system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What is the distinction between Avoidant Personality Disorder and Social Anxiety/ Phobia?

After reading on both of these, I find it hard to understand the key differences between them both. There is a lot to compare between them. I've seen a lot of articles comparing and contrasting them but many of the contrasting traits were either broad or unclear. I am wondering how do psychologists know when someone has AVPD instead of social anxiety/phobia and vice versa?

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Thank you!
gpt
Here is an overview of the two disorders.

Social Anxiety disorder - fear, anxiety, avoidance in social situations. SAD isn't typically a manifestation of extreme personality traits, the symptoms can come and go and are often environmentally triggered and situation specific.

AVPD - thought of as a maladaptive pattern that is stable across time, characterized by social inhibition. We also see a preoccupation with criticism with AVPD.

An okay way to distinguish them is SAD is associated with performance-related anxiety, AVPD is associated with difficulties forming relationships in which to perform in the first place. So forming vs. performing, but this isn't always the case and we do see some individuals with SAD experience anxiety in social situations where they aren't required to perform (E.g., sitting in a lecture hall).

There is an ongoing debate in the treatment community as to whether AVPD is a more extreme or more stable variant of SAD, and we don't have nearly as much research on AVPD, as they are difficult to find and avoid volunteering for research studies. Even our thinking about the stability difference is challenged in a recent study which found that the disorders are equally stable across time, so it can be quite difficult to distinguish them. That same study concluded that they *are* distinct constructs. There is a lot of overlap, but enough is different to classify them as so, and the treatment strategy should vary depending on which disorder is presenting.