Zella-rose - Zella Rose

I’ll try and respond to this later, I do have Some Things! (but not enough time or spoons to spare, just now)

hey… do any of my fellow avpd-ers have advice on making yourself Do Things that you Really Need To Fucking Do (ie adult things like emails/phone calls) and, on that note, how to explain your avoidant tendencies to people esp authority figures so that you don’t sound like a lazy asshole

no idea if this is true, but it feels true

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela (via themindmovement)

Provence 

Sometimes people add the cutest nicest tags to one of my posts, and then I sit there giggling like a dork for entire minutes. I love you too, followers!

AvPD and healing self-esteem - tl;dr.

(Part of my ongoing series of posts on Avoidant Personality Disorder.)

AvPD disconnects you from others, from yourself, and from your feelings.

And that hurts. A lot.

It’s okay to try and fix it.

It’s okay to want to feel better.

And it’s okay to notice your feelings, even if they’re unpleasant.

When you feel judged on all sides, make a safe space for yourself. Find somewhere you can be totally alone and free of observation, like a private journal. Feel what it’s like to not have anyone looking over your shoulder -- maybe for the first time.

Explore your feelings. Get to know what you really think and want, when your opinion is the only one that matters.

When you can, be nice to yourself. Try giving yourself the benefit of the doubt.

Do things that feel good.

When you’re upset with yourself for messing up, consciously decide to look for things that you succeeded at instead. Make a list of wins.

Here’s how this relates to self-esteem.

When we describe what it feels like to have AvPD, it sounds like, “Everyone judges and hurts me.”

But people only have the power to decide how much we’re worth, because we aren’t taking charge of doing that ourselves.

When you reconnect with your feelings, create a judgment-free zone for yourself, and learn to treat yourself nicely, you’re giving value to yourself. You’re saying, “This matters. My feelings matter. I’m worth taking care of.”

Esteem means “favorable opinion or respect.” In the throes of AvPD, we survive on other people’s esteem for us -- it matters what they think, because that’s how we determine our self-worth. But when we shift to relying on self esteem, we can finally heal and begin to thrive.

When we give respect and value to ourselves, no one else can take it away.

And that’s why practicing self-care and self-kindness is so powerful and important.

(You can read more here, in the long version of this post.)

you don’t have to change your life overnight, but try to add good things to it each day.

Your purpose in life is not to love yourself but to love being yourself.

If you goal is to love yourself, then your focus is directed inward toward yourself, and you end up constantly watching yourself from the outside, disconnected, trying to summon the “correct” feelings towards yourself or fashion yourself into something you can approve of.

If your goal is to love being yourself, then your focus is directed outward towards life, on living and making decisions based on what brings you pleasure and fulfillment.

Be the subject, not the object. It doesn’t matter what you think of yourself. You are experiencing life. Life is not experiencing you.

If you’re struggling, here’s some words from Angry Prayers for Furious Survivors 

It’s really strange to be putting this stuff out there.

Actually, it’s strange to be compiling everything in my head about Getting Better and packing it into good old-fashioned text posts -- but also really, to be putting it out where people can read it.

Like, poster child of AvPD... (well, recovering poster child...) pulls out a bunch of really, incredibly super vulnerable stuff and sticks it on the internet for all to see

It’s kind of terrifying but also liberating? Like, maybe this stuff isn’t Just Me? Like ... maybe it’s actually relevant for other people? Or at least thought-provoking enough to be worth reading, even if it doesn’t apply.

(Also, this is literally the most attention I’ve ever gotten in my 3.5 years of tumblr. squeaks and hides)