I think I have Avoidant Personality Disorder and my shitty GP called it a AvPD a 'label' that isn't worth giving people and shoved me off to a therapist instead of talking about it/referring me to a specialist to talk about a diagnosis.
Fuck the NHS
In the UK if my GP won't help, where should I go to talk about diagnoses for personality disorders? If there is anywhere
How do you feel having a diagnosis will help you?? What will it change?
You sound pretty entitled, and to a nearly meaningless diagnosis of all things. You should just submit to therapy, assuming the person he referred you to is any good.
Knowledge is power. And if I get the diagnosis I can get proper treatment.
I've explained the situation to a lot of people so I'm explaining it bluntly at this point but her demeanour when I saw her was pretty shitty, which is why I'm mad. I'm fine for therapy but I need to know.
you're better off without the diagnosis attached to your legal identity.
>i suffer from symptoms of avpd
and
>i have been officially medically diagnosed as having avpd
are functionally the same as far as your stated objective is concerned
I think maybe I misspoke.
I'm not assuming that I have AvPD, I think I do, but I don't know for sure, and I want to talk to a specialist so I can find out if I do have it so that if I do, I can get appropriate help. According to the internet appropriate treatment is a combination of medication and therapy. One or the other doesn't work well.
I've had problems possibly related to this since I was a young teenager and it's destroying my social and working life and I need it to stop.
If it's not AvPD and I'm just having a case of selection bias then that's cool, but I won't know until I've spoken to someone.
And I don't want to self-diagnose something like this and expect to be taken seriously for it.
I probably should have explained all this in the op but I was mad from the internet not having any answers.
>I don't want to self diagnose
>but I do want my version of a treatment plan from the start
How about you just follow your GPs instructions, go to a therapist and see them for a while
You can discuss getting meds there sometime or to transfer to a specialist if really needed
You might say fuck the NHS, but that NHS is trying to keep the costs down by not sending idiots like you straight to expensive as fuck specialists
If you were really that bad, GP would have send you there and if he made a mistake, therapist will send you there
A therapist can give you insight just like a PsyD or Psychiatrist can, though Psychiatrists have gone through more difficult schooling. What you really need, and you're right about this, is insight. But labels are not very important to what happens, just something you're craving atm.
>i'm suffering from symptoms of avpd
literally say that and go from there then. neither you nor the doc are gonna be under any illusion that you saying that holds diagnostic weight, you'll both implicitly understand you're using it as a jumping off point because it's conveniently packaged up all the shit that you're there to address into a quick and concise info delivery. s/he might still caution you against self-diagnosing even if you don't waver at all from approaching it with the mindset described above, because eh that's just what happens sometimes. i hear what you're saying, i promise. take what i'm trying to tell you into consideration k?
>You should just follow your GP's instructions
No, because my GP did not even listen to me. You're not understanding what I'm saying. We didn't even discuss AvPD. When I arrived I explained the situation and that I was worried I might have it. She assessed that I was not depressed. Okay. Irrelevant. Then she asked if I've considered exercise. I said no. Then she asked if I've spoken to a therapist. I said no. She asked if it'd help. I said maybe. She started talking about this therapist. As it was the reason for the appointment and she hadn't yet even mentioned the thing I tried to bring it back to AvPD by asking what she thought. She said something along the lines of "there's no point in putting a label like that on it" and brushed it off and sent me out with some questionnaire for this therapist. She didn't entertain the thought of AvPD. "Talk through it with this therapist and see what he thinks" would have been fine. "From what you've described I don't think you have it" would have been fine. All I wanted was for the question to have some kind of answer even if that answer was "I don't know but talk to this person" or "talk to this person and they'll tell you if you should talk to this person". She didn't ask a single question about the topic. She just said what she had to say to get me out of her room and that was it. My surgery has a reputation for being complete shit because it is. I asked a question that she didn't even try to answer and that's why I'm saying she's shit.
>idiots like you
kys
>if he made a mistake, therapist will send you there
That's literally all you needed to say from the start
I guess but it would just be helpful to have context is all. It's much easier to say "I have avoidant personality disorder" than it is to give a thesis on my problems. If I even have it.
I'll probably see the therapist either way, it's just an answer to the initial question I asked her would be nice.
the treatment is therapy either way, i don’t see any reason for you to be mad other than that someone told you “no” and you’re spoiled.
You have a very selective reading ability
i’m mentally healthy
>I guess
100%
but yeah your desire to have a diagnosis makes sense. just know it's not going to mean jack compared to a diagnosis of a real, that is to say concrete, disease.
this is important because professionals will disagree with each other based on their educational backgrounds, even if they're equally qualified. yet they're using the same dumbass crazy-bibble, so how qualified are they.
>i'm suffering from symptoms of avpd
That's the thing though, I don't know if I am. I want to get a professional's opinion before I go around saying things like that.
I am taking in what you're saying, and I appreciate it, but I just want to make sure I'm taking the right path before I go ahead with it. The doctor didn't seem to care beyond getting me out of her door so I wasn't confident that her advice would do me any good. The people calling me spoiled would agree if they saw the conversation.
Don't misinterpret my hesitation for deflection, I am grateful for any and all advice you guys throw at me.
How could having someone help you try more positive things in your life without running away from them be a negative path?
Your GP is not in a position at all to say anything about if you might have a mental illness, so they don't. They just think about where to send you
Because from what I've read of the disorder the appropriate treatment is a combination of anti-depressant medication and therapy, and one without the other is ineffective. If following the GPs advice would be a waste of time I'd rather not bother and instead somehow pursue an answer to the question I tried to ask her, even if that answer is no, that pursuit being what I was asking for in the op.
If the therapist would be able to refer me if he thinks the therapy isn't going to work and there's more going on then that's great. That's all I'd need to know. My understanding of a therapist is that they try to talk through your problems so if I'm wrong and they can do more that's all I need to know. I just got the strong impression that the question my gp was answering was not the one I was asking.
I know, The problem I have is that I strongly think she flippantly sent me to the wrong place so I'm trying to find out how to get to the right place. If it even is the wrong place. I don't even know anymore. I'm sleepy.
if the shoe fits we're stubborn asshats, lonely af, uncomfortable af around most people, very heavy emphasis on that "most", and neurotically uncertain and anxious about what objectively is just normal easymode social interaction. wrap a sense of self up in that. then guess what happens when you poke at it.
one way it can go: think yourself very shy. be no stranger to introspection. know you used to get overwhelmed remarkably easily but have gotten better about that, thank fuck. don't know you *haven't* gotten better about it, you've only gotten better about avoiding getting into situations where it's more likely to happen. find this out in the most definitive way imaginable. snowball in that state for a couple years. finally, FINALLY get begged pushed poked prodded threatened and terrified into reaching out to Someone and have your "halp pls how get back to normal" be met with the suggestion that this may now in fact be your new normal from some (ultimately thankfully) feckless jagoff.
another way it can go: be struggling with whatever socially and getting overwhelmed by stuff. probably realise you're not just shy and introverted and a bit of a homebody but that you actively avoid a lot of stuff because it stresses you out way more than it should. arrive in whatever way at this psychological thing that seems to describe you and has a name and thus presumably ways to be treated. feel relieved/excited/whatever to finally know wtf to do to unfuck yourself. make dr appt. perhaps first shred of optimism in years crushed when professional dismisses and brushes off the answer you'd thought you found at last.
or: any/every other way of cannonballing the dot of hope in what's become a remarkably fragile worldview held by a person wracked with paralysing doubt fear and uncertainty they don't know how to cope with yet and haven't yet got the tools to overcome.
angered, wounded defiance will be the result 10/10 times
frankly i wouldn't get attached to it even if this therapist were to insist it applies but that's just me. either way talk to the guy, tell him what's been going on in whatever manner you feel most comfortable clearly expressing it, and see what he recommends you do to get yourself back to a place that's good and steady and allows you to move forward.
OP here, do you have AVPD? How did you find out?
What you've just said struck so close to home you have no idea. But I don't know if I'm talking from a standpoint of normal social anxiety or someone with the disorder. But avoiding social situations of pretty much any kind out of fear of making an ass of myself has become such a default for my brain that I don't even have to consider whether or not I want to go to them anymore. I'm invited out and I don't even entertain the idea of going, my brain just defaults to 'no, make an excuse'. Same goes for any kind of situation where I have to deal with normal society or the outside world. I just want to stay in my room and rot where it's safe even though I know I'll never be happy that way but I can't stop. Ech.
I totally get you, but I just feel like the context of knowing I have it will be such a huge relief for me. Maybe I'm just grabbing at straws but idk. I've decided I will see the therapist either way though if I can gather the courage. Thanks man.