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This personality disorder is characterized by a person who is hypersensitive to potential rejection, has low self-esteem, is socially withdrawn, and is generally unwilling to enter social relationships unless there is assurancee of uncritical acceptance. We are born with a genetically determined temperament that will continually influence our behaviors throughout life. Understanding of personality disorders and how it affects your life is important -- increased awareness does not lead to radical change but rather to a smoothing of the rough edges and a greater ease of going with their natural flow. To either change or learn how to work with and around personality disorders will require large doses of honesty, hard work, humility, and courage.
You can change a great deal if you have the courage to go for it -- remember only thing to fear is fear itself.
Realize that you are catastrophizing and personalizing the difficulties, pitfalls, and humiliations of social intercourse.
The longer you put off facing the risk of embarrassment, the further behind you fall developmentally and the more impossible it feels ever to catch up to where you should be.
The less ambitious approach is simply to back off and take a rest when things feel too overwhelming.
Treatment goals should focus on decreasing resistance to change, goal development, improving social interaction, decrease avoidant behaviors, improve coping, cognitive restructuring, decrease sensitivity, develop appropriate affect and expression of emotions and improve self-esteem.
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