#schizotaxic

[hazedxg0]

It's really something seeing people who aren't cluster A or schizospec discuss anhedonia. Because they always talk about how horrible it is, and how it makes life borderline not worth living, but there's always this emphasis that it's temporary.

"Anhedonia is the worst thing I've ever experienced, but don't worry! You can just get your meds changed and it'll go away! You'll be enjoying everything again in no time!"

"I felt like this before I got help for my depression. Don't worry guys, therapy can totally fix this!"

"This is how everyone feels before starting HRT lol. If you think you have this you should start questioning your gender."

I don't understand how you can talk at length about how serious a particular symptom is, but then turn around and treat it like it's this easily fixable symptom that no-one will have to deal with forever.

Chronic anhedonia is a thing. Some of us will spend most of, if not the rest of our lives like this. For some of us, it's not a side-effect of medication, or treatable depression, or being closeted. It's engrained into how our brain works. That reality deserves to be acknowledged too.

[avpdpossum]

can we talk more about avpd being a (proposed) schizospec disorder? because i almost never see that theory talked about but i wish it was. like…

avpd makes me censor my thoughts because i think someone might hear what i’m thinking and see what a horrible person i am on the inside or judge me for thinking embarrassing things.

avpd makes me so afraid of someone walking in on me doing something i Shouldn’t Be Doing that my brain twists background noise into the sounds of whispers and footsteps behind me.

avpd makes me so worried about people staring at me that in my peripheral vision, anyone near me looks like they’re already staring at me, and it’s only when i look at them directly that i realize they’ve been looking in a totally different direction the whole time.

avpd makes me so convinced of how much everyone must secretly hate me that i often start thinking everyone secretly wants to hurt me too, to the point where i’ve had panic attacks from a person walking too close behind me because i feel like they’re getting ready to attack me (when i haven’t had any kind of trauma that would create that fear), and the paranoia just serves to reinforce my need to avoid people.

avpd makes me lose my ability to speak or reduces it to nothing more than one word answers only when spoken to, turning the thoughts i wanted to express into a jumble that’s impossible to turn into words or just throwing them away completely and making my mind go blank, so i end up just staring at people silently or even acting like i don’t see them standing there at all (not on purpose but because my brain won’t let me engage with them).

avpd makes me look damn near emotionless around everyone but my safe person (and sometimes even around my safe person) because showing my emotions would be far too vulnerable for its liking, so it completely takes away my ability to express them.

and i could keep going! there are so many things i experience because of avpd that i’ve seen really closely reflected in the experiences of schizospec people. i don’t know how common these kinds of things are in avpd overall, but they’re a really prominent part of my experience with it, so when i found out that some research suggested it could be considered a schizospec disorder itself, that made so much sense to me! and i’d be so curious to see how many other avoidants have dealt with this stuff but haven’t talked about it because it’s never mentioned as being part of avpd.

[kpopwerewolf]

I came across this in the comments on a YouTube video:

[ID: A screenshot of a conversation that reads as follows:

User 1: Please don't use the word "delulu". It's incredibly disrespectful to those with psychotic & schizospec disorders and the term was specifically created to mock delusions. It's extremely trivializing as it waters down "delusion" to "believing a fantasy" rather than what it actually is (a very serious and often terrifying and traumatizing experience, such as believing that you're being stalked)

User 2: Idc

User 1: I know not everyone is bothered by it, but a vast majority of the community (at least from what I've seen) does [bolded for emphasis] care. [line break] If you're find with others using the term or if you even use it yourself to describe your own experiences/symptoms, then more power to you, but others in the community have been asking people to stop using this term. [line break] It's very upsetting and even triggering to some, myself included, and it's additionally upsetting when people are dismissive of the distress it causes.

User 2: I ain't reading allat [a slangy spelling of "all that"]

// End ID]

(I hope I formatted it okay; I've never made an ID for a conversation before, so I wasn't really sure what the preferred way to to present it was)

I find this very frustrating. User 1 is explaining why the term "delulu" is hurtful and User 2 is just blatantly dismissing it all. (Which ironically enough is mentioned by User 1 in the previous message)

Just. Why do people think it's okay to act like this? Someone is taking the time to explain something to others -- obviously due to something said in the video -- and User 2 comes along and just starts being rude about it.

I just don't get it. I can understand people using the term before they realize the history and the hurt it causes, but this is just-

There are no words to describe how much it hurts to see people actively dismissing the schizospec community when we try to speak up about this

(I'm tagging this with "delulu" for those who filter the tag because the term alone causes distress)

[sch-com]

how I would describe my dissociation

Depersonalisation:

It feels as if my whole life was a dream

Or a game in which a player makes choices, but I'm not the player, I'm the character that's being controlled

Hands, arms feel very heavy, but not like physically? And also as if there were prostetic which I do not control, just look at what they do

When I touch my face it feels as if it was paralyzed like after the visit to the dentist

When I look at my body, hands, I feel as if I was looking at hands of a person sitting next to me. I don't feel any connection to them

The line between what's my body and what's not is very blurry - it's hard for me to understand that my arm and foot are me, but the table, cup or a pen are not

I don't recognise myself in the mirror, it's as if I was looking at somebody else's picture/video

Derealisation:

It feels as if the whole world is made of cardboard. I don't believe that the objects have a solid form, only the outer layer

Words don't describe objects and objects are as abstract of a concept as words that we assign to them

The whole world is fake, arbitral and there is no reason why it looks... like it does

At times it feels as if it all were to just collapse, disintegrate, fall apart in front of my eyes

[hazedxg0]

I love being schizoid in this modern era of the internet where everyone demands to know your legal name, your age, your face, the exact country and city you're from, your sexuality and sexual interests, every medical condition you have, and the shape of your genitals.

[hazedxg0]

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.

[hazedxg0]

I think the fact that schizoid personality disorder often makes it so that you are only willing to interact with others when you have an intellectual interest in them partially explains why there isn't really an equivalent of a "favourite person" or "exception person" for people with SzPD.

Other personality disorders often experience a need for validation or another person to emotionally regulate them. Or they have a need for feeling loved or wanted, feeling superior or in control, etc. Hence terms like "favourite person".

Schizoids don't tend to experience that, but many of us do occasionally become interested in another person due to an intellectual fascination. We may see someone that we believe has an interesting set of traits and we want to understand their thought process, so we might begin to observe them.

But in my experience, that feeling usually dies out after a few weeks of interaction. Because every single human being can easily be put into boxes after a little while of learning about them. I don't mean that in an edgy way, just there only seems to be so many variations on the patterns of thought and emotion that people tend to have. You learn enough about someone's past and their way of experiencing the world and suddenly you can reliably predict almost everything they will think, feel or do in a given situation.

And I mean, I'm not an exception to that either. No-one is. If you learn enough about schizoid dynamics and other conditions I have, I'm willing to bet I'd be predictable as hell too.

But once I have someone figured out and there's nothing left to learn, the interest basically completely disappears. I can probably still put up with them if I have to, but I won't have any personal interest in interacting further. I can't count the amount of times someone has told me they're upset we don't talk as much anymore since "you know me so well and I feel like I can come to you about anything!"

Even when I am still actively interested in someone, if I am stuck with them when I don't want to be, my symptoms will set in just as hard as they would with anyone else. I can think you're the most interesting person in the world and I will still do absolutely anything to get away from you if I feel you're getting too close.

Of course, the main reason schizoids don't really have a culture of having a "special person" is because we don't find satisfaction from human relationships and don't tend to rely other people for any kind of psychological need. But I think the fleeting nature of intellectual fascinating probably contributes to that too.

I think humanity as a whole can be pretty interesting sometimes, but individual people can never be captivating enough to justify prolonged emotional intimacy.

[hazedxg0]

i saw your post/reblog about szpd, aspd, and npd respectively and as someone with aspd and npd, I'm becoming a little curious about szpd and I'd like to know more about your experience with it if that's alright? personally, I express some szpd traits but I think it has more to do with the fact I am Schizophrenic rather than due to a pd itself but am still curious about szpd after reading that bit with aspd and npd cause I find that outside of aspd and npd experiences also relate to szpd experiences as well so i thought to look into it cause maybe I might learn something new shrugs

Apologies for the late response, this accidentally ended up getting buried in the inbox.

The way I explain schizoid personality disorder to people is that it's essentially the negative symptoms of schizophrenia as a personality disorder. Anhedonia, avolition, asociality, flat affect, etc. All of those things are deeply intertwined with my personality and how I navigate the world in all contexts.

Personally, I experience my SzPD as just not being a person, as a result of missing all the key feelings and desires that drive most people. I don't feel like I have a sense of sense, my sense of "personality" mainly just has to do with what behaviours and thoughts my brain naturally defaults to. I honestly just feel like a void instead of a person.

I don't have a desire to have relationships with other people, as I don't feel affective empathy and struggle to feel any real satisfaction from interacting with others. I experience what's called the schizoid dilemma, where occasionally I will feel like I want to try reaching out to other people again, but will quickly resort to isolation due to feeling suffocated by closeness to other people.

For me, emotional intimacy makes me feel like I'm being trapped and controlled, but being too isolated for too long can make me start to think that maybe relationships would fill some hole inside me. But every time I try, I just end up feeling suffocated while still not truly feeling connected to the other person, which drives me back to solitude. Every time the cycle repeats it just reaffirms to by brain even more that I do not want to be around anyone else, and nowadays I don't even really bother trying anymore.

I lack the ability to feel any kind of pleasure or satisfaction from life. Even if I engage with things that I "like", all they do is sustain my attention better than other things. I still don't really get enjoyment out of them. Because of this, I don't really want to do anything with my life, I don't have goals or dreams expect for the life path I've been forced to come up with by society (and I really don't care that much about it anyway).

In fact, most of my emotions are so muted I can't even tell if they're there or not. I don't really think I can feel things like happiness or sadness at all, and things like fear I only feel physically (i.e. faster breathing and heartrate) and not psychologically. I do feel anger psychologically every so often, but I lack the ability to express it in most contexts. I only ever lash out if I'm in an actively traumatic situation and am already severely emotionally decompressed.

I do experience suffering, especially in reference to C-PTSD related stuff. But due to flat affect it doesn't really show and it's lead to problems with being believed and taken seriously by the psychiatric and legal systems. I could be in a severe trauma based episode, all symptoms at an all time high, seconds before a suicide attempt and externally I would just be standing around staring blankly at nothing. I don't tend to cry, or scream or anything like that no matter how much distress I'm in.

I'm very passive in general. Even if I do get a desire to do something, it tends to be quite fleeting and I lack the ability to convert internal desire into external action. I kind of just let things happen in my life. I don't go out of my way to initiate things in most cases.

Finally, I have a very rich internal reality. I basically spend all day every day inside my own head, I get way more satisfaction out of imagination rather than reality. Similar deal to how I interact with the external world: I'm not personally involved in anything, I'm just observing.

All of these things overlap and play into each other, and honestly there's probably more I'm forgetting. But I suppose that's the gist of it.