Avoidant Personality Disorder Test
Dr. Thompson
Medically Reviewed by Dr. Thompson
April 24, 2024
Table of Contents
- What Is Avoidant Personality Disorder?
- Avoidant Personality Disorder Test
- Signs and Symptoms of Avoidant Personality Disorder
- Risk Factors for Avoidant Personality Disorder
- How is Avoidant Personality Disorder Diagnosed?
- How is Avoidant Personality Disorder Treated?
- Can Avoidant Personality Disorder Be Cured?
- Get Help For Avoidant Personality Today
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Do you find it difficult to be in social situations or experience enormous stress from interacting with others? This can stem from having developed an avoidant personality disorder. This can make even the simplest of interactions difficult to bear and greatly compromise your ability to be around family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. We recommend you take this avoidant personality disorder test and see what results you get. From there, you can discuss your answers with a treatment professional in order to determine if treatment is necessary.
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What Is Avoidant Personality Disorder?
An avoidant personality disorder is a mental health disorder that impacts a person’s ability to interact with others. The individual often is a shy child, and their shyness as they age is written off as just their personality. In actuality, they have an avoidant personality disorder that causes them to have extreme difficulty being around others. They are hypersensitive about how they are perceived and often assume they are being judged or criticized. This disorder impacts a person’s personal relationships and ability to function at school and work.
Avoidant Personality Disorder Test
Answer the following questions to the best of your knowledge. For each “yes,” add one point. For each “no,” add zero points. Rogge and Kirkland (2014) list seven criteria for Avoidant Personality Disorder. The person must exhibit at least four to meet the diagnostic threshold. This is a simple screening tool for BPD and is not meant to be a professional diagnosis. If you are experiencing an emergency call 911 immediately or consult your nearest physician. The criteria are:
- Do you avoid occupational activities involving significant interpersonal contact, due to fears of criticism, disapproval, or rejection?
- Are you unwilling to get involved with people unless certain of acceptance
- Do you show restraint within intimate relationships due to fears of shame or ridicule
- Are you preoccupied with fears of receiving criticism or rejection in social situations
- Are you inhibited in new interpersonal situations due to feelings of inadequacy
- Do you consider yourself as inferior to others, socially inept, or personally unappealing
- Are you unusually reluctant to take personal risks or to engage in any new activities because they may prove embarrassing
Signs and Symptoms of Avoidant Personality Disorder
It can be easy to write off symptoms of avoidant personality disorder as the person just being shy or being a homebody who prefers to keep to themselves. The avoidant personality disorder test helps people understand if this mental health disorder is present. They can also consult this list of common signs and symptoms of the disorder. They include:
- Feeling awkward in social situations
- Avoiding social situations
- Feeling inadequate about talking and interacting with others
- Fear of meeting new people or participating in a new activity
- Hypersensitive about being criticized, including imagining someone has criticized them
- Anticipating being rejected and sometimes misinterpreting someone as rejecting them
- Feeling shame because of not being more outgoing and confident socially
- Difficulty functioning in intimate relationships
- Avoid taking risks out of an assumption you will fail
- The assumption that people disapprove of you
Risk Factors for Avoidant Personality Disorder
There isn’t a specific cause for a person developing an avoidant personality disorder. Similar to other mental health disorders, genetics can play a part. When a family has a history of mental illness, it increases the likelihood that members of the family may also develop it. Additionally, someone may be impacted by environmental factors, including a difficult living situation, that results in an avoidant personality disorder.
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How is Avoidant Personality Disorder Diagnosed?
A diagnosis begins with talking to a physician qualified to make it. They may refer the person to a psychologist, psychiatrist, or other trained therapist to determine the state of their mental health. The clinician performs an avoidant personality disorder test and uses the results to help make a diagnosis. The person making the diagnosis will use the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as a guideline. The person being tested must meet a minimum of four of the behaviors listed for this mental health disorder in order to be diagnosed with it.
How is Avoidant Personality Disorder Treated?
Once someone receives a diagnosis of avoidant personality disorder, a mental health professional can design a program to help treat them. The extent to which this disorder impacts the person’s life will help determine which type of program they need. Therapeutic program choices include residential programs, which require the person to live in a homelike facility while receiving 24/7 care. Other people do well in outpatient treatment, which allows them to live at home and attend daytime therapy appointments.
Psychotherapy provides the backbone of treatment for avoidant personality disorder. Individual therapy allows a person to speak one-on-one with a therapist who is trained to be sensitive to their condition and tendency to misinterpret other people’s words. Individual therapy gives the person a private setting in which they can open up about their emotions and fears and challenge any erroneous assumptions that have become a habit. Many people make progress using cognitive behavioral therapy. It helps people manage their emotions, resolve conflict, and develop healthy coping skills.
Finally, medication can help improve a person’s symptoms. The treating clinician can make recommendations for using FDA-approved prescription medications that help a person reduce anxiety.
Can Avoidant Personality Disorder Be Cured?
The reality is that an avoidant personality disorder cannot be cured. In fact, several types of mental health disorders cannot be cured. However, that doesn’t mean that seeking treatment for them isn’t worth the effort. When someone receives treatment for their disorder, they can make great improvements. Attending therapy sessions can help a person learn to change some of their thinking and emotional patterns. This, in turn, helps them experience fewer symptoms of avoidant personality disorder.
Also, someone who does not seek treatment often finds their symptoms intensify and happen more often. When this happens, the individual may end up isolating so much that they compound their problems. Seeking treatment helps them avoid this and experience an easier time being social with others.
Get Help For Avoidant Personality Today
If you or someone you care about has an avoidant personality disorder and would like to get treatment for it, Arbor Wellness can help. We have residential and outpatient care programs that provide expert treatment for mental health disorders. Our staff knows how to bring out the inner strength in an individual and help them reframe how they see the world. We treat each person as the unique individual they are and help them learn to enjoy better mental health.
To find out more about how we can help you, visit our admissions page now. Our team is happy to talk to you about the results of taking our avoidant personality disorder test.
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