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Avoidant personality disorder 

Avoidant personality disorder is a relatively new diagnosis that has been described over the last few years. These people are characteristically shy, timid, fearful of social situations, very fearful of 

These are the people who just couldn’t get up in front of the class to

Not one of my problems, obviously - and in general do not like to get into strange social situations for fear that they may be humiliated or embarrassed in some way. Now when they are not with strangers, they are often warm and relate very well to close friends and family. Although they are avoidant and often stay more by themselves, they are not like the schizoid person in that they really want relationships with other people. It’s just that they are fearful and anxious about that. The co-morbidity of course is social phobia and other anxiety disorders, major depression, eating disorders, things of that type avoident

Dependent personality. People who are dependent, and interestingly there does seem to be more women who fit into this category and youngest children. If you were the baby of the family, that also makes you at a bit of a risk for this. There is the feeling that you can’t function without the help of other people. You have to get someone else’s okay before you make a decision about anything in life. There is a lot of clinging, and an expectation that someone else will take the responsibility and take care of you. That others are somehow more capable and generally have more ability than the person with the dependent personality does. The co-morbidity here is depression, particularly if the person on whom they are dependent abandons them for any reason, such as death or divorce or something of that type. These people are prone to some types of substance abuse, particularly 

They may have eating disorders, particularly overeating. In that sense they fit kind of the old analytic concept of the oral character. But there may be some slop over again with other personality disorders, such as the histrionic and avoidant.

Treatment