I always knew something was wrong with me. I knew I had depression even before I was diagnosed, but I also knew it wasn’t just depression, that it had to be something else too. I finally went to a psychologist yesterday because I was so tired of not knowing exactly what was wrong, so I really needed to know. I was told that I have depression co-occurring with AvPD. I had never heard of AvPD before, so as soon as I left my appointment I immediately starting researching the crap out of it. This is when I found out it affects 1-2% of the population. Wow. We’re definitely special in a way, aren’t we?

I have a lot of feelings towards my diagnosis. It feels good to finally know WHAT is wrong with me, but it also feels super terrible knowing that something IS wrong with me.

I isolate myself constantly. When I was in college, I was miserable. If I wasn’t in class or at work, I was in my dorm room lying in my bed. I always did my assignments from my dorm room, nowhere else. I’d really try to avoid people at all costs. I HATED when my roommate was in the room because I didn’t want to interact with anyone. I never went to any kind of events at school because #1 nothing really interested me, but #2 I really feared that I would look like an idiot going to stuff like that. Now that I think about it, AvPD might really be the reason I’m not going back to college. 

I also suffer from trichotillomania (hair pulling). This is another way I cope with my intense social anxiety. I’ve suffered from this since middle school and I feel like it’s part of the reason why I never had any friends, especially at that age. Along with me not being able to initiate conversation with anyone, nobody initiated it with me either because nobody wants to be friends with the weird girl who doesn’t have any eyelashes or eyebrows because she picks them out during class!! It’s really really difficult when you want to stop pulling your hair out, but the reason you do it is BECAUSE of the social situation you’re in that causes you anxiety, and I would be in that situation every day...it’s not as bad as it used to be, I used to have literally no eyebrows or eyelashes, but now they’ve all grown back and I just pull my head hair instead.

I literally don’t know how to make friends. I have zero social skills. I’ve grown up my whole childhood and teenage years without having friends. I just never know what to say to people, it sucks so bad. I have 1 friend now, and we’re not even as close as she thinks we are. I hold back a lot from her for the simple fact that I feel like she’ll judge the shit out of me and that she just really won’t care. I also really feel like I don’t know how to act around people. I hate when people say “just be yourself!” because ummm, it’s kinda impossible to do that when you don’t. know. how.

As much as I want to make friends and as much as I want to have close relationships with people, my lack of self-esteem and social skills prevents me from doing so. Tragic. 

I hope I get some kind of reply on this because I need to know that someone truly understands. Lol if you even read to this point which I doubt you did because honestly speaking, who truly cares? There’s so much more to it than this but this is the gist of it.