[Music]
Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Peter Serno.
I'm a personality disorder specialist
and a retired licensed psychotherapist.
I have retired my license in order to
focus more on education and writing. I
also had the privilege of being featured
as a personality disorder expert in the
Hulu series Ted Bundy Dialogue with the
devil. So if there are any people who
are interested in that type of docu
series, you can watch that on Hulu or
Disney Plus. Some of you who watch my
videos know that I tend to go a little
bit rogue, if you will, because I
challenge a lot of the popular but
misleading ideas in mental health about
what really causes personality
disorders. Before we begin, let me ask
one thing as always. Please keep the
comments respectful. These topics can
feel very personal and very raw. My goal
here isn't to label anyone or attack
anyone. It's to teach, to clarify, and
to give you a deeper picture of what
these disorders actually look like.
Today we are going to talk about
avoidant personality disorder. When
people hear avoidant, they sometimes
think about avoidant attachment or
social anxiety. But avoidant personality
disorder is neither of those. It belongs
to what's called cluster C, the anxious
and fearful cluster of personality
disorders. The most important
characteristic that avoidant
personalities lack is resilience. They
get knocked down by shame or rejection
and they stay down. Not only that, they
convince themselves that they are going
to be shamed or ridiculed. And so their
coping strategy is to avoid occasions of
this by withdrawal and isolation in
order to protect what they believe is
inevitable ridicule. To be diagnosed,
somebody has to show a persistent
pattern of social inhibition, feelings
of inadequacy, and hyper sensitivity to
criticism. In plain language, the
diagnostic criteria are as follows. They
avoid jobs or roles that involve a lot
of interpersonal contact, not because
they don't like people, but because they
are terrified of criticism. They rarely
get involved with others unless they are
certain of being liked or accepted.
Intimate relationships are often avoided
or kept shallow, not because intimacy
isn't wanted or desired, but because
they fear shame or ridicule. They are
preoccupied, sometimes constantly, with
the possibility of being criticized or
rejected. In new social situations, they
are visibly tense and inhibited,
convinced that they will come across as
inadequate or unlikable. Their view of
themselves is deeply negative. They
believe they are socially inept,
personally unappealing
and inferior and they avoid taking risks
or trying new activities because of fear
of embarrassment. This goes far beyond
shyness. The entire operating system of
an avoidant personality is built around
fear of humiliation. We can think of it
like this. When it comes to oneself, the
avoidant personality thinks I'm
inferior, unappealing, and defective.
When they think of others, they think
they are dangerous, critical, and ready
to humiliate me. They think of the world
as very scary and full of ridicule. And
so, their coping strategy is avoidance.
It's not that they don't want or desire
love, friendship, or connection. In
fact, many desperately want it. But the
fear of shame overpowers the longing for
closeness. So, they keep their world
very small. small circle of friends and
often family members that they feel very
safe with. Small risks, small goals.
They say no to opportunities, not
because they don't care, but because the
thought of public failure feels
catastrophic. Clinically and
relationally, avoidant personalities
often come off as shy, fragile, tense,
and overly sensitive. They might seem
like wall flowers or daydreamers. They
often deflect attention, rarely talk
about themselves, and are hypervigilant
to any sign of disapproval. Others may
respond with caretaking, pity, or
patience. But over time, some get
frustrated or even irritated because
avoidance seem to be constantly
retreating that eventually they stop
asking. And then tragically, the
avoidant personality uses the withdrawal
of others as proof of what they believed
all along that they are going to be
rejected or disapproved of. One of the
biggest points of confusion when
identifying an avoidant personality is
the difference between avoidant PD and
social anxiety disorder. These two
disorders can sort of look like one
another because with avoidant
personalities they have fear, avoidance
and discomfort and so do socially
anxious people. But the motivation and
the awareness are what makes these
distinct conditions. With social anxiety
disorder, the fear is about very
specific situations. Public speaking,
eating in front of others, being called
on in class are some examples. But
people with social anxiety actually know
that their fears are irrational. They
just can't switch them off. With
avoidant personality disorder, the
avoidance is global, not situational.
It's every domain of life that involves
people. And the fear is not experienced
by them as irrational. It's rationalized
and justified. The avoidant person
really believes that the world is that
cruel and rejecting of them. This is a
key point in understanding all
personality disorders. Anxiety disorders
are egoistonic. The person knows
something is wrong inside of themselves.
Personality disorders are egoonic.
The person believes that the problem
lies in the world, not in themselves.
That's why avoidant PD is so persistent.
The thinking feels like truth, not
distortion. I'd like to comment on
narcissistic personalities in this video
because narcissistic personality
disorder is one of the most talked about
disorders. I'd like to mention it in
relation to avoidant personality
disorder just to make some contrasts and
comparisons. Narcissists don't have low
self-esteem issues the way that avoidant
personalities do. Research shows that a
narcissist's self-esteem is indeed
fragile, but it's maintained through
antagonism and control of others.
Avoidance on the other hand genuinely
believe that they are unworthy. This
often gets attributed to narcissism but
that is incorrect. Avoidance do not
demand admiration. They actually assume
rejection. That's why avoidant
personalities retreat. Both are
personality disorders, but their
internal engine or operating system is
fundamentally different. Here's where I
want to challenge another misconception.
Many therapists were trained to say
avoidant personality must come from
childhood trauma, poor parenting, or
ineffective mirroring. But research,
behavioral genetics, twin studies,
neuroscience shows that's not quite
accurate. As behavioral geneticist
Robert Plowman says, what looks like a
parenting effect is often parents
responding to their children's genetic
differences. In other words, the
temperament comes first. The environment
interacts with it, but it doesn't create
it from nothing. Some avoidant
personalities had adversity, some
didn't. The common thread is a
biological vulnerability to shame,
self-doubt, and withdrawal. If you want
to capture the inner monologue of an
avoidant personality, it sounds a lot
like this. I am inadequate and I cannot
tolerate rejection. People will
criticize me, but I still desperately
want to belong. If life gets too
painful, I will just retreat into my
fantasies or solo activities. Their
thinking is colored by catastrophizing.
If I go or if I participate, I will be
humiliated beyond repair. It's also
colored by overgeneralization. If one
person rejected me, everybody will. I
usually don't make videos personal, but
here it matters. I have lived with
avoidant personality traits my entire
life. I remember begging to be
homeschooled, not because I didn't like
school, but because I was truly
convinced that every day I went to
school carried the risk of me being
humiliated in a way that I wouldn't
survive. I missed out on team activities,
activities,
relationships, friendships, and other
social opportunities because I had
already concluded the ending. Ridicule,
shame, rejection. Nothing needed to
happen. My brain and nervous system told
me it was inevitable. For years, I sat
in therapies that wanted me to revisit
my parents, my past, my teachers, my
quote unquote anxious attachment. Some
of it was interesting, but it didn't
change my life. What finally made sense
was the science that I had a temperament
wired for avoidance and that no amount
of rehashing old stories was going to
fix it. The only thing that I discovered
helped was practicing courage. Not
curing fear, practicing courage. Courage
is doing the thing while terrified. It's
going to the event while your chest is
on fire. It's writing the book even
though you know some readers are going
to hate it. It's showing up on YouTube
knowing there are going to be harsh
comments and doing it anyway. Two
fundamental shifts occurred in my life
that made this possible. Understanding
the true ideology of personality
pathology through formal education and
specializations in personality disorders
through some of the best trainers and
experts in the world. And my wife, she
is the one who encouraged me to start
sharing my work publicly. I resisted for
years because my avoidant wiring told me
that social media was a firing squad.
But my wife said, "Peter, you have
knowledge and training that people
desperately need. Don't keep it locked
away because of fear." She was right.
And I realized something very important.
If sharing the truth helps others, then
the noble thing is to do it even if it
terrifies me. Maybe especially if it
terrifies me. Courage is not about
feeling fearless. Courage is acting in
spite of fear because something larger
than fear like truth or service or
integrity matters more. That's why I
post videos like this. That's why I
write books. It isn't because the fear
is gone. Trust me. It's because I
believe helping others has to take
precedence over protecting myself from
criticism. Because avoidance are
collaborative and don't like living the
way they live their life. There is a bit
more success in treating this disorder.
But treatment doesn't mean endless
insight into the past. It means
installing the traits that are missing.
Resilience and courage. It means
exposure. It means practicing the very
behaviors your fears say are impossible.
It means tolerating imperfection.
Learning that rejection and criticism
are survivable and proving to yourself
over and over that the world is
dangerous, but it's not as dangerous as
your operating system insists it is.
Avoidant personalities do not need to
conquer fear. They need to walk with
fear and act anyway. We do not choose
our temperaments, but we do have choices
about what we practice and who we
practice being. Thank you for watching.
I'm Dr. Peter Serno. If you found this
video helpful, consider reading my
books, The Nature and Nurture of
Narcissism and Traumatic Cognitive
Dissonance, where I go deeper into the
science of personality disorders. Please
leave a respectful comment if this
resonated. Share this video with someone
who struggles with fear and withdrawal.
And if you want to keep learning, my
next video is going to be about
dependent personality disorder. Until
then, thanks for watching and I'll
