People with Avoidant personalities withdraw from the world of interpersonal relationships. You have seen that schizoids do also. The difference is schizoids withdraw with indifference and avoidant personality types withdraw with anxiety. Avoidants need closeness and affection; schizoid personality types don’t (interpersonally, that is. It is much more complicated). Avoidant personality types fear criticism and rejection; schizoids don’t.

Fear of evaluation marks the avoidant personality. Restriction of occupational activity is their defense. The avoidant demonstrates a pervasive pattern of social inhibition and feelings of inadequacy. In interpersonal relationships they show restraint because of the fear of being shamed or ridiculed. They view themselves as socially inept, personally unappealing, or inferior to others. They are also reluctant to take personal risks or new activities because they might be embarrassed. In the normal range, a person with an avoidant personality structure will be a very private person. They don’t share their thoughts and activities readily. They prefer to work alone, or in small trusting groups. Once they feel interpersonally safe in a group they will open up, become friendly, and cooperate with the team. You can already see that the avoidant personality does not fit well with modern flexible teams where groups of staff come together for specific projects and then move on to another when the work is done.

Another hallmark of the avoidant personality is the reliance on fantasy and imagination as a means to replace anxiety-arousing thoughts of inferiority.

The avoidant personality fits well in small cliques that use gossip to fortify interpersonal cohesiveness. They tend to idealize their friends in the group, however, when they are threatened with rejection or criticism, they turn around and undermine their own group to reestablish distance and reduce anxiety.

Like everyone, they suffer from self-fulfillment of their own avoided issues. As a result, they often report feelings of shame, humiliation, and not being understood. Generally, their own anxiety about being accepted and close is pre-consciously noticed through transference by others who counter-transfer a rejection of the anxiety causing the avoidant to feel rejected. The harder they try to be close, the more they are rejected. Of course, they don’t know it is the anxiety that is being rejected, not them.

The prevalent experience avoidant personality structured individual experience as children is intense or frequent parental rejection typically associated with the failure to support a family social image. The parents may have high social standards and belittle the child for the smallest mistakes. They are socialized to perform adequately without causing embarrassment or humiliation. As a result, they anticipate rejection and socially isolate themselves for protection. Sometimes, atypical development will prompt disappointment from the parents. These perceived parental attitudes are internalized as injunctions and cognitively stand guard over the normal desires for intimacy in interpersonal relations convincing the avoidant--after pausing briefly from constant belittling of small mistakes--that intimacy ends with pain and disappointment.

Any type of employment that provides small group interaction fits well with the avoidant personality type of employee. Their propensity for fantasy and imagination works well with tasks like advertising, and writing. They are definitely behind the scenes type of people. They are not supervisors and the social demands, like public speaking, prohibit avoidant type of personalities from being executives. They are ideally suited for home-based businesses that rely on internet marketing and little or no interpersonal contact.

As you can see, attempting to evaluate the behavior of an avoidant personality structured employee is impossible without causing shame and belittlement. If they are part of a clique the employee’s reaction will be magnified, distorted, and spread over the entire organization. As a supervisor of an avoidant personality, you would want to emphasis and reinforce achievement in interpersonal relationships (“I noticed how you kept John informed of those changing data, thanks.”) and desensitize the employee to criticism. Respect-in-the-workplace policies and procedures provide an opportunity for the avoidant person or their peers to address and reframe ‘criticism’ over time. This allows the avoidant employee to actually own the issues associated with their personality traits, receive authentic feedback, and reduce anxiety.