Pedro Saguas, Imminence // Camille Rankine, Emergency Management // Mary Oliver, Entering the Kingdom // Dorianne Laux, What We Carry // Alejandra Pizarnik, Primitive Eyes
its all fun and games until someone makes a genuine even lighthearted confession of their feelings and suddenly its expected of u to say something back and u have to stop yourself from blowing everything up in a 2 mile radius
in front of any person i'm always putting up a performance. that doesn't mean i'm faking it, no. my performance is very automatic to me and feels natural. i can even enjoy myself in it. however it gets bad when after some time i start realizing that this performance is more so taking a toll on my mental well-being rather than is enjoyable. that's all.
Another thing I realized is that I am incapable of vulnerability with others. All my relations are one-sided.
If things began to be returned in any way, I panic.
I ask others how their days are, I remind them to eat and sleep and if they are in pain I try to soothe it. I do want to know, I can't explain why since it doesn't make me feel anything, but I do.
I take care of others' injuries, and I like this. I like calming down a shaking, wide-eyed, confused patient enough to let me assess them, watch their tension melt away as they realize I am helping and I will make them better. I like the insane adrenaline rush that comes from life threats, from a patient rapidly dying, I like putting it to use as I take control of the situation, as I give others orders and follow the ones I have laid out for myself in my head.
I... would like to caress someone, maybe. I think about a friend I have. I think he's cute, sweet, innocent. He's not great at taking care of himself and I sort of want to protect him. I'm rather tall so it wouldn't be too awkward to hold him in my lap or lay front to back with my arms wrapped around him.
I might like to kiss somebody. Not on the mouth, or even the face. The neck, or shoulders, or hands, I guess. I can't see myself being soft or intimate with another person but I can absolutely see myself acting as a dom and sadist (which is a whole other can of worms). It would be, at the very least, amusing to watch someone squirm while I have control of the situation, especially if I knew they liked it.
It's common for "how are you?" to be answered and then followed with a response of "what about you, how have you been?" and I just go blank.
I couldn't be dragged to the hospital if I was dying. I'll deal with any hemorrhage myself, tough excruciating pain out, and anything slow enough to not be immediately life-threatening is gonna have to beat my own self-destruction if it wants to be what kills me.
Being touched at all is uncomfortable and stressful.
Being touched like that violently repulses me even in thought alone.
Does any other schizoid just accept the roles they're assigned? My therapist asked me why I help others so much if it doesn't make me feel anything, except discomfort sometimes. I didn't have an answer then but now I realize I'm just put in situations where the default/convenient option is helping. Truthfully, I have no drive to reach out to others. But they always come to me. I don't have a reason to decline.
Idk whether to attribute this to schizoid or dissociation or a fun combo of both.... [spoiler, it's mostly SzPD, I figured it out]
But my relationship with the past is definitely not normal.
Short term and mid term memory is fine-ish, as fine as it can be with CDD, but going into long term memory is were the issue starts. I got so few?? It's like my life dissappears behind me with nobody to remember, not even myself, it's all fading away. Barely any childhood or teen memories, barely any from last year or the year before that or the one before that. I remember important life fact, like 2022 I had a surgery, 2023 I moved to another country and back, but I don't have any or very few "lived memories" that go beyond my knowledge of the fact that an event happened. Some pictures, some gifs some boxed feelings (like "this felt awkward"), snippets.
I don't really feel like someone who's lived a life before the present moment. I'm in the present, the past doesn't feel like it's me. I want nothing to do with who I was, I don't want to know this person.
And idk what it is but I can't stand looking at old pictures of MYSELF, it's so awful, it feels triggering but in a vague unspecified way. I don't know why. It's like I'm allergic to remembering myself from the past.
Is this possibly why I don't want people to remember me? If they know who I was, then they know too much about me. They have information on me that I do not want them to have.
I think I feel trapped and betrayed by the past. It gives people information on me, too much information, the wrong information. Know me from the past and it feels like you have found a hidden window into my internal world. And to avoid that I attempt to stay the same. The same me. Consistently. Nothing new in my life. I try to act the same, look the same, have the same likes. There's only so much room for change unless people leave my life so I can be free to grow again, so I don't have to keep being me from the past.
People's memories of me are a threat. Especially if I don't remember what they remember.
It's funny how in the process of letting my thoughts flow I contradict myself: I started out "I don't really feel like someone who's lived a life before the present moment." and ended with "And to avoid that [the past giving people too much information on me] I attempt to stay the same. The same me."
My conclusion from this is that a part of me is scared of the past because it's entrapping because people know too much information about me from the past. And this fear of the past and people knowing too much about "me" translates to me disowning the past and past selves, afterall you can't know too much about me from the past if who you know isn't "me". So I live in the present only with no past. My horrible long term memory is a symptom of this conflict.
Great, I answered my starting question too. It's mostly SzPD doing this.
🔤 Schizoid Words: A Guide to Understanding Alogia…
Definition: Alogia, also known as poverty of speech, refers to a reduction in the amount or quality of speech, often observed in individuals with certain mental health disorders, including schizophrenia. It involves a decreased fluency and productivity of speech, as well as limitations in the content and spontaneity of language expression.
The Schizoid Experience…
Reduced Speech Output: Individuals exhibit a decrease in the amount and quality of speech, characterized by brevity and limited elaboration. This reduction in speech output reflects the schizoid tendency towards social withdrawal and emotional detachment.
Lower Frequency of Social Exchange: Schizoid individuals may choose solitude and introspection over engaging in social interactions, leading to fewer opportunities for verbal expression.
Lack of Spontaneity: Speech may lack spontaneity and be limited to necessary communication, reflecting the schizoid tendency towards emotional detachment.
Perception as Aloof: The reduction in speech output may contribute to the perception of schizoid individuals as aloof, uncommunicative, or disinterested in social interactions.
Difference in functioning: Alogia in schizoid individuals may stem from their unique way of relating to the world and functioning, rather than an underlying pathology such as in schizophrenia.
I think one of the reasons why schizoid personality disorder has such a poor prognosis even when we do get treatment is because therapy is really hard when your brain is hardwired towards isolation and not letting people in.
For schizoids (especially those for whom trauma was a factor in developing SzPD), having even small amounts of emotional intimacy in a regular friendship or acquaintanceship can feel extremely overwhelming and unsafe. Another person finding things out about you can make all future interactions with them feel suffocating.
With how most people struggle with opening up in therapy, combined with how difficult any kind of openness can be for schizoids, you can probably see why this would be an issue for us. But one thing I think many MH professionals I've seen haven't understood is that sharing literally anything, even things that seem "small", can be very difficult for schizoids. It's not just the big vulnerable things, it's anything that's perceived as "personal".
Sure, I have trouble sharing the deep rooted personal issues that are at the heart of all my problems. But I also have trouble sharing relatively simple things, and it can cause major problems in therapy.
For example: the first time I did EMDR, I could not for the life of me give my therapist an answer when she asked what "safe space" or "safe image" I had picked to think about after the processing, or during if I got triggered too badly.
She assumed that I just couldn't think of anything (and I guess that was partially true because there isn't really anything that makes me feel a strong sense of comfort, since I don't really have that kind of emotional range), but no, I just couldn't voice anything I was thinking of because just telling another person about the kind of imagery I find calming was too much.
She ended up picking something for me I didn't even really find calming, so you can imagine how well that session went. But I can't even fully blame her, because she had no idea what the actual reason for why I wasn't telling her anything was.
But in so many other contexts as well, I've had therapists do that thing where they try to tell you their analysis of you and they've just been completely fucking wrong. And it's not necessarily because they're bad at their jobs, it's just because I didn't tell them anything, and I've mastered the art of saying just enough that the other person is satisfied without giving anything away.
It makes the whole process very frustrating, because on one hand I know I have significant mental health issues that are making my life miserable, but at the same time I am viscerally uncomfortable with someone else knowing what goes on in my head.
Just another reason why psychology courses basically ignoring "rarer" conditions (that aren't even that rare to begin with) is unacceptable. These things would be much easier to navigate if the professionals I see knew what my diagnosis actually meant.
"that doesn't sound sincere- it sounds rehearsed" is one of the most devastating and fucked-up statements you can make to anyone in the neurodivergent/ADHD/Autistic/Schizophrenic/Disordered Personality sphere. yeah bitch it's rehearsed. because i wanted to get it right when i said it
I’ve recently discovered how much better life can be when we normalize this. My best friend and I have started saying “hang on, I’m scripting” when we need a minute to mentally rehearse during big conversations (and “bear with me, I’m doing improv” when we’ve reached the end of our script and start to struggle with words lol)
not necessarily fully related but i have schizoid PD and in attempting integration and the development of proper social skills a big problem is that i script a lot for basically every conversational turn i make because i want to minimize active involvement, but when i completely lose interest / can't come up with more / it takes a turn i didn't expect i stop talking and enter my own little Mind Palace. + it's inconvenient and i just want people to be chill with it. while i'm thinking and shit.
anyways, i've called this "gone fishing" and i occasionally use it to explain suddenly going quiet or ceasing participation. nah i'm fine i've just gone fishing. and my friends understand. doesn't happen too often but when i'm having a bad time with it all it gets a lotttt more common, so its super useful
do you ever care about something really really hard for three seconds and then stop caring completely. like ok im fine now actually. dont know what came over me
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