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Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

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Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen

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“If you’re avoidant, you need to be able to maintain some distance, either emotional or physical, from your partner and preserve a large degree of separateness. In order to be happy in a relationship, we need to find a way to communicate our attachment needs clearly.”

DistanceCommunicateSeparateAvoidantAttach
Book:Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love
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“In the beginning of their relationships, both short term and long term, the AVP seems to welcome assistance. As time progresses, they can see these same helpers as incompetent. This could be from a spouse helper to a therapist. When this occurs, passive–aggressive displays can be apparent, subsequent to distancing from a given relationship.”

AvoidantAvoidant AttachmentAvoidant Personality DisorderPassive Aggressive Behavior
Book:Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder
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“Hence, the significant other has little to no input on this process. It’s already been done. The dramas/traumas have already been enacted. Their own memories carry negative emotions, even if they are not able to remember the details of the memory.”

NegativityAvoidantAvoidant AttachmentAvoidant Personality Disorder
Book:Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder
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“We know that while AVP may be the least problematic of the personality disorders, it can have serious consequences in the lives of close family members, and particularly the significant other. Treatment can be initiated by an AVP, but often the focus is on other “symptoms,” such as failed relationships, anxiety, or depression. More often, treatment is initiated by the AVP’s significant other.”

TherapyAvoidantAvoidant AttachmentAvoidant Personality Disorder
Book:Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder
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“The spouse sees all the wonderful aspects embodied in these relationships, and the missing pieces in their own relationship with the AVP. This is how the spouse would prefer to be treated. This causes anxiety, confusion, frustration, and loss for the spouse. Coworkers, colleagues, employees experience different levels of the AVP. The AVP’s perfectionism is usually full blown on the job, where the AVPs are at their best”

AnxietyConfusionFrustrationAvoidantAvoidant AttachmentAvoidant Personality Disorder
Book:Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder
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“Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also has dissociative symptoms as an essential feature. PTSD has been classically seen as a biphasic disorder, with persons alternately experiencing phases of intrusion and numbing... [T]he intrusive phase is associated with recurrent and distressing recollections in thoughts or dreams and reliving the events in flashbacks. The avoidant/numbing phase is associated with efforts to avoid thoughts or feelings associated with the trauma, emotional constriction, and social withdrawal. This biphasic pattern is the result of dissociation; traumatic events are distanced and dissociated from usual conscious awareness in the numbing phase, only to return in the intrusive phase.”

PtsdNumbDissociationTraumatizedPosttraumatic Stress DisorderAvoidantTraumatic StressFlashbacksDissociatedIntrusive Thoughts
Book:Rebuilding Shattered Lives: Treating Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders
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