Eesh, that article looks like DBT. lol I had a rough time of it because of the two tenets.

First, accept who you are right now. Got it - that's why I have low self-esteem, in a way, because I know all about and accept (or at least can't deny) all my flaws. (That I can't accept that anything positive about myself is true, that's very un-DBT, but like I said, it didn't work for me anyway.)

Second, change yourself to do better. And there is the rub. AvPD can't be changed. You can learn to accept it, throw a bunch of coping techniques and distraction at it, but it can't change.

So DBT was pretty much torture for me. What I need and want is more people in my life, but that is impossible. It would be similar to if there was a crippling disease that could be cured with a peanut based medicine, but you're allergic to peanuts. What do you do? Take the cure and die of the allergy, or live your life knowing that to a degree it's your choice that you are in agony?

That was a decent article. Unfortunately, none of it applied to avoidants. The problem is, that it says to raise your self-esteem, change how you interact with people. I don't and can't interact with people, not on a personal level anyway, because I am avoidant. But it's full of nice ideas for other people who have a chance, other people who I hope read my original post and decided to take another look at what was actually going on with them before they bound themselves to any label.