avoidant personality disorder

Avoidant personality disorder (AvPD), or anxious personality disorder, is a personality disorder characterized by excessive social anxiety and inhibition, fear of intimacy (despite an intense desire for it), severe feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, and an overreliance on avoidance of feared stimuli (e.g., self-imposed social isolation) as a maladaptive coping method. Those affected typically display a pattern of extreme sensitivity to negative evaluation and rejection, a belief that one is socially inept or personally unappealing to others, and avoidance of social interaction despite a strong desire for it. It appears to affect an approximately equal number of men and women.

People with AvPD often avoid social interaction for fear of being ridiculed, humiliated, rejected, or disliked. They typically avoid becoming involved with others unless they are certain they will not be rejected, and may also pre-emptively abandon relationships due to fear of a real or imagined risk of being rejected by the other party.