The mental health professions are greatly challenged by sufferers of avoidant personality. Most sufferers avoid treatment. This has resulted in a void of developing productive treatment strategies. A vast majority of mental health professionals who have experience with avoidant personality disorder believe it’s not resolvable.

Having worked with over 10,000 patient with avoidant characteristics of all ages since 1978 I have discovered the key to productive treatment. It’s actually a simple formula for a very complex problem. The formula is simple. Implementation is not.

The keys are leverage and integrity. Architecting these dynamics are imperative for positive and healthy change.

In the case of the dependent of any age, who is not capable of initiative for the healing process leverage is accomplished by caregivers learning an empowering strategy that will no longer “enable” the “addiction to avoidance”. Be very clear:

Over-dependence is usually the power which enables an

“addiction to avoidance”.

In the case of the adult who is capable of “initiative” for healing “integrity” is crucial. This means accountability and honesty, two characteristics that are under- developed for the sufferer.

In “Work Makes Me Nervous: Overcome Anxiety and Develop the Confidence to Succeed” (Wiley) my co-writer Amy Lemley describes her recovery from avoidant personality in one of the few such accounts anywhere. In “Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties” (Simon & Schuster) readers learn an empowering therapeutic strategy for dependents of all ages.