., Bar-Kalifa, E., Berenson, K. R., Downey, G., & Rafaeli, E. (2017). Affective instability as a clinical feature of avoidant personality disorder. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 8(4), 389.

Weinbrecht, A., Schulze, L., Boettcher, J., & Renneberg, B. (2016). Avoidant personality disorder: a current review. Current psychiatry reports, 18(3), 29.