Lately I've been wondering if I have AvPD. One of my friends approached me and told me that she feels like I have it after talking to her therapist and discussing the disorder. After looking it up it does sound a lot like me.

Avoidant personality disorder (AvPD), also known as anxious personality disorder, is a Cluster C personality disorder recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders handbook as afflicting persons when they display a pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, extreme sensitivity to negative evaluation, and avoidance of social interaction despite a strong desire to be close to others. Individuals afflicted with the disorder tend to describe themselves as uneasy, anxious, lonely, unwanted and isolated from others.

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. As the name suggests, the main coping mechanism of those with avoidant personality disorder is avoidance of feared stimuli. Avoidant personality disorder is usually first noticed in early adulthood, with both childhood emotional neglect and peer group rejection being associated with an increased risk for its development.
I've noticed that as I've gotten older I've become (as I would describe) more socially awkward or inept. And I've often attributed this to my natural tendency to just not be that desirable of a person/friend. You know, I just haven't ever been a person that people tend to like and befriend. My friendships tend to take awhile to bloom while a lot of people just click. I've always been that friend who sits there and listens to the rest of the group make plans and exclude me from those place. When walking in a group I am the one who ends up in the back. When having a group discussion I am often the one who is ignored, isn't heard, or is interrupted. I don't have a lot of friends that I talk to on a regular basis. I have my boyfriend, my best friend, and occasionally another friend. I have no friends at my college yet. I have some acquaintances I will talk to in the halls and in class, but no one's gotten to the point that they want to hang out with me outside of classes. At my former college I managed to not make any close friends despite being there for 4 years. I was a part of clubs, and a regular in a close knit program, and only on rare occasions was I invited to do anything outside of campus. Often I'd turn them down because I felt it was just a I'm-Inviting-Everyone kind of occasion and if the person inviting me was the only person I knew I'd definitely not go.

Throughout grade school I was basically a social reject. I was bullied by a lot of my peers. I was even bullied at home by my brother and sister. And when my school reached out to my parents to tell them that maybe they should get me into therapy because of all of that I might suffer from depression, they simply told me that I have no reason to be depressed. When I finally started to make friends, I was often taken advantage of. I was dispensible.