dichotomy

are you human?

[schizodissociativereading]

From the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual

[pdizaya-blog]

It’s been a while now since I’ve started searching for info about different personality disorders, mostly about schizoid and avoidant personality disorders.  I know it is always better to see a professional, but for various personal reasons I haven’t had the opportunity to visit one, so I’ve been trying to do my best to understand myself and these disorders better. As different as they are, they are also quite similar. I have read on multiple sources that these two disorders cannot be comorbid, others saying that szpd is not a disorder at all but just a personality type, others saying szpd is just a further developement of avpd.

Considering people’s personal experience, I’ve seen many people like me struggling and considering the idea of having developped szpd as a consequence of avpd. As we know, both people with avpd and szpd tend to isolate themselves, but people with avpd do it because they’re scared, too sensitive, afraid of rejection, while those with szpd do it because they don’t care and don’t need social interaction. The thing is: what if, as a coping mechanism, someone with avpd, isolating themselves, reached a point in which they started to completely repress and/or ignore their emotions? This could lead said person into believing they don’t care/need social interaction, ignoring the fact that they’re acting this way just because of their well-repressed fear and insecurity.

Another thing I’ve considered, is the way szpd is described. If we take the standard definition: “Schizoid personality disorder (SPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency towards a solitary or sheltered lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness, and apathy. Affected individuals may be unable to form intimate attachments to others and simultaneously demonstrate a rich, elaborate and exclusively internal fantasy world” it appears quite simple. Individuals who, differently from the majority of human beings, do not appreciate/need social interactions, can’t emotionally connect with others, and so on.

However, there are professionals who believe that this description is just the surface of the complex interior life of someone with szpd. As the name itself suggests, the term schizoid implies the presence of schisms, leading to a split way of feeling or being, thus creating contradictions between the exterior and interior life of the individual. Those who embrace this interpretation are, for example, Nancy McWilliams and Salman Akhtar . 

This is starting to get too long and I am getting tired of writing, so I’m just gonna suggest to read this pdf and to look up “Salman Akhtar Schizoid Personality Disorder” for more info about this issue. You can find something in my szpd tag as well since I’ve mentioned them before.

This post was just me organizing my thoughts, nothing detailed and professional of course. Feel free to reblog or add your thoughts.

[samuelroukin]

[disorderrd]

someone: omg we should hang out its been so long ! me: yeah cuz i aint wanna c u bitch !!

[garden-of-growth]

i’m supposed to care about your fucking feelings?

[actuallyschizoid]

i'm schizoid but i am really good at reading people and understanding their pov on the world. but i don't feel it's in the feelingsy sort of way really. like, i don't feel what they're feeling but i notice a lot of little details and patterns about someone's behavior and can deduce their emotions based on that. it's more like a behavioral scan than empathy. i have no idea how to put this into words but i wanted to see if any other schizoid knows what i'm trying to convey here.

Potentially correct link to the related post… it might be wrong one though, but it’s the best I could find.

Yeah, I think that’s about how it happens for most schizoids. You get to learn what kind of behavior to expect from people when they feel this or that emotion. Eventually you get to “read” what’s going on from their POV, but I don’t think it happens same way for most other people. 

But some schizoids are, indeed, exceptionally good at it — I’ve mentioned before that schizoids often make a really good psychoanalytics if they have enough motivation for it and not enough despise towards people to work with them. 

[hyenadays]

yeah im very good at reading ppl in most situations even though it’s not empathy

[pdizaya-blog]

The psychoanalytic use of the term schizoid derives from the observations of “schisms” between the internal life and the externally observable life of the schizoid individual (cf. Laing, 1965). For example, schizoid people are overtly detached, yet they describe in therapy a deep longing for closeness and compelling fantasies of intimate involvement. They appear self-sufficient, and yet anyone who gets to know them well can attest to the depth of their emotional need. They can be absent-minded at the same time that they are acutely vigilant. They may seem completely nonreactive, yet suffer an exquisite level of sensitivity. They may look affectively blunted while internally coping with what one of my schizoid friends calls “protoaffect,” the experience of being frighteningly overpowered by intense emotion. They may seem utterly indifferent to sex while nourishing a sexually preoccupied, polymorphously elaborated fantasy life. They may strike others as unusually gentle souls, but an intimate may learn that they nourish elaborate fantasies of world destruction.

x

[schizoidprince]

yea i got mood swings. thats when you feel like one (1) thing and then quickly go back to feeling nothing at all right

[themachineinspace]

i love myself for who i am because i’m pretty much no one and very changeable at that.

[disorderrd]

Hi, can i ask you what a comorbid between szpd and npd might look like? I have szpd and am currently questioning if i also have npd as well so I'd appreciate the help

hey ! im not at all uh…an expert on this, but i cn say how it looks for me?

so with szpd, the most apparent symptoms are gunna b ur lack of desire for close relationships, no interest in personal interactions, stunted emotions, and often a lack of (or subdued ability to have) empathy. overt schizoids dont hide this and often come across completely uninterested when actually engaged, while covert will most likely pretend to be enjoying interactions to avoid conflict, but internally just want to leave the convo (me lol). i personally would be content to live alone in a single room for the rest of my life and do absolutely nothing.

however, when npd comes into the mix (to reiterate, this is my own experience) it combats that apathy to an extent, because i Need attention. I don’t necessarily care about the people im getting it from, but i find myself creating personas within evry single interaction so that nobody will hate me, and i can receive praise for things. its somewhat like being covert but instead of just doing it to get by easier im doing it specifically to be liked and i find myself being extremely generous and overall affable so i will continue to receive that attention, even though im wildly uncomfortable having to interract with people as often as i do. my emotions can often be boiled down to simply “void” but npd has me flying into rages at people who treat me as lesser, because i feel im above that. the lack of empathy is true to both disorders, and i talk about myself a lot, and most prevalent is probably my “manipulativeness’ because im…stupid good at getting people to do what i want

its interesting because once ive secured a relationship n wich i can count on someone for my narc supply, i tend to act More schizoid around them: flatter, apathetic, moody, because i feel mostly safe n th assumption they wont leave, but i often bend that too far and find myself nervously repatching the relationship by twisting my personality around on its head to keep them around, even though deep down i dont really have a strong attatchment to them?

for me, as someone who finds interacting with people draining, but needs interaction to live, the internet really does feed into this. because i have a screen as a buffer, i can deal with people but not Truly deal with them if that makes sense. its become a perfect place to validate myself (notes, asks, follower count, etc) while remaining reclusive irl.

sorry if this doesnt make much sense im pretty out of it right now, but i wanted to answer this before i forgot it. let me kno if u have any other questions, and followers, feel free to help this anon out

[tszpdfw]

tfw you don't understand what love is or is meant to be, everything is out of lust

[borderline-borderwhine]

hey can we stop demonizing people who like … fake interest in people

like yeah it’s one thing for someone to only want to be friends w/ someone because they’ll buy their coffee every day or because they have a pool or whatever bullshit or if they’re literally only interested in people for emotional investment they have no intention of reciprocating but like

people w/ low empathy (great example: ppl with szpd) often fake empathy and interest in people because they Have to. a lot of us get abused or further demonized when we are open about the fact that we have low to no empathy or that we don’t. care about making friends or whatever and so we have to fake it! all the time! and that’s not our fault! and if sometimes our inability to use that fake empathy to be there for someone else to support them emotionally lapses that’s also. not our fault. it happens to people who experience more empathy and/or neurotypicals all the time so why. is it any different for us to just need a break from other people’s issues. we don’t always have the energy to deal w/ our own problems let alone others so when posts go around saying “if u aren’t there for someone unconditionally” or “don’t pretend to like people” it’s damaging to those of us who can’t Not pretend to be interested

[schizoidsuggestions]

it’s fine if i don’t matter to you anymore because you never even mattered to me in the first place lol

[schizoidprince]

for a person who hates feeling things boy do i crave to feel things intensely when it happens

[szpdgooglesearches]

[dateaneurodivergentwho]

date a neurodivergent who always spontaneously laughs

[szpdmahiru]

Do other ppl fake emotions too