I think that I might have commitment issues. All I know for sure, is that after I've been in a relationship for a while, the one thing I enjoy doing more than anything else, is annoying the other person. I've tried to change.
A personality disorder has to be impacting your life in some negative way for it to be significant enough to get a diagnosis.
If it's not negatively impacting your life, then you probably don't have the disorder at all.
How we think affects how we behave. A personality disorder is called a 'disorder' for a reason.
Since you used AvPD as an example earlier... People with avoidant personality disorder often consider themselves to be socially inept or personally unappealing and avoid social interaction for fear of being ridiculed, humiliated, rejected, or disliked.
If you don't feel that way, then you very likely don't have AvPD.
The word subclinical is used. It's often used when a condition is inherited and you see similar traits in say the mother but she is leading a normal life. Still it's noteworthy to see that she has "something".
It's also used in other contexts to describe a pattern of behavior that doesn't meet up to a proper diagnosis.
I never knew the difference between low and high functioning disordered whatever, as I never cared to look. But from what I've just read on the internet, I think it's safe to say that I'm fairly high functioning in whatever it is.
I seem to have gone from low-ish to high-ish functioning as the years have passed.
My whatever doesn't impact my life at all, so I don't care for any kind of formal whatever diagnosis.
Wow. I find your post really insightful and self-aware.
"...I have self-selected myself into a certain kind of "society" that I fit into. Not deliberate, exactly, but what I like, and who I like to be around.Put me in some corporate job and I would go out of my mind, kill someone...or maybe just punch them ;) I've never really had a "real" job a la the white picket fence kind of thing, but I do well where I am. I def have issues w/ planning, foresight, being impulsive and many other things...def. makes for disorder in my life, but you (hopefully) learn how to cope."
This comment above is really evolved. You seem to really know yourself and create a life that works for you regardless of society's "measure of trad. success". I may be projecting a bit. I struggle with the corporate job vs. where I am most comfortable, which doesn't look as good on paper. My older bro is like me too that way.
Sometimes a "disorder" is just like seeing the world differently and not wanting to fit in.
;)
I've been "doing this" (figuring myself out....or call it having been "diagnosed") for a long time. Work in progress.
I don't actually know how well I know myself, but I do know that I didn't really choose to be this way. You're not projecting, I have a a really cool, interesting life in many ways. But I couldn't really "be" a different way. There is NO fucking way I could ever be in some corporate job, or even care what that looks like on paper. If traditional success means being super rich, nope, that's not me. Not yet anyway. I suck at things like bills, money, and/or giving a fuck about a lot of stuff - and for better or worse, many people too. I can write people off without thinking twice about it, but at same time I am able to connect very deeply with others. Context, again, maybe.
The recent "figuring out"...or I'll take "really insightful and self-aware" as a compliment...is trying to suss out why I can so easily "turn it on/turn it off", ie, traits that lead me here to this forum.
But you are right that disorder can be just seeing the world differently...but maybe though -->> and this is for you to delve into for yourself...just maybe...it is isn't about "not wanting to fit in", but rather...it is about really wanting to fit in, but you aren't in, or haven't found, that place yet. Think about that.