If you’re a schizoid who feels like “the walking dead”, this might mean you dissociate. A lot. And apparently, for schizoids, that’s common.
Others might not know what dissociating is, or might think “oh I dissociated” the moment they miss one point during a meeting. (Yes, that’s dissociation, but not to the extent a schizoid experiences it.)
Dissociation is a way to protect us from harm and strong emotions, but it also makes our lives bleaker. Dissociation is like living in a house where the temperature is always steady, but because of this, you do not know what hot or cold is. Or even worse: when it suddenly does get hot or cold, it’s suddenly a disaster because you never experienced it, and you go through some panic because of it and dissociate again as soon as you are possible.
Today’s blog post is about this common aspect of SPD and the goal is to explain what it is, where it comes from, how Schizoids vs. Neurotypicals might experience this, what can be done to dissociate less. Finally, it poses the question whether this is a blessing or a curse. I’ll also be giving a personal example of a recent time I was about to dissociate and was able to catch myself in the moment (thanks to therapy.)
The root cause of dissociation
Trauma
In psychology, so many behaviours have a basis in trauma and dissociation is no different.
Some examples of trauma that may be a root for dissociation are:
being physically stuck during verbal or physical abuse
living with people who gaslight you constantly
being stuck in a school where you are constantly bullied
being dismissed for who you are by your parents all the time
Basically, the latter three points are all examples of the first point. It’s a common appearance in young children that went through these nasty experiences, but were unable to remove themselves physically from the ones inflicting the harm.
(I refrain from using the word “abusers”, maybe as a means to also protect my parents. They meant no harm but were constantly dismissive of my needs in ways they did not interpret as harmful. While my psyche suffered because of it, that was also the last thing they wanted. It’s not always black and white, and another child could have been raised the same way without developing SPD as a result.)
Not having the agency to step away from a horrible situation as a child, is what teaches the child to dissociate. If you are going through intense fear or anger or guilt or sadness or shame or any other negative emotion, it can become too much to handle.
The solution? Don’t handle it. Disconnect yourself from your emotions. Look at the situation as though it’s a movie and you’re just watching it from the safety of your couch. You might still be an actor in the movie, but to yourself, you are not even more or less important than the other actors in the scene, and you don’t experience your own emotions anymore. Begone, foul feelings, life is ok again now. (But also horribly bland.)
Dissociation to neurotypicals
Everyone dissociates, but not everyone does it in equal amounts. A neurotypical will know what it’s like to daydream, or will drive to work and suddenly be like “oh, I’ve arrived” without really remembering what happened during the drive. People who’ve had accidents, might also no longer remember what happened just before or after the accident, even if they seemed conscious to bystanders. It is very possible the pain or trauma made them dissociate in the moment, and that they hold no memory of it afterwards.
This is something that the neurotypical person can relate to: living live as though going through the motions, without experiencing any highs or lows emotionally during that time, sometimes not being as aware of their surroundings.
(I do wish to state that “forgetting” what happened around you is not something that is as common in schizoids that dissociate. We don’t have massive gaps where we’re like “oh we can’t remember anything of this day or when you spoke to me” - only in periods we’re actively going through abuse this might happen - in most cases, it’s just that we do not connect to our emotional selves much at all, ever.)
Dissociation is also something that neurotypicals understand best when they went through the death of a parent, for example. They might dissociate during the funeral, during conversations with friends, family and acquaintances that offer their condolences in the weeks that follow, during the selling of the deceased’s belongings, and even longer… People that watch them at the funeral might say “oh they seemed pretty cool about it.”
These people might not show much emotion at all, until suddenly many months or years later, the grief suddenly catches up to hit them like a punch to the gut.
In comparison, to schizoids, that punch to the gut often just doesn’t come, and the dissociation can feel endless.
Dissociation to schizoids
There are a few schizoid traits that could just be explained as “yes, they are constantly dissociating”.
little or any desire for sexual relationships
feeling like you can’t experience pleasure
having difficulty expressing emotions
lacking motivation and goals
no reaction to praise or criticism
How could you do any of these things when you’re always dissociating? I have no idea how.
When I need to explain to a neurotypical how I experience things and how they experience things, I tell them that they can point out highs and lows during their lives and days. It might look a bit like this:
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
For a schizoid, this is what their highs and lows look like:
—-~——–~——–~
It’s like experiencing the world while simultaneously wrapped in cling film or bubble wrap. You are kind of aware of what’s going on around you, but it just doesn’t impact you much.
So when a really hot person suddenly walks by, a neurotypical might be like / (omg this is the hottest person I’ve seen in a long time oh gods are they single? I wonder if I could talk to them?) and a schizoid’s emotion might be ~ (hey they’re pretty. Did I feel attraction for them? I don’t think so, maybe? But right now I’m already feeling normal again when looking at them. They’re ok, I guess. Aesthetically pleasing to look at, I suppose)
Being schizoid can be like being in a state of perpetual “meh”.
Furthermore, because your emotions give away so little about how you ‘feel’ about people, your opinions will be based on logic. Compare it to being like Spock. Our first impression will often be a cognitive one and not always one based on feeling. (And simultaneously, when we do experience a tiny negative feeling, this might also be enough for us to go “ok we’ll never talk to this person again.” - because if you don’t experience BIG emotions, you might sometimes use a small emotion as an excuse in the same way others would use a big emotion.)
Different ways to dissociate
Not all ways you can dissociate are the same, and my impression is that most schizoids are rather similar in how they dissociate. I just quickly want to touch on all types to dissociate I could find (without going into to much detail), just so you know that not every person who dissociates, does so in the same way.
Dissociative amnesia: having difficulty remembering personal information/forgetting things you lived through. (Common in people with childhood trauma, many can not remember things like birthdays or most of their childhood even. They dissociate from all of it.)
Dissociative fugue: travelling to a different location or taking on a new identity (without remembering your identity). (I do not think this is common in schizoids. While ghosting is a thing we might do, it’s not exactly the same. This would mean we forget who we were, at least for a while. We do have rich internal worlds and fantasy lives, which does sound similar in a way, though it is purely theorethical, we don’t actually move locations, just in our head for the duration of an event that is unpleasant or boring to us.)
Derealisation: feeling like the world around you is unreal (experiencing life as though others are robots, everything is gray or black and white, seeing the world as lifeless…)
Depersonalization: feeling like you’re looking at yourself from the outside (experiencing life as though you’re watching a film and you’re one of the characters, and you’re not fully certain what you’re going to do. You are merely observing your emotions, not feeling them. You’re emotionally numb.) (Sounds very schizoid-like to me.)
Identity alteration: feeling your identity shift and change (use different names/speaking in different voices or accents, feeling like you’re losing control to someone else) (not a schizoid way to dissociate, more common in certain other disorders)
Identity confusion: feeling like it’s difficult to define what kind of person you are (not knowing much about what drives you, what your favourite things are or your identity is, or feeling like there are different people inside you) (while part of this sounds schizoid, another part does not sound schizoid to me.)
How to stop dissociating so much?
In most of my posts, I talk about the therapy I’ve gotten myself in the past few years. While I still dissociate, I don’t do it 100% of the time anymore, which to me is a win.
If I have to say what helped me overcome the permanent dissociation, I would say it was ACT in combination with mindfulness. (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)
HOWEVER, personally I do not recommend ACT as a first step because there is still trauma at the root, and you want to tackle the trauma first. I went through EMDR Therapy (read my previous blog post about it), which helped me get over nasty emotions that came with the traumas I’d endured in life. (There are other ways to get over trauma besides EMDR - talk to your therapist about which way would work best on you.) Once you get through that trauma, it’s not as scary to be mindful of other emotions that pop up in life.
While I’m not a therapist and I can’t decide for you what is best (trust your medical health professionals near you), I do think it makes sense to get through trauma first before you are taught to be more in touch with your emotions. Because what if you learn to experience emotions better and suddenly you are triggered by a trauma you didn’t process? Chances are very big you’ll dissociate again (which I guess is ok) but if you don’t, suddenly you’re alone, left to process a trauma which is easier to process with the help of a licenced therapist near you. So tackle that in therapy first, I’d say.
So my personal advice would be to go through some type of trauma therapy first, before you start learning mindfulness, which is part of ACT.
Mindfulness vs Dissociation
Mindfulness was a bit of a buzz-word several years ago. Companies thought “mindfulness trainings” for their employees would solve stress-related issues and burnout at work and teach people better time management and other things. And while I do not think that’s all bullshit, I kind of feel that once companies start embracing certain concepts, it befouls them at the same time. (Good job, you made something nice sound like a joke.)
For schizoids and people with dissociative disorders, mindfulness teaches them the exact opposite of what they are inclined to do. Because, if you haven’t realized it yet, mindfulness and dissociation are polar opposites to one another.
And that is also what makes it superhard for schizoids to learn. I found it challenging and at times I felt I wasn’t learning anything at all. I struggled. I thought it was all bullshit. Some exercises didn’t seem to have much effect on me, but others seemed easier, so those are the ones I stuck with.
I still am not mindful 100% of the time, but I can pick up dissociative patterns more, and I’m learning to embrace “being content” now. I’m slowing down more during the day, focusing on my surroundings AND on my inner self. Am I tense? Why am I tense? Did I sleep enough? Am I hungry? I am quicker to label emotions and to act upon them, so I suppose that in the end, learning some mindfulness was definitely worth it. I’m no longer “the walking dead” all the time, I’m sometimes very aware of what needs to be done in the moment, or of the effects of environments and people on me.
I’m still “new” at this mindfulness stuff, so I do not know if years down the road, its effects will be greater on me than they are now.
If mindfulness is the opposite of dissociation, and if dissociation is responsible for about 5 schizoid traits, can teaching mindfulness un-do the schizoid personality completely?
I’m hesitant to answer that. I don’t know. I’m not sure that’s how it works. But I’m certain it can improve this zombie-like state of mind that we struggle with when we go undiagnosed and unhelped.
If you wish to know more about mindfulness, I’m not sure if this is something I can teach in a blog post. I’m still learning myself, but I’m certain you could ask a psychologist or other therapist if they can teach you some mindfulness and ACT as part of their program to help you.
One exercise that I like doing is one that I kind of “invented” myself using elements from other exercises I did. I have a cat (as already written about in a previous blogpost) and he’s quite the cuddly cat. When he cuddles me, I slow down. I stop doing what I’m doing and I focus on my breathing first, but then also on my cat’s breathing, and then I try to be mindful of the sensation of his fur against my hands, of the warmth he carries, of how soft his ears are, or how smooth or sharp his nails are, of how lovely cats smell, of the sound of his purring or breathing, and also how it makes me feel within. Usually I’m quite content, but if I’m not content while holding him, I can go “why am I not content right now? Why am I experiencing stress? What’s stopping me from enjoying this moment?” It’s a moment for me to relax, to focus on my breathing, on all my senses (except taste; don’t lick your cat, folks.) and to explore my emotional state of the day.
A personal example
Story time. I bought an apartment and am in the middle of a move right now. (Still living in the old appartment now for a few more weeks.) Moving was my own decision, and something I probably would not have done were it not for all the therapy of the past years, and while I knew it was going to be stressful, I knew I could handle it mentally and financially, and that it was the right thing to do.
However, my parents, in their helpfulness, are having a tendency to waltz over me. Just writing out this sentence brings some tension to my chest - their invasiveness on my life is part of the reason I developped this personality disorder, along with some earlier childhood traumas. It is one of the reasons I learned dissociation at such a young age.
I do honestly know it comes from a place of love and worry - they want to help me with “acts of service”, but they simultaneously cause me to dissociate in their presence. And they tend to forget I have my own identity.
On Saturday morning, the painter came by to take a peek at the new apartment. My dad had also told me to “get some color samples from the paint store” so we had a basis for discussion and an idea of what to order. He and my mom had already told me not to stray too far from the color scheme of the original apartment, just cause that would be harder and require more layers of paints and be more expensive, etc. (Solid advice.)
So thinking of the furniture I already owned and the colors that would match it, I thought a gray wall would look nice in the living room, where there was currently a beige one. I had no intention of making it much darker than the current color was, just enough to cover the beige easily.
So the painter arrives, and my dad immediately starts doing the talking. Explaining which rooms need to be painted, basically taking over the conversation before I can say much to the gentleman. But then, it’s time to discuss colors, and I did my homework, so with renewed hope I show some of the samples I got and explained my reasoning. (Such as the colors of the furniture I already own.)
“Gray is ugly, don’t do gray,” my dad says. I’m a bit annoyed. It is my apartment, after all. And he’s stating an opinion, nothing more.
“I thought gray would look nice with my furniture.”
“But it’s really ugly.”
The painter is a bit more eloquent, and he points out “While gray may work well in some rooms, I think you must not forget the color of the floor tiles you have here. They’re beige. The current color of the walls matches that pretty well, and I think with gray you would create a contrast that would not look good against the floor.” - a valid argument, and if an opinion, not stated as such.
I resign myself to the fact my homework was for naught, and agree: “I trust your opinion on paint more than my own. If you think the color should stick close to the original, I’m ok with that.”
He does explain we need to change the white of the room to something a little warmer, but other than that most of the colors stay the same. Fine.
When discussing a date, the painter says he’s only able to come the last week of the month. I urge him to come sooner because the moving van is set for the 29th. My dad says “If he can’t come sooner you just move in later” - to which I protest.
I’m leaving my current apartment because the heater is broken and I don’t even get hot water anymore, I’m not content waiting a week longer to move. I voice it as such. But my dad tells me to shut up. He seems alarmed that I’m advocating for myself and basically not agreeing with what he’s telling the painter (to take his time). I’m trying to be polite to the painter still, while also expressing the urgency of this.
My dad is getting in the way, honestly, and too willing to accomodate the painter, going as far as saying the living room does not need to be painted before the moving van comes. I give arguments on why that is a horrible idea (there are racks that needs to be attached to the wall and my big cupboards simultaneously, a job I want the movers to do cause they do this best) and the paint needs to be done first by then, especially in the living room, but I’m feeling like it’s one against two.
In that exact moment, I catch myself dissociating. I catch myself at the exact moment I’m ready to throw the towel in the ring and to flee into the safety of my head where there is NO frustration towards my father for not picking my side in anything or respecting my wishes, NO desire to advocate for myself, NO need to state any boundaries. It is safer there, peaceful there, and I want to go there. But I catch myself - probably due to the mindfulness training I’ve had - because I’m experiencing tension and I want to escape and I can’t and I’m stuck in that moment. So I stay in the moment, and instead of escaping, I experience sadness.
I did not advocate well enough for myself though. (Boundary-setting is a lesson for another day, I figure.) And I did feel like a toddler instead of a late-30-something adult. But for once, I did not dissociate from the unpleasantness. Because I *can* suffer through it. And it’s not the worst thing in the world either - and I can still understand where my dad is coming from.
He’s raised in a barn, in a way, used to speaking loudest and being heard, and advocating for his family. He does this because he cares. That does not mean it’s polite or right, but it is the way it is.
I drive home and cry - because I’m sad. It’s not full on sobbing, but it’s small tears, because I felt powerless in a situation where I should not have been. (Hey it’s my apartment and I’m paying a fortune to own it!)
Once back home in my old apartment, I head straight to bed, even if it’s just noon. Experiencing emotions is exhausting, and I need to sleep it off. (One could argue sleep is the ultimate way to dissociate.) Later in the day, mom calls me, and I tell her of what happened, of how I was sad this happened and how I cried and she’s like “oh dear, I should have been there. I know how he gets, I will have a word with him.”
Maybe I should have that type of talk with him myself, and not my mom for me, but she is the only one that can win in an argument from him from time to time, and she is able to advocate for me better than I can do myself sometimes, and I also felt like I had other things on my mind and I did not want to dwell on it too much myself.
But because I did not dissociate, I experienced sadness, and because I experienced sadness, I could tell my mother about it, and because she realized that was not a great thing, she advocated for me.
Had I dissociated, I never would have mentioned it ever again. My dad’s bossy behaviour would not have been adressed, and I would not have even realized what my mind was doing. But by catching myself during the dissociation, I could stop it, and now next time, I might be able to advocate better for myself. And my dad got a slap on the wrist for the way he acted, so he’s not without consequence either (and he did feel sorry.)
Small steps. But steps I would not have taken before therapy.
Blessing or a curse?
I want to leave this question to you guys. Is dissociation a blessing or a curse?
In a world as unpleasant as ours, it’s a bit of a superpower to not have to be “in the moment” when you are going through trauma, working at a shitty job, or having a horrible life.
I used to work with mentally disabled folks - and this included fantastic tasks like cleaning poop off the walls, changing diapers and wiping up vomit.
Doing this while dissociating is easy. Not having to throw up yourself as a result, is a plus. You can just “get over it” in your mind and do the work that needs to be done while still smiling at your clients, and not taking it personal. (I’ve seen some colleagues of mine do the same work, but get really resentful towards whichever client that had done the bad thing. While it’s ok to express what is right or not, I do not feel like actual resentment has a place in such a job. But they could not get over themselves or their emotions while doing the work. A pro-dissociator like myself had no issue with that.)
In wartime, being able to dissociate from your emotions can help you do what needs to be done. If you survive, there is still time to process the emotions at a later time.
Conclusion
So while dissociation can be a good thing in some situations, it is tragic if you dissociate all your life. Because you’re going to be “fine” with everything. You’re not going to advocate for yourself. And if you don’t do that, how can your life be better or more attuned to what you want? How can you even feel what you want, if feelings are alien to you? You will live a life that fits the mold of society or people around you. You will not listen to your true self, or your true self will be purely logical, like Spock. And while that’s not the worst thing in the world, you deserve to feel content, and perhaps even happy. That also means experiencing the negatives, but even that can feel like a relief when you haven’t experienced much at all.
To some schizoids, isolation is the only antidote to dissociation. Not being with others, makes the world safer to experience feelings. But what if isolation is not the solution, but mindfulness is?
If you’re a schizoid, how do you feel towards your own dissociation? Is it something you embrace, or something you’d rather get rid of? And would it not be worth it to invest the time and money in learning how to deal with your emotions, good and bad, in a healthier way?
If you haven’t yet, check out internetkindness on youtube. Amy’s a schizoid who is trying to spread awareness about SPD on a different platform than Tumblr, namely: youtube!
There are few channels that specialize in SPD, and even less that talk about SPD from a woman’s perspective so I felt like I could not keep this resource from you.
I also wish to state that while I still relate to schizoid men too, I think there’s value in understanding that women and men can present differently in mental health topics. And sometimes it’s interesting to explore where similarities between people with the same gender and diagnosis lie precisely and to explore if there are differences between the sexes.
One of the things she mentioned in the video I will link was that for her, in the past, she didn’t put a lot of effort in appearance and would have periods where she would hardly look in the mirror - I have experienced similar disinterest in my appearance. It’s also the reason why I prefer to talk about the diagnosis in blog-form as opposed to doing it on youtube or twitch. Schizoid men might also say “oh but I also don’t put effort in my appearance” - valid, but let’s be real, there are a ton of non-schizoid men that don’t either. It’s socially acceptable for men to do that. For women it’s still considered an act of rebellion. And I did feel peer pressured into presenting differently at a young age, because “all women wore makeup”.
Anyways, I’m getting distracted here - but check out Amy’s youtube channel. What I also value is that she’s trying to keep it positive - too many sources on SPD online are very depressing and make it seem like there’s no improvement possible or just don’t mention anything but the bleak and emo picture they paint of the diagnosis - I think it’s good to also focus on the positive things and on ways to improve your own quality of life when you are living with SPD.
It’s been a long time since my last blogpost and I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t had particular inspiration to write for a very long time. Not just for this blogpost, but also for fanfiction or other stories. I haven’t touched a pen in ages, and that’s very atypical for me.
In the past that was usually a bad sign. Being unable to write sometimes equated to being unable to feel anything. It was usually a sign that I was in a very bad place, going through the motions, and often utterly depressed. However, I feel like this time it’s different.
I went through EMDR therapy and have no longer had any PTSD attacks and my self-worth has steadily grown since then. While there are still things for me to work on, I’m feeling more self-assured, assertive and even content in life. Today’s blogpost is to focus a bit on what brought me there, and what I still need to work on.
An Ambitious Title
Let’s just say that “On the road to Enlightenment” is… well… quite pretentious a title indeed. But I do think it’s accurate.
What I mean with the term enlightenment is very broad. It’s the ability to have bad things slide off of you like butter off a hot knife, to have a sense of inner peace, to be like a tree unyielding to the wind, just swaying along… It means accepting your own position in life, and understanding what you can change of circumstances around you, and which battles can not be won. It means trying to be a little better every day, no matter the odds against you, but also being okay with it if the process is slow or sometimes comes to a standstill. It’s being your own best friend and your biggest supporter.
So even if I singlehandedly can not solve poverty or global warming or a pandemic, I can take my responsibility and help in the ways that I can control. And I can let go of what is out of my hands.
And most importantly: I understand that I am still the person who controls myself, even despite past traumas or my own character, it would be foolish to say growth is impossible.
So in that way, I do think I’m on the road to enlightenment. But I’m not fully there yet. And maybe that mountain is further away from me than I believe right now, but I’m feeling hopeful I can reach it.
Improvements I noticed
Less inclined to jump into drama
The past year, there are a few things that I’ve somehow let go.
In the past, I could get really into stupid arguments online. Someone said a dumb thing, and I would be there to refute it. And it wouldn’t make me feel better. It would just be a stupid way to get a little dopamine boost, until the asshole would respond with his own little dopamine boost, until we’d shredded each other to a pulp online. And a day later the process would begin anew, with another idiot of the day in another random spot on Facebook.
I still read a lot of things that sometimes have me start a sentence to refute whatever idiotic statement they posted, but nowadays, after a few words, I press backspace until no words are left, and I move on.
I bet it seems like a logical thing to do to some of you - not everyone gets dragged into useless discussions like that, but for me it was a miserable way to pass the time sometimes, and it would utterly drain me and even keep the focus from my job.
Instead, I did join more fandom groups with memes, and now if I do need a little dopamine boost, I prefer to check some of those memes, and pass on the best ones to some of my friends, brightening their days too. That’s a small way to spread positivity instead of rewarding negative behaviour with attention. And doing that constantly is like a breath of fresh air. It’s much chiller than before.
PTSD? Gone!
After EMDR therapy I also noticed that I no longer get triggered by my old trauma or situations similar to it. In my EMDR post I explained more about how it worked, and shortly after writing that post, we also wrapped up the EMDR therapy, and I noticed during situations that would otherwise have triggered me, I felt a little anxious, but only for a few seconds, and then I became aware of the anxiousness, I was able to remain confident in myself, and it never escalated to the point of tears or anger or a fight or flight response.
Mindfulness = happiness?
While we haven’t dealt with mindfulness in therapy yet (we probably will soonish), I do feel like I’m getting better at counting my blessings, also thanks to my lovely cat Vincent. He’s an absolute joy and I love having him around, he makes me incredibly happy and is such a smart boy. I do really think he’s responsible for so much of my progress.
It’s a massive improvement, because I started therapy with the ‘feeling’ that I hadn’t felt anything in ages. Nothing but anger, at least. To experience positive feelings, even if they might still be flattened in degree compared to what neurotypicals feel, is great.
Because two years ago, when I went into therapy, I only felt angry or tired, nothing else. I’m still tired sometimes, but not angry, definitely not angry, I’m feeling calm and instead of anger I feel determination, which is sometimes anger channeled into something useful. I could really get used to that.
Self-confidence
If you would have asked me a few years ago if I were self-confident, I would have hesitated, then probably said yes. But the fact I would have hesitated, says enough about how it really was. I’m feeling more assertive now, and at work I dare to offer my thoughts and frustrations more than I ever did before. Many schizoids can probably relate that they avoid conflict at work. We do not like that attention for ourselves.
But let’s give a dumb example - suppose a radio is on at work, and it disturbs you from performing well… a schizoid might remain silent to keep the peace, and then suffer in silence.
Nowadays, I would no longer keep silent. I would talk about the issue. I would also accept if there would be no solution to my problem, but I would advocate better for myself and voice my frustration honestly. I’m no longer covering up frustration in honey, because that doesn’t work. I have learned to be more direct, even though I’m not sure how I learned it during therapy - I suppose it might be a result from the EMDR therapy (and from getting older, probably.)
Ongoing Struggles
Focus and flow
One of my biggest issues to this day remains executive dysfunction. I can get paralyzed at the thought of completing certain tasks. I’m still not certain where this comes from. I’ve asked my therapist if she thinks it might be ADD or something of the sort, but she has not given it a straight answer, to my frustration.
I still receive help in the household from my mother, and I wonder if this is going to be a permanent thing and if I need to get a household help for the rest of my life, or if this is still something I can grow out of, as I’m slowly nearing the age of 40.
I can’t find focus for household tasks and certain other things, and can’t always find flow for work or certain hobbies either.
With flow I mean the feeling of “being in the zone”. Even when doing some of my favourite things, like gaming, I can still feel out of the zone, and get bored of it, or restless.
That’s actually a relatively new thing for me. I never got bored. Like, ever. And now I’m finding myself bored more easily than before.
I do sometimes find flow too, in work or hobbies, but it’s not a permanent thing. Finding better focus and better flow is certainly going to be a task for the future.
No ambition
I still have no ambition whatsoever. And I’m not even sure if that’s such a bad thing or not. But the thought of changing jobs, changing apartments or changing most of anything is too exhausting to even consider. And so I remain at a standstill.
Sometimes I also think 'oh wouldn’t it be nice to do more Twitch streaming?’ but then I never find the energy for it, and I’m like 'you have work, that’s enough, you don’t need to spend your energy on streaming, you’re not social enough for it anyway.’
And then I wonder why I want to Twitch stream in the first place and I can’t even answer the question. Because others do it and make money that way? Because I like gaming in my free time? I truthfully have no idea.
I’ve also lost all ambition to write. While I didn’t write with the idea of getting money out of it, it was still something I did regularly, and I haven’t written anything decent in many many months. It was one of the only things I liked to do regularly and it has fallen away somehow, and that does worry me a little.
But maybe the question is whether ambition is a must in a person’s life? Is it a must in a schizoid’s life, or is a life without ambition still a good life, and a person without ambition still a good person?
Conclusion
So while I’ve come a way already in my therapy, some big hurdles are still ahead, mostly the executive dysfunction. Does it come from something schizoid-related or could it be due to some perfectionist trait or ADD?
I also regret this is one bit we can’t tackle with EMDR - because EMDR worked very well for me, I’m kind of sad not every bit of my personality can be improved upon with that type of therapy.
I’m at that point in therapy where I’m grateful for the help I’ve received so far, and I’m able to name several things that have greatly improved, but I’m also a little afraid that the next thing to tackle can not be tackled or improved upon at all anymore, like I’ve reached the limit of my therapist’s expertise or my own ability to change.
The executive dysfunction has been with me since I was a teen and I honestly don’t know how it can go away. I hope that in a year from now I can give an update where I’m like “oh, good news everyone, it’s gone, and here’s how I did it!”
Until then, feel free to come into my inbox with any questions you might have (about anything) and I’ll be certain to leave a response for you on my blog or in private!
To my knowledge, there is no therapy that cures Schizoid Personality Disorder. Probably also because it’s a disorder, not a disease, and thus you’ll be Schizoid your entire life. You can’t cure it, but I’m hopeful there are tools that Schizoids can be equipped with that will improve their quality of life.
I have only known that I’m a schizoid since May or so – so I don’t have a great deal of experience with different forms of therapy. All I know, at this point, is EMDR Therapy.
But I see in Facebook groups that some folks don’t know what it is, how it works, or how it can be effective as a therapy method for Schizoids. I also understand your skepticism to it. All I can do is explain how it works and why I think it might be a better treatment method for Schizoids than others.
Important note: I’m not a therapist, I’m a schizoid. This is drawing from my own experience with EMDR therapy. If therapists find useful info in here for helping other schizoids, that’s great though! Don’t hesitate to come into my ask if you have more specific questions about anything I say in this blogpost.
What is EMDR Therapy?
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. That’s what it means.
If “Eye Movement” makes you think of “Rapid Eye Movement” – REM-sleep, then go with that thought for a moment. During our REM-sleep, we process events from our life. It’s where we dream and get over the business of the day and process both good and bad in order to be able to move on the next day. The eye movement, the pupils going from left to right, is a sign that you’re processing things.
Now EMDR therapy believes that this left to right movement is something which helps you to process things. By simulating the REM sleep in a rather vague way, it hopes to process events as quickly as you would do in your sleep.
(Hypnosis is something which works similarly, I assume, though I’m not speaking from experience. But the swinging of the pendulum should remind you of REM sleep as well. It’s a bit like that. But EMDR is NOT hypnosis, important to know!)
During the therapy, I was given one buzzer for each hand – which would vibrate in one hand, then in the other, as quickly as you would see your eyes move during REM sleep. During that time the therapist will help you focus on your breathing and you may close your eyes too. This is as far as the comparison to REM sleep goes. Then, there is the work you put in yourself with your therapist – the questions and answers and method behind it. I will try to explain that next.
How does it work?
Once more, I feel it necessary to state I’m a patient, not a therapist, and thus I might only be aware of the tip of the iceberg and not of all the work underneath. However, since I’m writing for fellow Schizoids mostly, I still want to explain to them what they can expect.
I’ve already explained you’re given buzzers in your hands and that you close your eyes and that you focus on breathing, but before you’re at that point, there will have been a bit of talk therapy too. But during this talk therapy, the therapist might not go too deep into the matter, and just note down “ok so she had this traumatic thing happen, and that traumatic dream she remembers vividly, and her mother told her this happened when she was 1 year old”, and the therapist is writing all of that stuff down.
Then when the EMDR therapy starts, you focus on one particular memory or dream at a time. Even prenatal ones. Even things of which your memories is cloudy – because the memory itself is not as important as the emotion which caused you to remember it for so long. It’s also not a bad thing if you remember things worse than they actually were or if you vilify a person in the memory – it’s not like we’re going to the cops with this information, we’re just thinking of these events in a function of helping you overcome something stressful and maybe traumatic.
I will gladly explain how it works with a fictive example. For example: you remember your mother being angry with you when you were two years old.
1. The therapist will ask you to think of the situation. With buzzers in hand, you’re given a minute or two or three to think it over.
2. The buzzers stop. The therapist asks you where you feel tension in your body. For me it’s usually in my throat, in my chest or in my head. She asks you to focus on that location while overthinking the memory. Buzzing starts again, you’re given another few minutes.
3. Buzzers stop once more. What emotion is it we’re picking up in, for example, your throat? You feel anger – or sadness – or fear. Let’s say it’s anger in this case. You’re asked to rate it on a scale of 1 to 7. Let’s say it’s 5/7. Buzzing starts again.
4. A few minutes later, we reevaluate. How’s the anger? 2/7? We try again. Until it is 0/7. No longer angry about the memory? Feeling in your throat is gone? Very good.
5. We focus on the memory again. What is the lie you have told yourself as a result of the memory? In the case where you remember someone being mad at you, your lie might be something like “I am a nuisance, I am annoying, I do not deserve this life” – it’s a lie because you probably aren’t a nuisance, you’re not annoying, you do deserve this life. You’re asked to think about the memory again, but with the positive thought, that you do deserve this life.
6. You repeat it several times until your memory is associated with a positive thought about yourself, and no longer with negative emotions and negative thoughts about yourself. And then you’re done!
These steps take between 20 minutes and several sessions. Some memories are not as intense but still worth processing, other memories in my case have taken about 2 sessions in total, but usually by then I was over them.
I can imagine folks with bigger traumas to take more than 2 sessions. I’ve also never had like a really bad session where it went completely wrong. Before we began with EMDR therapy we did do some exercises on how to find a “safe spot” in your mind and learned how to retreat there in case a session went bad. Luckily in my case it was never needed.
Why EMDR would work for Schizoids
EMDR works well in the following situations:
PTSD
Anxiety
Depression
Panic
Anger
Feelings of despair
Lack of motivation
Fear of being alone
Lack of trust in others
Memories of traumatic experiences
Interpersonal behaviors
(I stole that from some graph somewhere. XD)
While schizoids don’t have all those things, there are plenty of things most schizoids have, like PTSD, Depression, sometimes anger, sometimes feelings of despair, lack of motivation, lack of trust in others, etc… I think this makes folks with our personality disorder very good EMDR patients. There’s plenty of stuff for us to tackle with EMDR.
Advantages for Schizoids
I do think EMDR has a few big advantages for schizoids. We don’t like talking most of the time and so talk-therapy where you go back and forth with your therapist and are asked to talk yourself into exhaustion takes ages and will feel to the therapist like they’re trying to pull teeth from your mouth while you keep your mouth closed. I don’t think it’s very effective for many of us and it’s also very exhausting.
Apparently, when trying to process PTSD (something plenty of schizoids have), EMDR has a success rate of over 80 percent and only takes up half the time that talk therapy does – aka: it’s good for your wallet too and the success rate is very nice!
EMDR is focused more on introspection (something we are usually pretty good at!) and while you do need to open up a little about traumatic events, you don’t need to talk about it too much. And while you process it, it’s mostly in silence, in your mind, with the therapist guiding you through the storm like the captain of a ship, but it doesn’t feel very intrusive.
During my first session of EMDR I was shocked to find sadness in my body. I’d begun therapy with the idea I was bleh and had no emotions and suddenly with the aid of my therapist, I found a spot of tension and when I opened up that spot, there was an emotion inside. It was mind-blowing to me.
Biggest Hurdles to Overcome
Schizoids or neurotypicals, I think during the first session you feel a bit like a fraud. I spoke about it with some neurotypical friends that had gone through EMDR to get rid of some PTSD and they also said that during their first sessions, it felt so weird and it felt almost fake. Because you’re being asked weird questions, like “Where is the tension”, “rate it”, “how much is it now?” “keep breathing, keep quiet for 2 minutes while I do this buzzer thing, how is it now?” – and it’s just a weird thing to go through, you’re not even sure what the buzzer is doing, so you’re going to feel a bit weird about it and you’re probably going to fake a bit of it in the beginning.
Basically, it’s a “fake it til you make it” situation – just go with the flow, try not to overthink it, and after a few sessions you will begin to see it make sense. You will notice that different memories go with different emotions that are hidden in those pockets of tension. I can’t always predict which memory will evoke which emotion precisely, but that’s what makes it interesting.
I also struggle a lot with finding the lies I’ve told myself in those situations. I’ve often told myself lies that come down to “I’m stupid”, “I’m a waste of space” and that sort of thing – it’s nice to see where those bad thought patterns actually come from, so it’s very satisfying when you struggle finding the lie and suddenly you got it.
Food for thought for therapists
I’m only a patient, but I think for schizoids there might be purpose in not only using EMDR for traumas, but also for examining “happy” moments. I think it might be an interesting experiment to look back at a happy moment with a schizoid and to look for where positive emotions are hiding in the body, and for trying to analyze them in the same way you do the pockets of tension and the negative emotions inside.
Since schizoids experience so little emotion, I think reexamining those moments might prove to the schizoid that they ARE capable of emotion, even if it’s rarely, even if those emotions can only be unpacked in front of the therapist, in a safe environment. I’m not sure what the effect would be of doing this regularly, but I can’t imagine it to be bad. That’s a thesis idea I’ll leave to someone else. ;-)
Conclusion
EMDR might be one of the best treatment methods for Schizoids. Personally I don’t think we need medication (as long as comorbidities don’t require it), and talk therapy has a high chance of us just ghosting our therapist because we’re so sick of it. Group therapy? Don’t make me laugh. I don’t know if it exists but I don’t think we’d enjoy therapy in group – we’re schizoids, after all.
EMDR is quicker and you talk less, and it’s a safe way to experience emotions – something we hardly ever do – even if they’re mostly negative ones.
I’m not done with EMDR therapy yet so I have no idea what the long term effects will be or can be, but even at this point I’m already positive about it. I do recommend it to other schizoids that are looking for a form of therapy. If you wish to open up about your own experiences with EMDR, my askbox is always open!
In the midst of a pandemic, I got a cat. Vincent has been with me for nearly four months now, and I recognize myself in him, and him in me. When asking schizoids what kind of animal they think they are, there are a variety of answers, but many folks will just say “cat”. I think I understand why now. Comparing schizoids to cats is unlikely to win this blog a great deal of credibility, but hey, I’m just a schizoid, not a psychologist, and as goes for most schizoids: I don’t really care what you think about what I do anyhow.
(Picture of the beautiful Vincent, sleeping… He’s named after Vincent Van Gogh.)
This particular blog isn’t as serious as some of the previous ones, and is more about cats than about schizoids, but I sincerely hope you do enjoy it nonetheless!
Why it took me so long to get a cat in the first place
I’d lived alone for 10 years in a small apartment, and always wanted a cat, but was simultaneously fearing I would be a bad owner. (And for the first years of living here, there was also a Belgian law in place saying I couldn’t get animals if my landlord was against it, which he was.) (Fortunately that law has been changed a few years ago, so that argument no longer matters.)
But I was afraid I would be a bad cat owner too, because I have executive dysfunction as one of the side dishes that goes with my SPD, and this means that some days I don’t take good care of myself. That goes for eating, doing healthy stuff, cleaning, paying my bills on time… Important stuff. Over the years I’ve learned to take better care of my bills and I got help with cleaning. Eating is still something that I’m not doing as a normal person would do it. (I can eat a wedge of cheese and call it ‘dinner’. Also, what is this ‘breakfast’ thing so many people speak of?) As for doing healthy stuff for my body, like sports, yeah that ship has sailed. XD
So naturally my biggest fear was that I would be unable to take care of a cat and that I would neglect the creature’s needs as I neglect my own. A friend who struggled with depression and had a cat said that I had to stop worrying about that, and that I would take better care of the cat and it would take care of me in return. I’m glad I believed that friend, because she was right.
I have no trouble taking care of my cat: cleaning the litter box, making sure they eat well, that they get playtime… It’s easy, actually. And when things are wrong, I have been to the vet to check them out – which is more than can be said for myself. (I need to go to the dentist but have been putting it off for a long time…)
I was also afraid that a cat would be ‘too much’. As a schizoid, I get on edge with people surrounding me 24/7. Turns out cats are not people and I have no problem living 24/7 side by side with a cat. (I’ve been working from home and my sweet Vincent is always by my side and follows me across the apartment most of the time. It’s not a bother at all, it makes me smile.)
So I’m being a top-notch cat mom and loving it! And in return, I get some lovely cat snuggles and head bumps, and some free serotonin to help battle depression!
(just look at this serotonin machine!)
Cats are lessons in consent
There’s this tweet that’s been going around the internet for a long time which is controversial to dog lovers, but absolute truth to cat lovers.
The tweet reads: “someone said cats are a lesson in consent and so many controlling people hate cats because they can’t control them and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since”
In a way, can’t the same be said about schizoids? “someone said schizoids are a lesson in consent and so many controlling people hate schizoids because they can’t control them and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since” – schizoids who have been bullied when they were younger can probably agree.
We’re originals, and we don’t let ourselves be controlled by the masses. (Though obviously, not even schizoids are immune to all kinds of manipulation, some types of manipulation are harder to pull off on us. I always feel like we’re immune to emotional blackmail in a way that neurotypicals are not. We get red flags going up in our system, and unless we ignore them we’re harder to fall for certain types of obvious manipulators.)
When schizoids clash with figures of authority, it’s often controlling people we’re clashing with in a similar way that cats piss off those same controlling people because they do their own thing and they don’t care if you like it or not.
But if you’ve been with a cat, you know that you can’t pet the cat, unless it wants you to, you can’t hold the cat, unless it wants you to, you can’t do anything to a cat, unless it wants you to. And if you do push on, they either run away or lash out in anger. That sounds like me, if you do stuff I dislike, I either run away, or I get angry as a means to scare you off. (The first more than the second.) So in that way, the lessons cats teach us about consent, are about the same lessons schizoids can teach you about consent.
Why cats are good for schizoids
I’ve mentioned it before, but cats are free serotonin machines. They’re soft and adorable and they purr when they’re happy. And schizoids are like permanently depressed zombies in a way – we can use all the serotonin we can get.
Serotonin won’t ‘cure’ being a schizoid, but it can change us from being a miserable schizoid into one that’s okay with life. So do look for serotonin in your own way. (And if you’re a dog person, I’m certain they distribute plenty of serotonin too!)
Getting a cat won’t cure us or stop us from wanting to be a hermit in some way, it will just encourage us to become ‘crazy cat ladies’ with 17 cats. But I bet we’d be happier that way than if we were alone.
Cats are also good for getting us to keep moving a little bit. If you’re a couch potato, a cat is nice to have. Because you have to play with them a few times a day, it will get you moving as well, and cleaning the litter box is a workout in itself. It’s all very minimal movements, in a way, so don’t expect to lose pounds from getting a cat, but if you’re as immobile as I am most of the time, a cat will get you out of your chair and using those muscles.
Unlike humans, cats don’t drain us. They don’t have draining emotional stories to tell us. (Though when you hear them meow about how hungry they are, you can imagine them telling you how they’ve been starved for MONTHS without food – that’s how dramatic they sound) – luckily, you know the truth and they’re just being a hungry little bastard. They demand very little – some food and some playtime, that’s it. They sleep like 16 hours a day and when they’re awake they don’t bother you for most of it either.
And cats love us in return. We have no trouble ignoring a cat for a while, and that’s something that cats often need to get used to their new owners. They don’t want to be chased around the house when they’re afraid, or they’ll end up hiding under the bed, they just want to explore on their own terms, and we have no trouble giving them the distance they want, because it’s the same sort of distance we would want for ourselves.
I think that our own disorder only helps us to understand cats better. They’re mirrors to us, in a way, and I hope that if you’re a schizoid cat owner, you agree!
(Vincent being a #schizoidmood)
How to get a cat then?
When I wanted to get a cat in the middle of a pandemic, I wrote e-mails to three local animal shelters. I basically said: “I’m looking for an indoor cat, preferably one that would not wreck my place, that can live alone. It’s okay if it’s an older cat and I’d love for it to be a ginger one.” Two of the animal shelters didn’t have any cat to offer me, but the third immediately sent me pictures of this cat that looked ill at ease and like he wanted to leave that place asap. He matched all the criteria.
He looked depressed – and for that reason I immediately wanted him. We could be depressed together!
Vincent’s story
The last week of July I went to the animal shelter, first to just meet the cat (always a good idea, and I also needed to wait for cat stuff to arrive, like the litter box and bowls and such). He did not come to me or act super affectionately – he was absolutely miserable. He was easy-going though, and as the owner of the place picked him up, he just let himself hang like a bag of potatoes until she placed him on the window sill. He was dodging my gaze, and it was clear he wanted to go back to the cat tunnel he’d been in, so he’d feel protected from the other cats and from us humans.
We did not bond at that moment, and my sister laughed at me afterwards. She said: “Why on earth would you take a cat that shows no interest in you? You have to get one that at least seems eager to go home with you!” I disagreed. Because the cat I had seen was miserable and just wanted peace and quiet, and that was what I could give him. It was also a cat that dodged conflict, not scratching or hissing, but just looked depressed. I was certain I could offer him what he needed.
(this pic was taken at the shelter, the week before I got him - as you can see he was in his tunnel, shedding like crazy, his eyes were dirty and he wasn’t taking great care of himself due to his depression. He was skin over bones and has since then gained a bit of weight.)
So a week later I took him home. On the drive home, he started meowing, uncertain of the new life that awaited him. His story was a rather sad one. He’d lived with a woman and 3 other cats and 3 dogs on a large property. The lady had moved to a smaller place, and with no room to keep the animals separate, the dogs were constantly chasing after the cats. The woman could not keep them apart anymore and was afraid of accidents happening, and dumped her 4 cats in the asylum. (They’ve all been adopted since, last thing I heard.)
In the shelter, I also saw him among the other cats, but he did not seem attached to them at all – if anything he seemed scared of them in such a small space, and one alpha-cat seemed to be ruling over them all. I can imagine he was glad to be rid of that particular cat at least.
I let him settle into the hallway the first days – his base camp – and spent time sitting on the floor with him nearby. The first hours he didn’t even leave the litter box – he felt safest where I couldn’t get to him. Later on he was allowed in my living space, and he spent most of his first weeks on the chairs underneath the table – once more in places where I couldn’t get to him.
I had intended to keep him from the bedroom, but when I was sleeping at night, he would start meowing at 4 AM at my door, so eventually I caved and let him in. At first he slept on the radiator bed I placed there for him.
It took about a month or so for him to accept me as his owner. One morning as I was still in bed he came, sat on top of my chest, and just looked at me for a full two minutes, like he was trying to communicate with me. No idea what he was saying or trying to convey with his long stare, but he hasn’t done it since, and things have only gotten better between us since then. I think he realized then it was gonna be me and him from then on.
He now no longer sleeps on the radiator bed, but at my feet all night. And when I’m awake in the morning or evening, he’ll curl up in my arms and sleep there for fifteen minutes before he moves back to my feet for the rest of the night.
We play during the day, something he had to learn because his previous owner had never played with him, but he needs it to get some energy out of his system, and if he’s hungry, he lets me know with his meows.
He makes me smile, a lot. He’s handsome and funny and like all cats, very curious. Though not about the outdoors – he is happy being indoors. When I open the door to the apartment hallway, he always runs back into the apartment – the outdoors is the last place he wants to go. But when I come home from shopping, he’ll investigate the bags to see what I brought home. When I’m eating, he’s nearly on my plate to inspect I’m not eating anything poisonous. (And to get some food for himself.) He’s hilarious and my best buddy now.
(he’s spoiled rotten)
What if you want to get a cat?
Keep in mind it will be costly, and you want to be able to take your cat to the vet and get them the stuff they need to live a good life at your place. If you are financially tight, consider waiting until you’re better off, OR consider fostering cats. (Fostering cats often means they give you stuff to take care of the cat, like food and litter and such, and will even pay vet bills, but it also means you might need to give up the cat if someone wants to adopt it.)
During a pandemic, most shelters are closed for visitors, but they will happily respond to emails or facebook messages you send them as long as you show interest to get a cat.
If you want kittens, keep in mind they usually only let them get adopted in pairs – some shelters don’t, but here in Belgium I haven’t found any that do that unless the kitten really doesn’t get along with other cats or has some special medical needs.
I can only recommend adopting an older cat. Vincent is 7 and still full of life. So many older cats don’t get a second chance, and it is usually easier for the shelter to tell the character of an older cat than it is for them to estimate the character of a young cat. The plus side with older cats is that they’ve also been neutered and had their shots, which makes it a little easier on your purse at the start. (Though Vincent had to have some teeth pulled in the first month, which was quite costly too.)
Talk to other cat owners you know about what they do for their cats, products they use, and for all behavioral issues or quirks you notice in your cat, check out Jackson Galaxy on youtube, he’s called “the cat daddy”, and he knows all there is to know about cats. You’ll be a better cat mom or dad yourself if you watch his videos, it will help you interpret your own cat’s behavior.
Conclusion
If you have the means and are a schizoid who is feeling a little down, get yourself a serotonin machine, I mean a cat, in your house! You are saving a life and will most likely spoil the creature rotten. Not only that, but cats aren’t human, and are therefore perfect companions to schizoids! Schizoids are often hermits, but how often do you think they’re crazy cat ladies too? ;-)
This article got published a few days ago and does not focus on the clinical criteria for SPD, but instead on some of the issues Schizoids face. I thought it was very refreshing and interesting to read. While I felt like all of it was true, there were a lot of things in the article I hadn’t read elsewhere before.
When it comes to Schizoid Personality Disorder, I find there’s so little info online on how to deal with it. While not all schizoids are comfortable holding jobs, many love to work for the income it provides, which in turn gives them the opportunity to have their own little haven without starving. (Ah, the joys of capitalism!) Some even really enjoy the challenge their job provides. Others suffer through jobs that aren’t a good match for them.
In this blog I want to give tips to employers about how to deal with schizoid employees, and to the schizoid employees themselves - don’t worry, you’re an asset!
(Also a quick note: covert schizoids are the ones you’re most likely to encounter on the workfloor, overt schizoids usually have it a little harder with fitting in.) (I can’t speak from experience there since I fall in the covert category.)
Now, the chance that an employee will tell you they’re schizoid, is minimal. First off, many don’t seek out therapy and thus don’t even know they are schizoid. (I didn’t know until I was 36.) Second, those that know they’re schizoid, will often feel like they can’t trust you with something as personal. Third, in some cultures it’s a big taboo to talk about mental health, especially if you have something that is labeled a ‘disorder’, and thus they will not tell you because they fear you would just fire them.
But in the rare occasion that your employee opens up to you about schizoid personality disorder, at least now you have this bit of advice from a schizoid who’s been employed in two countries (Belgium and the Netherlands), in a few different sectors and who has been in situations where the employer did not know, and is currently in one where the employer does know.
To the employer
First off, don’t be terrified or apprehensive if an employee tells you they are schizoid. Schizoids are better rooted in reality than most people and don’t suffer from delusions or paranoia like certain other personality disorders. They’re often quiet observers, analytical, witty… if they dare to open up in your company!
While it’s called a disorder, it doesn’t necessarily require medication or a great deal of therapy – it’s a state of being. If someone tells you they’re a schizoid, what they are saying is that company can drain them, that they are immune to most forms of peer pressure, that they don’t mind not talking to people.
Keep in mind that Schizoid Personality Disorder can be accompanied by depression, PTSD, anxiety and other comorbidities. While a schizoid seems emotionless most of the time, when your schizoid is suddenly crying at work, it’s possible you triggered some PTSD and that’s why they’re unable to perform well. But a schizoid without any comorbidities should, in theory, give you less trouble than any other employee.
You might think “humans are social beings”, but the same can’t be said for schizoids. We operate in a world where most people around us are just different from us, and accommodating to their social needs can exhaust us. (And in my experience that part gets worse with age.) We’re not very social beings. We get energy from being alone.
Consider us the ultimate introvert, while most managers and CEO’s I’ve met are on the other side of the spectrum, massive extraverts. To explain that bit: Did you find the lockdown horrible? Did you find it draining to talk to your employees online instead of at the coffee machine? Well, for a schizoid it’s often the other way around. Talking to colleagues through chat online is easier, more fun and less draining than talking to them at the coffee machine, and while you get energy from those conversations in the lunch room, they drain the schizoid person. We’re wired a little differently, so keep that in mind.
As an employer, you want to get the most out of your working relationship with anyone in your company. For schizoids, like other employees, you can just ask them what they feel or think, but in some cases schizoids will try to avoid conflict, and thus just say what you want to hear or not appear analytical at all. If they don’t trust you, I wish you the best of luck in getting them to open up. (You’ll need it.)
Especially young schizoids have not yet learned from experience to open up and might not indicate when things aren’t working out for them when they see it’s working out for their other colleagues. While immune to peer pressure (they might not eat the birthday cake everyone is having when they dislike it, or conform to the same clothing standard of the rest of the company when it’s not a strict rule), they will avoid conflict and thus they might not be fully upfront if the new work islands are ruining their concentration or when you place them among the loudest colleagues in the group and they just suffer quietly between them.
So in general, ask them whatever you like and be open and honest, and with any luck the schizoid will be self-critical, open and honest in return to you.
Ideal jobs for schizoids would be jobs they can do alone, like being a night guard, administrative jobs they can do from home, or jobs with animals or in nature. But that doesn’t mean that that’s all they’re good for. Plenty of schizoids work in retail, customer support, elderly homes, healthcare, IT, or are teachers, lawyers, even psychologists themselves! Having Schizoid Personality Disorder should never be an excuse to fire someone from a job, because it’s not a reason as long as the schizoid is doing their job well.
Practically
Feedback moments
Schizoids have their walls up very high, nearlly all the time. During feedback moments, that’s true as well. Give your feedback, but don’t expect to see shock, anger, sadness, relief or happiness on the face of the schizoid. They might not respond differently to your praise or criticism than if you were to recite the alphabet to them. Ask them what they will do about the issue and they’ll probably come up with a solution themselves or give you the acknowledgement that you wanted to hear that they understand the problem now.
Whatever you do, don’t get harder and meaner in your feedback because you see no response. Someone once did that to me and it triggered PTSD that I’ve been coping with for 15 years now. I did not realize why my employer was so mean to me, but now I realize that I must have sat there like a zombie, hardly acknowledging his feedback with any visual cues, and he felt a need to “drive it home” to the point where my body is now convinced I’m being sent to a war zone when my employer says it’s time for my yearly evaluation.
Control/manage
Schizoids don’t enjoy other people controlling everything they do. I’ve worked in helpdesk situations and do great in situations where I’m not given specific scripts to stick to. It makes for a better customer experience too and I get the job done and I get it done well. By forcing scripts on schizoids (but probably on plenty of regular folks too), you’re destroying motivation and only making the job harder. Let the schizoid do their job and use their magnificent brain, they’ll figure it out. Be there as a person they can come to for help. Tell them they can always ask for help or advice, and they’ll ask it if they need it, but don’t try to be too authoritarian, it usually doesn’t stick well with the schizoid and they’ll just learn to dodge you instead.
Flexibility in shifts
One of the biggest advantages of having a schizoid employee is that they might be willing to work Sundays or Saturdays or evenings or nights while others prefer to spend that time with family or going to the bar. I volunteered to work on Sundays and evenings because if I work on Sundays, I don’t have to go to carnival get-togethers with the family (huzzah!), and evenings because then I don’t have to work with all my colleagues together at once, but I just have one other colleague around and it’s quiet and I can listen to music.
I’m also the go-to-person for my colleagues when they have an evening shift they need to switch in case of emergency. I don’t mind switching from morning to evening. (I’m also an evening person so my efficiency will be better if I work late shifts compared to when I work early shifts.)
So while a schizoid person might not enjoy being in large groups, don’t say they’re not team players! They will gladly help out the company when they can, as long as they’re not being taken advantage of.
Dinners/parties/celebrations/team buildings
Every company has reason to celebrate at times and sometimes you want to thank your employees for their hard work with a nice party or event. A schizoid might not like every type of party or teambuilding though. I’ve been to a few I really enjoyed, but others where I was like “can I just work instead?” We did a very intimate speeddating teambuilding with our closest colleagues which I really enjoyed (wait, what, a schizoid enjoying a speeddating sort of thing? – I liked it because it wasn’t small talk but really witty questions that you could discuss with colleagues.), but there are sometimes also parties where the entire company is there and that are just too many people whose name I don’t know and whom I don’t fully trust, with music I don’t like and lots of drunk people, so I’ll rather bail out of those. Basically, my tip would be: definitely extend the invitation for the event, but if they say “no”, that’s that and don’t take it personal. (Also, they once didn’t ask me to go to a party because they know I never go anyways, and then I was a little sad they hadn’t asked me. I’d still like to say no and feel included. ;-))
Privacy
Most employees like to know a lot about the private life of their employers. Schizoids might not share a great deal. They like to keep work and private life separate, but let’s be real here: there’s often not a great deal going on either. Asking “What did you do in the weekend?” might result in a slightly annoyed schizoid. They probably didn’t do anything you’re interested in hearing. They probably had food. Watched shows or played games. Slept. A lot. And that’s what they might do for the next 51 weekends of the year as well. Don’t invite yourself over uninvited either, I never open the door unless I know someone’s coming. It’s not even something personal, it’s just that home is sacred and I wouldn’t even open the door to my elderly grandmother.
Someone else said that intrusion upon privacy is even something they consider offensive, so best not to do it!
But, if you’re patient, you will get to know your schizoid employee better. We just open up slower than most, so don’t pressure it, we’ll tell you what we want to tell you when the time is right.
Carpooling
I think carpooling is great for nature but from a personal point of view I hate it. Some companies are big on carpooling, sometimes to events. One schizoid told me she drove 6 hours to go to a company event because she didn’t want to take a flight and sit next to a talkative colleague. That’s how much we prefer to be alone when travelling sometimes. For some schizoids it’s the only time they have alone. At home they might not live alone, at work they’re never alone, and thus that time in the car is sacred to them, the only moment they can recharge a bit and be alone with their mind. (I have the same with lunch break, I usually take my lunch alone, just to recharge a bit. It’s nothing personal, I just need the me-time.)
Ambition
When asking a schizoid where he or she sees themselves in a few years, they might offer a blank answer. Schizoids don’t have a great deal of ambition. They will rarely say they see themselves as a manager or anything of the sort, instead they’ll express they’ll be good employees with a good knowledge of all systems and such. Don’t expect your schizoid to be ambitious – they might be perfectly happy with an entrance-level job.
Please do not mistake this as a sign they have no interest in the company or in their own career with the company. They just can’t imagine a lot of things changing very fast in their career path.
Mediators and Listeners
Schizoids are great mediators and listeners. If you have a problem, tell them the problem and wait for their pearls of wisdom. They’ve been observing society for their entire lives, even if they’re not very social people, they understand society better than most. They’re also very good listeners and will earn a lot of trust from their fellow colleagues that way if they open themselves up to them. Just be mindful at the same time that you’re not expecting them to do a specific job AND sit them down next to people that love to talk, because those people will love to take advantage of the fact they’re great listeners and get their own egg out of their system. Not a lot of work will get done then.
Bonding with colleagues
If you want a schizoid to bond with colleagues, it’s not really going to happen if they work 9 to 5 with 10 other colleagues in the same room. They’ll become part of the wallpaper. If you want them to bond, then let them work with other colleagues in 1-1 situations where it’s just the schizoid and the other colleague. For me, that’s during my late shifts and weekend shifts that I’m usually alone with one other colleague, and that way they get to know you in a non-intrusive way. For me it always works better that way then if I spent a regular 9 to 5 job among a large group of people.
Open Office
One of the hypes that I really dislike on the work floor are all the “islands” and “open workspaces” they have now. Everyone is stuck in the same room, often very close to one another, and it’s often loud (even when everyone is trying to be quiet) and distracting. A manager is like “but I want people to play off of one another!”, but to a schizoid it just means they can’t think properly and they lose track of what they’re doing and they need to listen to conversations from other colleagues about their kids that are going through college or the soccer match of their youngest. I once worked somewhere where not only half my colleagues were constantly on the phone, but the others were not allowed ear plugs to listen to music because the team lead wanted folks to listen and talk to one another. Needless to say, in a room of IT’ers that decision was not appreciated. IT’ers in generals are very introverted, at least allow them ear plugs to listen to music if they’re in a loud environment, you can’t afford to have them fuck up because they can’t focus. (Not to mention that now with covid a lot of open offices are like ‘oh, maybe we should not have had everyone in one big area, maybe we should have at least kept a few smaller offices with walls in between them….’)
Meetings
If you are having weekly meetings with your team, let me just tell you now, so your schizoid doesn’t need to tell you: your meetings are boring as hell and repetitive. It’s more efficient to have brief meetings when new things are happening or problems need fixing. Weekly meetings where you go over the same agenda each week aren’t really necessary, the neurotypicals are just abusing the fact they don’t have to work for an hour. :-P I felt like someone needed to say it, even if it’s not even a schizoid thing to remark. Sorry, managers. Monthly meetings are more than enough in most workplaces.
To the schizoid
Whether or not it’s wise to tell an employer that you have SPD depends on many things. I notice that culturally there are big differences. In Belgium and the Netherlands I feel like there’s a very open attitude among millennials regarding mental health. When I told my employer I was going to a therapist because I wanted to explain my anger outbursts and PTSD and I wanted to learn how to control them better, I got nothing but praise about how brave I was to take the first step and to talk about it so openly and to trust them with the news.
It took quite some time before I had the schizoid diagnosis, and after processing it myself, I also told the same team lead about what they’d found and what it meant. She’s a big extravert so it was rather funny comparing and explaining it to her, but she was intrigued and also confirmed that even if I am a schizoid, I’m still a teamplayer and my strengths are the weaknesses of others (and the other way around.)
When working in a team, there’s room for everyone and schizoids aren’t toxic people or anything of the sort. We can be barometers to sense the mood in a room and whether something is wrong in a team.
With all of us working from home with covid, my lead has also seen proof in my numbers that I perform better when alone at home than when I’m at the office in an open space. She’s also thinking of, when covid ends, letting me work from home several days a week and no longer having me come into the office four days a week. (On Sunday I always worked from home anyways.) Maybe when covid is over I’ll just be asked to come over one or two days a week.
Personally I think there are more advantages than disadvantages for companies that hire us.
However, it really depends on the company. Ten years ago, I’ve worked in a company where I saw people go if they had diagnosis of ADHD or other much milder things, where they were laid off and told to pack their stuff. Not necessarily the moment they opened up, but they never remained for longer than a year after that. Some companies do not welcome diversity or folks that decide to have such an open dialogue with their employers.
In my opinion, if you’re a schizoid and babyboomers are in charge, I don’t think it wise to open up. They do not like diversity or just folks that ask attention for their own mental health in the same way millennials do. They don’t see it as an advantage but as a disability to their own company. They don’t want folks to ask any work from them, they like it as a one-way street. They don’t want folks with labels. And some labels are more harmful than others. Personally I don’t think schizoid is a harmful label, as long as your employer does not confuse it with schizophrenic. And some employers will think a label, for the sake of having one, is already a bad thing.
How people look at personality disorders also depends on the country you are from. Belgium and the Netherlands are rather open (- especially the Netherlands). In the Netherlands they often say: “Alles is bespreekbaar”, which means that you can talk about anything, without judgement. If you admit something weird or extravert, you’re sooner called ‘brave’ than ‘weird’. Or you’re called both, affectionately.
Political climate at your job/in your country is also a means to predict how well it will be received when you admit to having a disorder. The more to the left, the less folks will make a fuss, the more to the right, the more they’ll think it better to exclude those that are different.
If you decide to never tell your employer, that’s perfectly fine. If you are happy in your job, why would you? If you are not in therapy or anything of the sort, there’s very little reason to tell them.
I’m very open about my current treatment as well, and now that I’m in EMDR treatment it’s possible I’ll have days of emotional turmoil and thus lessened productivity. I warned them in advance so that if it happened, they’d know about it. With my PTSD attacks increasing, we also agreed that I could just tell them “having an attack” or something of the sort, and then they’d know what I was doing to self-care and that I’d be back asap. (But it helps not having to explain everything from the start in that very moment, since that’s counterproductive.)
Or as we say in Dutch “goede afspraken maken goede vrienden” – meaning that good agreements make good friends. We got agreements on what to do in certain unexpected situations so that if a PTSD attack happens, they know exactly what to expect from me with just a word.
I realize such a good relationship with superiors at work is rare - I’ve had a lot of jobs before I landed this one and some were straight-out toxic. I would not recommend opening up in an environment where folks will use it as a means to pick on you. Luckily not all workplaces are like that, and I hope you find such a place!
Conclusion
Schizoids are hard workers that just want to make some money so they can support themselves. They might not be very social at work but they can make up for it by being a team player who doesn’t mind taking over unwanted shifts. They thrive when working at home, alone and don’t need constant supervision. They can be insightful and are good observers, and they are peacekeepers within the group. You won’t catch them having fights with colleagues. Since they read the mood in a room very well, if your schizoid is closing off completely or looking ill at ease, that’s probably a sign that the mood on your work floor isn’t great. There could be some toxic people out there that are preventing the schizoid from opening up at all and those same people could be ruining the mood for others as well. (Or worse: a toxic leadership style is also possible.)
If you have further tips or questions, my inbox is always open! I’m certain there are many more tips to give, and not every tip will be effective for every schizoid. (I suppose this is more for the covert schizoid, like myself, as opposed to tips for helping the overt schizoids.) None the less I hope it’s helpful and that if you have a schizoid employee, you now know there’s no reason to panic!
While I usually write about how Schizoid personality disorder affects me, I think there’s a lot to be learned from drawing comparisons to fictional characters. In fact, before I got my diagnosis, I was writing fanfiction in which I poured very large portions of my soul and very being, often without realizing I wasn’t really writing about other characters, but I was exploring my own inner self. I loved writing about outcasts, about recluses and sometimes I didn’t know if I just was in a sort of love with the characters I wrote about, or if they wereme.
At the age of 18, we’re talking about 2001 here, I got into Harry Potter. And with that I mean: I got into Severus Snape. Described as an ugly git and a mean bastard, I still loved him to pieces. (And Alan Rickman portrayed him beautifully, RIP)
And here might be the reason why he lured me in straight away: Snape is a schizoid, like me. And that only clicked when I got my diagnosis a few months ago. 19 years after first encountering the character. And after rereading some of my own fanfictions, I started realizing that what I’d described as Snape’s problems and needs in those stories, were my own. Strange how that works!
In this blog, I’m going to run over some traits of SPD (schizoid personality disorder) and explain how Snape fits into the criteria.
This post serves three purposes:
To people who have no idea what schizoid personality disorder is, this is a means to familiarize yourself with the disorder by exploring the traits while you imagine a character you already know.
To people with schizoid personality disorder, this is just meant to be a fun little blog where maybe you can recognize some traits of yourself. No worries, I have not forgotten we’re all on a spectrum and each schizoid is different.
To fans of the Harry Potter novels, I hope that you come to realize that people can identify with flawed characters for very personal reasons. Don’t be mean to fictional characters (unless they’re Umbridge I guess XD), because you never know who identifies with them. Your rejection of a character can feel like the rejection of a person who struggles with the same things. Anti-culture, in all fandoms, has to end. It’s not adult. It’s not wise. It’s mean. It’s exhausting.
I also feel like I need to make a statement about JK Rowling’s intent: I doubt she knew what SPD was when she wrote Snape. She said she based him off of one of her old teachers – no idea if that man had SPD or was just generally unpleasant. The way that Snape matches SPD is eerie though, just like Luna matches schizotypal personality disorder rather well. (More on that later.) An actual psychologist might disagree with me and say “No he’s not schizoid because….” – and hell, I’d love to hear it. I don’t mind it if this post, written by a schizoid but not a psychologist, starts a discussion that will help people understand the disorder even better, even if I’m wrong in assessing Snape. Or if we can learn to understand Snape better because of me being wrong, that’s also a win-win situation.
Ready? Let’s dive into it!
Cause
SPD is said to be caused by a combination of genetics and environment – as is the case with many other personality disorders. But ask around in schizoid groups, and most will tell you that there were issues in childhood with abuse, lack of warmth or understanding at home, or the presence of a “bad parent”. According to webmd: “Some professionals speculate that a bleak childhood where warmth and emotion were absent contributes to the development of the disorder.”
We all know that Snape’s early childhood was not a happy one. He had an abusive muggle father and grew up at Spinner’s End, the opposite of what you could consider a happy childhood home.
When you grow up in a loveless home, it ruins a lot of your own enjoyment of life. You get trust issues, you become awkward, and so when Snape finally arrives at Hogwarts, he gets bullied. He’s already rather isolated (he only had Lily), and they picked on him because kids can sniff out weaknesses and he was an easy target.
The bullying did nothing to stop the disorder from developing further. Many schizoids have gone through bullying themselves, and it does nothing to help you grow closer to human beings as you get older, quite the opposite, a bond of trust is broken and it’s incredibly hard to heal that. You’ll be suspicious of everyone you meet once that sort of thing happens. The more bullying you receive, the more you hate the world as you grow up. Maybe that’s not true for all people or all schizoids, but I bet some can relate.
You might say: “But Harry also got bullied at the Dursleys and he turned out fine!” Well, I guess he did. That’s the thing with many heroes – their tragic backstories make them poster boys of “look what they overcame and how he saved the world!” – but it’s not that realistic, and if you’ve got a genetic predisposition to develop a personality disorder instead, you’re screwed. Let’s also not forget that Harry’s first year in life was a very loving one. The very first year in a child’s life is crucial, and if things go wrong in early childhood, that leaves scars that most people carry with them for the rest of their lives. Snape never had that steady sort of home, not even for one year, or if he did, there’s nothing to indicate he did.
Diagnosis Criteria
Okay, time to get digging! According to the DSM-V, you need to display at least four symptoms in order to be diagnosed with SPD. Also keep in mind that these traits need to be present for longer than just a few months or a year or so. You might recognize some of these traits as something you’ve gone through yourself if you’ve ever been depressed – it’s when these traits last for what seems like your entire adult life, that a diagnosis with the disorder can be made. (I’m also not familiar with every other trait of every other disorder in the DSM-V, so as I stated in the beginning, it’s possible that other personality disorders are even more fitting of Snape, but that I just don’t know them yet.)
The seven criteria are:
Lack of desire or enjoyment for close personal relationships
Always chooses solitary activities
Little or no interest in sex with other people
Experiences little pleasure from activities
No close friends other than immediate family
Indifference to criticism or praise
Emotional detachment and lack of emotional expression
➤ Emotional detachment and lack of emotional expression
While this is usually at the bottom of the list, I want to put it on top. This is what they also call “flat affect”. You can give us a present, and it might seem like we’re not truly grateful. We may laugh with a joke, but the light never reaches our eyes. Emotionally, it doesn’t seem to an outsider like there’s a lot going on, and if it is, it’s going on so deeply within our souls we’re hardly aware of it ourselves. Think of Snape’s monotonous voice when talking. Now Alan Rickman is a brilliant actor and emotes with very very small signs sometimes, and it’s not like when talking to me, you’re talking to a wall. (But my empathic mask makes me appear rather normal to most folks.) (I don’t think Snape has a mask like that.) Other characters that have schizoid traits are, for example, Mai from Avatar the Last Airbender or Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher. If you know and visualize these characters, you may understand better what I mean with the “lack of emotional expression” then. Also, Snape being a great Occlumens? It’s because he’s the reigning champion in suppressing his emotions, like all schizoids are. We would make wonderful Occlumens, I think. XD Snape being mean? Not all schizoids have a good amount of empathy, they’re too emotionally detached for that. (Others are very empathic to some causes, but might be picky in what they are empathic about. For example: they can be empathic towards animal cruelty and Black Lives Matter, but don’t give a shit about other causes.)
A lack of empathy is what makes plenty of people an easy prey to fascists. Without empathy, what moral compass is going to stop you from becoming a bigot? (And I also want to state that within the disorder you’ll probably find people of all political leanings – many schizoids also seem to have a thing for the underdog, and thus seem to often lean towards the left instead of the right side of the political spectrum. But as with ‘regular’ people, you’ll find people swing both ways.) But here, in Snape’s case, his hatred for his bullies and his father (a muggle) pushed him right into the Death Eater’s arms, and they were glad to welcome a man of his skill, maybe even giving him the illusion, for a while, that he had found a new family. It didn’t last, and eventually his eyes opened to what the Death Eater’s really were. He was too young and naïve to see what they wanted of him (and the one person he loved), and it basically ruined his life. He was a teenage fool, and after losing Lily’s friendship, he had no one left to keep him out of that bad group of friends.
➤ Lack of desire or enjoyment for close personal relationships
Does Snape strike you as the social type that’s trying to make new friends all the time? Have you ever seen the man enjoy the company of another character in the books? Not just tolerate, not just need, but ‘enjoy’? Even when it comes to Lucius or Karkarov, it seems he is just keeping an eye on them, observing them rather than offering true friendship.
Maybe McGonagall might be an exception. He seems amiable towards her, in a competitive way. He might get a kick out of their arguing. She’s certainly an intelligent woman so he might enjoy her company for intellectual reasons.
➤ Always chooses solitary activities
We see Snape engage in a few activities at Hogwarts, such as going to Quidditch matches, or being present at the Yule Ball. Death Eater meetings and gatherings in the staff room might be social activities, but let’s not pretend Snape has a lot to say about whether he attends those or not. As a teen he already excels at potions, a solitary activity, and when we are given a glimpse of his “summer” lifestyle at Spinner’s End in Half-Blood Prince, he’s just reading. He certainly doesn’t entertain a crowd in his spare time, like, for example, Slughorn does.
➤ Little or no interest in sex with other people
I hear you coming now. “BUT LILY!” Schizoids are often asexual, but not necessarily sex-aversive. When asking around in a schizoid group, about a third of the schizoids seem to be in relationships or are even married, perhaps even more. And many of the others have had sexual relationships in the past. Many have tried to make relationships work, only to realize at a later point that that sort of life was not for them and that they would never be truly happy in a relationship. Other schizoids are happy in relationships – so it exists! It’s not impossible! (Remember: you need 4/7 traits, not 7/7 to be schizoid.) Also keep in mind, if Snape really was interested in sex, why would he pine after a dead woman for 16 years? He’d be over her way sooner and into someone else’s pants way sooner too. Lily was the first person in his life that gave him any kind of warmth, so him pining after her is not strange or inexplicable behavior. She offered what he craved, what he lacked, and he mourned her for the rest of his life, because he feared no one would ever give him that warmth. (And he kind of turned that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by being such a recluse.) He dreamed of love, but we have no idea what it would have been like had he actually ever had his affections returned. Maybe he’d have enjoyed a relationship with her for a long while and she would have been the only person he could have tolerated, or maybe after a year or so he would have thought “this is suffocating” and ended the relationship.
➤ Experiences little pleasure from activities
Can you recall Snape laughing in any scene? Smiling, even? I can imagine him to feel rather content when brewing potions or studying the dark arts, and he does have passion for what he does. But to a schizoid, passion and pleasure are not necessarily the same. We experience emotions differently. In some ways we don’t experience them at all, in other ways, we might feel like there’s a wall around our emotions, and we have no idea how to get over that wall and check what the currently active emotion is. But with logic, we can determine “I guess I’m happy now that I’m doing this thing I like doing.” Intellectual pursuits are fun too – like solving a puzzle, it gives a little boost of dopamine when you make it to the next level, so it’s not surprising he excels at Potions.
➤ No close friends other than immediate family
Basically, Snape only really had Dumbledore, and that bastard only used him to win the war. (I have beef with old Dumbledore, okay?) But Snape confided in Dumbledore, and the other way around, and so I think it’s safe to say that there was a true friendship between the two. When Dumbledore died, Snape was truly alone. (Which is incredibly tragic and heartbreaking when you think about it – in the last year of his life, Snape had no one, really no one, as he tried to keep Hogwarts ‘safe’ and eventually died. And everyone hated him for killing Dumbledore, not knowing the truth about his allegiance. Everyone who had once spoken kindly to him, like the other professors at Hogwarts, now considered him arch enemy #2, behind Voldemort.)
➤ Indifference to criticism or praise
Compliment or insult a schizoid, and it’s not like they won’t give any response at all. They might say “thank you” or they might get a little defensive about the insult, but they won’t always lose a lot of sleep over it. It kind of depends on who the praise or criticism is coming from. I can imagine that it did mean something to him if it came from Dumbledore, whom he cared about. I don’t think it meant anything to him what his students thought of him, since he didn’t give a personal level of shit about them. There’s also a moment where Umbridge shrieks “You are on probation!” and it’s described as “Snape looked back at her, his eyebrows slightly raised.” Then she says that she expected better after how highly Lucius Malfoy always speaks of him and she dismisses him. Snape then gives her “an ironic bow” – he really doesn’t give a rat’s ass and I love him for it.
These are the 7 criteria that you need to fit 4 of to be diagnosed with SPD – I managed to link all 7 to Snape – so I think it’s not unlikely that Snape is truly a schizoid. Now, for the next part I would like to highlight some other comorbidities which many schizoids also have, that seem to appear in Snape as well.
Comorbidities
➤ Depression In about half of all schizoid patients, depression is or has been present. How do you notice that in Snape? The greasy hair, among other things. Bad teeth. Always wearing the same outfit. If you’ve ever suffered from a bad depression, you know how difficult it suddenly becomes to shower at a regular interval, how you can go days without brushing your teeth, how wearing comfortable clothing is more important than looking fashionable – how it is absolutely meaningless to look fashionable because who the fuck cares anyways. Snape doesn’t seem to give a hoot about himself or his appearance, which strikes me as a sign of depression. And what does he have to be happy about? He knows Voldemort is going to return and he’ll have a cursed job as a double-spy. He knows he’s probably going to die. I wouldn’t be happy either.
➤ Anger Outbursts/PTSD Not all schizoids have this, but it’s something I have myself and which I’ve written about extensively in one of my previous blog posts. I look at it as a way of my inner self breaking down the walls and coming out to say “I know that I’ve been quiet for the past 37 years but what the fuck I’m really angry about this and have been for a while and I’m not going to contain it any longer” – and then the anger comes out disproportionately. It’s hard to impossible to really control such an outburst. And often, there is a very obvious cause to the outburst. Sometimes it’s PTSD related. For Snape, while he does not emote often, you see a few outbursts – like when he is face to face with Sirius Black in the shrieking shack, his childhood bully. He seems mad at that moment, not at all composed anymore, the sign of a real anger outburst. (I think it’s PTSD helping that anger build.) A few moments later, he thinks he has turned in Sirius Black to the Ministry, Sirius, who he holds responsible for the death of James and Lily (and it’s especially the latter’s death he can’t cope with), so when Sirius escapes, he loses it again. Then the next time he gets really angry is when Harry enters his “worst memory”. That’s a few years later, during the Occlumency lessons. While he’s no longer shrieking, he’s white with rage. My pro tip: don’t impose on the privacy of a schizoid, we get mad. XD In Half-Blood Prince, he’s got a moment where he’s like “Don’t call me coward!”, looking ‘inhuman’. I too can get anger outbursts over false accusations, and this one must really hurt, because at that moment, he’s trying to save Harry’s freaking life while the boy is all like “lemme at you I’mma kill you like you killed Dumbledore for fun!” – Snape was probably grieving the loss of his only friend and confidant and knew he was on his own from that point onwards, and then you get this bloody teenager trying to drag you into a wizard’s duel you’re not in the mood for, calling you a coward, which is the last thing you are. Man it has to suck to be Snape. I also want to state that there are many moments when things go wrong in class, but Snape never loses his temper like that. He’s not pleasant and he punishes students, but he doesn’t get mad – he gets even. That makes it all the more interesting to analyze the moments that he does go bananas.
Random Thoughts
Before I finish this blog, there are still a few small things I’d like to get out of my system about Snape and SPD.
➤ Snape and Luna
They are my favorite characters, but also because they’re very, very alike and very, very different at the same time. Both didn’t have a great childhood (Luna lost her mother at a young age) and they get bullied as kids at Hogwarts. Snape is called Snivellus and Luna is called Looney. All the suffering they endure, affects them differently though. Snape gets meaner, Luna only seems to get nicer. I see them as two sides of the same coin. One dark, one light, both a little eccentric in their own way. When you look at it from a personality-disorder point of view, then they both have personality disorders that are related to one another. Snape has Schizoid Personality Disorder, Luna has Schizotypal Personality Disorder. Schizotypal Personality Disorder is where you’ll find a lot of eccentric people who believe in conspiracy theories. Both are class A personality disorders. Some people might even have the two personality disorders at the same time. Schizoids seem to be rooted in reality with their thoughts, schizotypals can really start believing strange things if they’re not careful, alienating them from others And, in case you’re now wondering: “So many schizo-personality disorders! Is this also schizophrenia?” No – schizophrenia is when you have delusions and hallucinations as well. Read up on those disorders if you’re interested, because these descriptions of mine are too brief and don’t do it justice.
➤ Snape was a bad teacher
Not fully, and yes, he was. I think knowledge-wise, Snape was way better at Potions than Slughorn ever was. You notice when Hermione can’t keep up in her sixth year while Harry is sailing through Potions thanks to Snape’s book. Snape’s a genius and would have been able to instruct his students to be more efficient when brewing potions. But personality wise? Don’t put a schizoid in front of a classroom. And for that, I kind of blame Dumbledore. Snape wasn’t asking for a job as a teacher, but that’s all Dumbledore had to offer, and thus he put Snape and his unwilling students in a room together where none of them wanted to be. I think Snape would have been better off as some kind of a scientist, just him and his books, inventing spells or potions. But he was not given much of a choice, and he was forced to socialize with teenagers (ew, gross), and that must have drained him terribly. It’s a wonder he was usually roaming the hallways at night because I would have been too exhausted to get out of bed. That makes you realize it’s truly a work of fiction because who on earth has that kind of stamina? :-P (No, in all seriousness it’s probably also depression at work, keeping him up.) Snape was a jerk to Harry and Neville and Hermione on various occasions, and not all of it was to “keep up appearances” to the Slytherins. He seemed to even enjoy a bit of sadism here and there. You could contemplate why he poisoned Neville’s toad. Was it just to spite poor little Neville, or was he hoping his student would perform better under pressure? (Which Neville did.. The toad didn’t die.) It’s a cruel way to teach a lesson, but I think he must have thought the end justified the means. But what a traumatic experience to Neville, who then had Snape become his greatest fear.
➤ Purity culture vs Snape
We’ve seen a shift on both Tumblr and other social media where fandom is about purity culture. Back in 2002 folks were like “We love the baddies, deal with it”, and the people that didn’t love the baddies actually dealt with it and you could joke with people who preferred the Gryffindors and just poke a little fun at one another, but it was fun fandom. But over the years I’ve seen fandom change. Nowadays you can’t even express love for Snape without someone seeing it as their moral obligation to remind you of what a “bad person he really was”. To them I can only say that I like him for his best qualities, and forgive him for his worst. And honestly, I don’t need to justify liking a character to anyone. If I want to put Umbridge-posters in every room of my apartment, are you going to stop me or call the cops on me? Purity policing is weird. Very American, too. (Though I’ve seen some Dutch folks go apeshit as well over purity concepts.) And as a Belgian I don’t have time to put up with that shit. XD And purity policing also is just nasty when you consider that some folks are like “I relate to this character” and the next person is like “THIS CHARACTER IS EVIL AND DESERVES TO DIE!” My response to that part of fandom is: “Just fuck off already, jerkface.” Personally I was heartbroken by his death, because I feel like he could have made up to the people he’d hurt, I would have loved to see relationships mended between him and McGonagall and him and Harry and such, but instead we were left with him passing on some awkward memories to Harry and then dying. (Tbh I’m not the greatest fan of his crush on Lily, but whatever, I can accept it and understand it. She was the only light he ever knew.) It’s not his fault he didn’t get to redeem himself as a character, not fully - and that’s what makes fanfiction fun. So if people want to explore that in fic, let them. A character like Snape is too much of a treasure to shove under a carpet and pretend he never existed. Write all the things about him, have him have all the adventures!
I think I’m done now! If you stuck around until now, 10 points to Slytherin or whatever house you’re from. (Probably Slytherin if you’re reading about Snape.) What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment, send an ask, or whatever!
I read a paper that talked briefly about anger outbursts in szpd and they considered it a way to overcome dullness and loneliness. I get anger outbursts too, not often and usually quite short in length as well. I don’t really agree that it’s a way to overcome dullness and loneliness though because I’m not trying to get closer to the person. Quite the opposite, I hope my anger outburst scares them away for good. But I haven’t studied this like they have so my opinion has no weight behind it. http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0213-61632010000100005 Thats the article, they talk about anger outbursts about halfway down for a paragraph. Be warned it mentions SA
Thank you very much for pointing me to this article, @pinkfairypuke!
I’m not really sure what to think of the statement that anger outbursts are a way to overcome dullness and loneliness. My first response is “hell no, that’s probably a psychologist projecting their own reasons for getting mad onto schizoids! How does he daaaaaare to say such a thing!” (Dear psychologists, I’m semi-joking. :-P)
My own triggers for anger outbursts are never “Oh I’m bored” or “Oh I’m lonely” – it’s when other people take away my agency or try to spread lies about me or things like that, that I can get really angry. If people would have left me alone at that moment, none of it would have happened. So the “Oh I’m lonely, I shall get mad now”-theory really doesn’t land with me. Na-ah.
However, I haven’t read the article yet, so I’ll get right into that to see if the article is able to change my judgement.
This is the bit you were referring to (and I bolded some of the causes they give for anger in schizoids):
Lain suggests that a schizoid individual in one sense is trying to be omnipotent by enclosing within his own being, without recourse to a creative relationship with other, modes of relationship that require the effective presence to him of other people and of the outer world. The imagined advantages are safety for the true self, isolation and hence freedom from others, self-sufficiency, and control (p. 75). As a result, the schizoid becomes fearful of crowds, as they force upon her the recognition that others exist. A way to escape it might be by becominganaggressor. The author suggests that aggression in persons with SPD might contribute to a new construction of self (more visible as a result of enhanced assertive, extrovert, direct and confronting attitude) in an unconscious attempt to become more interesting and colourful for other people. Aggression can be considered in this way as an effort to overcoming dullness and loneliness. An expression of aggressive resistance could be interpreted as assertive behaviour,refusal to remain an outcast (that is normally absent in schizoid persons) and opportunity to rigorous transformation, and it might be an important step of “being in the world” and becoming released from loneliness.
So in simpler terms, to me it seems like they name three different causes for aggressive behavior in schizoids:
To escape social situations
To construct a new self (a more assertive self when trying to “fit in”)
To overcome dullness and loneliness
They state it differently and make some links I would not make myself, but unless I know the exact study cases, I’m not sure how to interpret some of the links they made. I can however explain the three causes I took from the article myself.
I can agree to the logic behind their observations to some point, and I’m glad it’s not just that “dullness and loneliness” are causes, but that they give two other causes that apply to the anger outbursts in you and me..
To escape social situations: I’m reminded of a documentary I saw of the hikikomori in Japan. These are young men that never leave their rooms, often because they have no desire to interact with others or get a job. (In my opinion, they’re probably people with forms of autism or schizoids. Full time jobs are hard to keep in our Western world, never mind in Japan where you have to work 60 hours a week if you want to make your family proud.) In many cases where parents try to get them to leave the house, they get very aggressive in order to make their parents back off. It’s very clear that in that case, they use aggression as a tool to get what they want, to be left alone and to be allowed to stay at home. OP, this also reminds me of what you say – you get angry to get people to back off – preferably for good.
To construct a new self/a more assertive self: in part this reminds me most of myself. I often get my aggressive outbursts at moments I need to stand up for myself, as described in my triggers. So in order to grow into a more assertive self, the aggressive outburst pops up simultaneously. As someone on Facebook stated, there seems to be logic to my triggers, and it’s often when I’m being assertive (or trying to be assertive) that it knocks me out of balance and the anger comes with it. I can only state for myself that I have no desire to be angry, but when frustration builds up, it needs to come out. Usually it erupts fiercely, like a volcano, but after a short burst it subsides again to stay away for months in a row. (Though that used to be with 10 year intervals before - the frequency has gotten worse as I’ve aged and am trying to improve myself, even if it goes against my very nature. A part of me fears I won’t ever fully overcome the anger. While I’d like to believe that the larva turns into a butterfly, a part just fears I’m just going to turn into something even nastier and completely fucked up. Or something dead.)
To overcome dullness and loneliness: I can’t really say that I can imagine an example of this in adults, or that I remember reading this in a post from another schizoid on Facebook or elsewhere, but in children it’s typical to start an argument before bedtime in order to not have to go to sleep, to not be alone in bed. Aggression can be a means to get attention, even if it’s only negative attention that it gets them. If you are in a psychiatric ward and no doctor can see you when you need to speak to someone, punch someone in the face and you can bet you can see a psych the moment you’ve calmed down. (Hey, I’m not telling you guys to do this, and this will probably prolong your stay there and possibly land you with a criminal record, but that’s how it works in the underfunded psychiatric institutions of the western world.) I’m not sure that’s something a schizoid would do, it sounds more borderline to me - but some people have both SPD and borderline, so maybe it’s something that occurs quicker in folks with a combination of those disorders.
Thanks again for sharing the link to the article, @pinkfairypuke, I found it very interesting! I hope my brain vomit is of use to you!
I want to start this particular blog post by saying that what I am about to describe today, might not be very common in schizoids. Maybe it’s not schizoid at all. Maybe it’s just me. Schizoids have what I’ve seen described as “flat affect” – as in that they show very little emotions. However, during my lifetime, I’ve had a few anger outbursts. These might be PTSD related in some cases. PTSD *is*common in schizoids. These attacks have been happening at an increasing rate in my lifetime. Hardly at all before the age of 30, but then more and more after that age until I decided it was one of the reasons to seek therapy.
The outbursts are usually incredibly brief. Such an outburst only lasts a few minutes, sometimes just a matter of seconds, but the spike of adrenaline often affects me for a few days, and afterwards, I’m a sobbing mess of guilt and other negative emotions for often hours in a row, and I’m exhausted as hell.
I will describe the triggers and my own reaction and what the experience is like. Sometimes I call it an anger outburst, but it could also be a form of anxiety attack or adrenaline attack or panic attack. I honestly don’t know the correct, professional distinction between all of them.
When it happens, my fight or flight response is triggered, and I usually choose “fight”. I’m not sure if I never choose flight, or if choosing flight just doesn’t trigger it and thus I’m hardly aware I even made a choice afterwards.
I really don’t know what the correct label is for my own “attacks”, but if after reading this blog, you feel like you know, then don’t hesitate to reply, send me an ask or reach out to me on facebook.
An overview of outbursts
Very often, my outbursts are work-related.
The very first time I had it was when I was about 16 years old. I had forgotten my homework, something which did happen a lot. I was a good student, but forgetful. I always forgot a book, sometimes I did forget to do homework too, but in this case, I’d done my homework but left the book at home. When the teacher asked, I was ashamed to say I’d forgotten it at home, but I said it. Another girl in my class, someone who I always found disrespectful towards me (and a bitch), was like “she probably didn’t do it!” – even though it was only the first thing she said to me that day, I decided it would also be the last thing she said to me that day. She said it in such a taunting manner that I barked back at her: “I DID DO IT!”
Now, for me to bark was rare. I was usually quiet, friendly and never looking for a fight. I dodge confrontation at all times. I was sooner a mediator or observer in the classroom than a fighter. But in this case, the fight or flight response got triggered, my adrenaline rose up, and I decided to stand up for the truth, and thus I shouted back in her face. She was visibly startled (when you never respond that way and know how to carry volume and fierceness in your tone, it lands) and she backed off immediately with an apology.
The teacher (who really had nothing against me, I was a good student) didn’t mention it either and just let me be for that hour while I cried where I sat.
I was a mess for the rest of the day. The first hour I sat in class crying and shaking, completely confused by what I’d done. Later that day I tried to keep up the pretense I was fine, but I was exhausted.
I don’t think it happened for another ten years afterwards, until as a 26-year-old, something very similar happened at work. I don’t know what the precise cause was, but a colleague of mine was a bit of a sneaky bitch, always gossiping behind everyone’s back. Calling her a bully might be an overstatement, but she was not a great person. She had two faces and I did not trust her. She said something that struck a nerve, fight or flight response was triggered, I chose fight and spoke back to her, then I ran out of the room, slamming the door. Then the next hour or so I spent on the toilet, crying. Very adult. Very professional. In what I call the “discharge”, after the adrenaline had left my body in the rage of anger, there was so much guilt and confusion I could not face anyone.
Skip another few years. A different situation. Once again at work. I do a helpdesk job, but it’s high-demand. We are expected to be flexible, answer phones, mails, social media, in various languages, about various subjects, always creating tickets and being productive. In the morning as I drove to my work place, I saw a small van of the internet company outside. My first thought was: “they better not fuck up our internet connection today, we’re behind on tickets.” An hour later, the internet goes down. I can’t do my job. There’s pressure on us to perform, and I get so angry at the thought that there was no problem but that those two idiots of the internet company outside managed to ruin our internet… While our leads ask us to switch to hotspots, my VPN connection decides not to work along, and I get so frustrated by this ridiculous problem that it triggers another outburst and I have to hide in the toilet in order to sob out my frustration.
Another outburst, one from over a year ago. I’m at work. It’s been busy as hell. I’ve been working overtime. We’re asked to fill in a self-evaluation. It’s a bit of work, but I’m glad to do it, I find it very important to do. So I do it after my time. So it’s 5 o clock and while others are going home, I’m still behind my desk, filling in the evaluation so I can take my time for it. After thirty minutes I’m done and I click “next” – but the site gives an error as though nothing has been saved. In no time at all, the fight or flight response is triggered, I take my keyboard in my hands and smash it down onto my table. I break its tiny fragile legs. A few meters away from me two colleagues were talking and they look at me like “wtf?” – I mutter an apology and sit there shaking, trying not to cry. (In the end, my evaluation got saved correctly, which makes it even worse, the site just gave a weird error after saving. I did not have to do it again.)
Something else which triggered a really bad episode was when I was at home, not at work for a change, and I was in a fandom discord. I can’t remember the exact cause, but mods were angry with me for a specific discussion in which I had not held back. I wanted to defend myself, but they denied me the opportunity to do so and gave me a strict warning. Without a means to stand up for myself or express my own emotions in a safe way, I exploded in anger, then in tears, just behind my computer, shaking, being a mess, eventually feeling exhausted. (This was a PTSD trigger for me, which I recognize as related to PTSD I got at the age of 21.)
This week I had another explosion.
I’ve been working on a new project with a few others of my team. Every week we get a few days to work on the project, each a few days. Last week I did two days, and this week I would be doing three days of work on the project. There’s a ton of work to tackle, so I planned it out and had planned out all three days. The third day, I start working in the morning (at home), with a clear vision in my mind of what I’m going to do that day so that everything is done before my colleague needs to continue the day after.
I’m at it for about ten minutes when I hear from the colleague that she gets to do the project that day, instead of me. She gets to do it for the rest of the week. My brain just short-circuits for a moment. I’m angry as hell.
In this case, it could be compared to a balloon that got inflated to a very big size, but did not pop immediately. Instead there’s a tiny hole of air and it’s deflating. In the minutes while I’m super-angry, I finish some of the stuff I must finish, mails that I had to send out and had already planned the day before. I use the adrenaline boost as a wave to do as much as I can in as short a time as I can. I take the energy from that moment and use it to be productive for the few minutes that I know it lasts.
I simultaneously express my anger about changing the shift on such short notice with the one responsible for this change. (via chat) I don’t blame her personally, but I voice that it affects me a great deal when she makes such changes without me knowing a day in advance. (While I express this anger I remain professional at the same time.) But slowly, the adrenaline wave is ending. A few minutes later, it’s over, my project work is done, and I’m a sobbing mess, unable to do my job of answering the phone while helping customers with their questions.
Luckily, I have a few great colleagues and team leads who know I’m in therapy for this reason, who also know I’m a schizoid, who know that I’m dealing with PTSD and who also know that I’m currently in EMDR treatment, which might cause things to trigger me more easily. So I just have to type to one: “having an attack”, and a few minutes later she’s calling me, and by then the anger is over and it’s a sobbing attack, and I explain through my sniffles and tears that I exploded, over what I exploded, and she’s immediately like: “Okay, what do you need to do right now in order to get over it?”
I state that it’s very exhausting, and that sleeping it off might be good. She agrees. It’s about 9 o clock, I go back to bed, and at 1 PM I am back at work, answering the phone, still exhausted, but at least able to answer the phone in a composed way again. I quit at 5 PM and by 6 PM I’m in bed again, sleeping. My productivity level in the afternoon was low, but at least I contributed in some way.
The Thoughts That Come With The Exhaustion
I feel most of these outbursts in my body for two days. The first day it’s like I just ran a marathon in a period of 3 minutes or so. The second day it’s like I ran a marathon the day before. :-P It’s just very tiring to have these outbursts. It drains my energy and my emotions.
At first there is anger, but almost at the same time there’s also guilt. There’s sadness and defeat. I remember the thought process of my last outburst very well, since it was only a few days ago. It was something along these lines:
“Schizoids aren’t ambitious people. You know this, but you also know that if you want to get your own place, not just rent it, you need to earn more. So you have to prove yourself. You have to work harder. You have to be more sociable. And you’ve been trying just that. This project is a way for you to prove you can tackle important work and maybe that might earn you a promotion in the future. That’s part of why you’ve been doing so much overtime for this project. And it’s a nice project. You like the project. But now that you’re having this attack, you’re only proving that you’re weak. You’re proving that you’re unstable. You’re proving that you need to remain at the lowest possible rank in this company because you can’t be given responsibility with this attitude. Not that you want to be a lead, but how can you be in charge of this project or any other in any way with these outbursts? What if you’d been doing a presentation to the CEO of the company about the project and you had such an outburst? What if he saw that? Not only would he want you gone, it would reflect badly on your coworkers and the team leads that are giving you this opportunity. They’re being patient with you, but it can’t last. At some point, they’ll have had it with you and they’ll see that they can only use you at the lowest possible responsibility, in a job where you’re easily replaced if you have an outburst. They’re good people, but capitalism doesn’t work on charity. In the end it’s about profit and you need to make sure you’re keeping up with the rest. You can still keep up with the rest, but you can’t prove to be more, so you’ll be stuck at the low-level income jobs for the rest of your life. Forget the ambition. It’s not real ambition. You have no ambition. This is why schizoids aren’t ambitious: because it’s defeating to always end up back at the low-level entrance jobs. Most schizoids don’t have jobs for longer than a few years, you’ve proven that time and time again before you landed this job. None of your jobs lasted very long. That’s why we forsake ambition and learn to just do our damn, miserable jobs. We can’t deal with the stress of climbing up the ranks. We can’t deal with the competition because we hate confrontation. So we just take a step back if someone louder and more aggressive says they want the job. Over and over again. No matter our talents. No matter if we have the capacity to out-think and out-work them on our best days. We can’t deal with the confrontation. We have no healthy way to deal with confrontation because we’re damaged in some way. We’re terrified of bad environments. We don’t want our work place to turn bad, so we always take a step back. Give up everything for the good of the group. To keep the peace. Just like how you did as a child. It’s the only thing you know how to do. To try and keep the peace. At the expense of your own happiness. So you bury it, deeper and deeper. What is ambition? You don’t know ambition. What do you want? You don’t know what you want. Or you think you don’t know, because wanting something might mean fighting for it, and fights are bad. Fights make it not worth it. So you remain miserable. Maybe someone else said they wanted to do the job. Maybe that’s why you were taken off the task. You made a mistake the day before. You admitted to making a mistake in the project. That’s why you’re not allowed to do the project today. They’re mad at you. They’re just tolerating you to do it because they need more people to do that work. Make sure you will not get replaced. You like this project. You can’t argue about it. Just be glad you’re back on the project next week. It’s a very busy time right now and you’re letting them down, so make sure that you’re up and running again as soon as you can. You can not afford to be a schizoid without a job. Certainly not during a pandemic. You can deal with people better than most. You just don’t like it when they mess up your schedule without your consent. But that’s going to happen more often in the future so how on earth are you going to deal with it? You have no idea how to deal with it. You’re going to short-circuit again. You don’t know how to prevent it. Maybe EMDR will help. Maybe it will only make it worse. The therapist said it would be worse for a while. But is this linked to your first EMDR session of a few weeks ago? Nothing you discussed in your last EMDR session resembled this situation, so why would EMDR be triggering this now? The therapist said you would get more triggers, but is this one? You shouldn’t blame EMDR. It’s probably not EMDR, it’s just an anger outburst like you’ve had before. Just because you didn’t want it to happen, doesn’t mean it stays away. You knew this could happen. Some colleagues are probably so disappointed in you right now. Some might be wondering where you are, they need you on the phone, it’s busy. You need to rest, you need to be able to answer phones again in the afternoon, you can’t do that in your current state. Think of something else, don’t allow yourself to ruminate about it. It’s not in your control. Not yet at least. Maybe you’ll learn to control it. You’re never going to control it this way. How old are you? You’re going to be dead before you control it. You’ve got depression too. Why do you even care about getting better? Just give up already. You’ve got depression so you shouldn’t be fighting for anything. Certainly not for promotion or approval. You don’t have the energy for that or the capacity to take any hits, so why do you bother? Maybe you should have gone to your safe space, like you were taught for the EMDR sessions? But this was not EMDR related, was it? Besides, it happened too fast. You needed to send those mails, when would you have had time to go to your safe space? You can’t send mails AND go to your safe space at the same time. You needed to ride the wave of adrenaline to get the last bit of work squeezed out of you. You needed to get the word out you were having an attack, so they knew why you weren’t on the phone. You did well enough, you finished sending the mails, transferring the project in a decent way, and you sent them the message you were having an attack. That’s something. That’s all you could have done, you did well. Does the safe space help now? Who are you kidding, you’re too exhausted to go to your safe space right now. You can hardly focus on one emotion or thought, that’s how tired you are, you can’t go to your safe space. That requires energy and focus. You have none right now. What’s it going to help, you need to rest now. Think of something else. Think of something fictional. Try to sleep.”
Harmful Thought Patterns
There are a lot of harmful thought patterns I need to break. Any psychologist could probably find several out of the thought process above. According to my own psychologist, I need to stop telling myself “I’m weak” – it’s a lie about myself that I believe deep in my core. But between knowing what is a wrong thought and between not believing a wrong thought lies a world of difference. I still believe that thought. It’s one of the things we’ll be working on, though I have no freaking clue how we’re going to break that thought since it’s one of my core beliefs.
There is some paranoia too. I don’t have the Paranoid Personality Disorder, but I can have paranoid thoughts during those moments of great sadness and guilt. But usually those thoughts are only there in moments of stress and I can recognize them afterwards, and most of the times at the exact moment as I’m having them as a paranoid thought. For example, thinking they’re looking for reasons to fire me, thinking they’re punishing me for making a mistake, I know that’s not the case. It’s a fear I have that they would do those things, but I know that that is not what they did, that’s not reality. That’s just a bad thought process that pops up after an attack. It adds to the guilt and sadness. It’s not something that I think during a regular day, since I usually don’t feed any emotions.
Not every thought that comes after an attack is a lie. I do believe there’s a lot of truth in my thoughts as well. There is self-analysis in there that is not completely wrong. I get wiser as I age and with the schizoid label also come new ways to look upon myself and my thoughts and history. I am starting to understand better why I am not ambitious. I am starting to understand why I avoid confrontation.
And I think the attack, in part, is triggered by confrontation. When you go back to the part where I describe all the past triggers I remember, it were always moments of confrontation in one way or another. I just have no idea how to deal with confrontation, hence me having a full meltdown whenever I force myself to stand up for myself.
I’m so not used to standing up for myself, that the exact moment I say to myself: “No, you NEED to say what you think about this NOW, you can not just pretend nothing happened” is when I have the outburst with all the unpleasant adrenaline and tears that follow. My communication towards the other party seems to be correct though. I don’t think anything was wrong with the chat I sent my colleague, or when I tell a bitch to back off - I think it’s assertive. But having a breakdown every time you’re assertive, isn’t normal. That’s the issue.
Had I decided not to confront my colleagues about how unpleasant it was to me that they changed my schedule, I might not have had the outburst, I think. (I honestly don’t know.) There’s the tiniest moment before the outburst, the fight or flight moment, where I need to make the choice. And it is a choice that I can make. I have agency in that moment. I can choose what my choice is, but I can not really choose the effect that comes with either option.
If I choose to flee, I’ll be relatively fine. Maybe a little shaken. If I do that, it probably adds another argument to the “you are weak”-narrative in my mind.
If I fight, there’s a possibility I end up at war with myself. In my thought process, I might be entering a war with everyone else. That’s usually not the case. People usually back off. (At least for a while.) But in my thought process, if I choose “fight”, it’s like I’m going to war. In that way, I do think that there’s a big link between my outbursts and some form of PTSD. I don’t see it clearly just yet, but I think I’m getting closer to a breakthrough of what it is.
A Link to Autism
I did not get diagnosed with autism. (Though we did the test!) However, the outbursts often seem autistic in some ways to me. Maybe people with autism experience it in a very similar way. Maybe they don’t and I’m just projecting.
(Just to clarify – before “autism” existed, people with autism all got the “schizoid” label. There are a lot of resemblances between the two. People with autism mostly distinguish themselves from a schizoid like me by not having the same social skills. Schizoids seem to have the skills more naturally while for people with autism it’s usually a skill they have to work on, like maths or languages is to neurotypicals. Or maybe it would be a better comparison to say it’s like they have dyscalculia while the rest of the world can do maths without much of a problem, but apply that comparison to how we as humans learn social situations. Another difference: Schizoids don’t want company, people with autism often do, but don’t know how to go about it. They both come across as asocial a lot of the time, hence some of the overlap between the two labels.)
But if you shorten what happened, if you say: “Her schedule changed last minute, and she exploded” or “A classmate insulted her, and she exploded” – that would seem autistic to some. A change of plans can really ruin the day of a person with autism since they prefer structure. People with autism can also really explode at bullies because they don’t know how to deal with them.
So if you shorten my trigger and my “explosion”, I think an outsider would say: “Oh that has to be autism. She can’t deal with change. She can’t deal with social situations.” My type of explosion is something that people with autism go through as well sometimes.
Sometimes it does make me doubt if it’s not autism for a part, but I suppose I should follow the opinion of my psychologist, and I do have to state that I don’t have a lot of difficulty reading social situations. I’m very sensitive to some situations even, feeling when some people can’t stand each other in a room without even talking to anyone. I think that’s something people with autism often can’t read from the room. I have been called a very good observer by some friends and colleagues in certain situations.
To End It
I’m not sure what else is left to say. Writing this has exhausted me as well, in a way. Going through emotions is hard for a schizoid. We bury them, deep. We don’t do it consciously, we just do it. Bringing it back to write about it, did bring a few of the emotions back. I did shed a few tears while writing this. (I’m not saying this for pity, by the way, just as an FYI to my state of mind while reliving this.)
An anger outburst brings the negative emotions to the surface. Anger (at the cause of the issue), guilt (about getting angry), sadness (about our own state of being), fear (of losing friends/our jobs/respect) are all negative emotions. You don’t want to have these on any day. Most days we don’t have any emotions. But on a day with an anger outburst we experience all of those emotions. In a matter of minutes. In an hour. And then we’re exhausted.
Not all schizoids experience this, and I’m not sure whether to envy those people or to pity them. Envy, because these emotions are all negative. Who needs that negativity in their life? But also pity, because it seems like they’re the only emotions I’m given in this life. Isn’t it sad that some have none at all?
I try to approach it positively and say “at least you have these emotions. If you have the negative ones, maybe the positive ones are hidden inside you as well. You just need to find the correct trigger to bring them out.”
Some schizoids say they don’t want to experience any emotions. I don’t think I’m one of them. I’d rather have a day without emotions than with only negative emotions, but I’d like to go back to positive emotions one day. I don’t want to fake being happy at a party, as I usually do.
And if I can’t have emotions, then all that’s left is achievement in life. To make value in my life, to accrue wealth or status or experience. I don’t mind dying poor as long as I’m not miserable. But imagine dying miserable and weak and poor, that sucks. I don’t want that.
Take care, and remember, if you have anything to share, your own wisdom or your own experience, my askbox is always open.
With every social media network rolling out new options for reporting mental health concerns, it’s worth taking the time to listen to people when they say that getting notifications asking if they’re okay from an automated system is not helpful. Instead it makes many people more paranoid about what they post, and takes away from their ability to use social media as a safe space to share their struggles with others. Instead of drive-by reporting, if you see something that concerns you try reaching out to the poster! Even if you still think it would be best to report them, shooting them a heads up that you’re doing so, goes a long way to ensuring that our online communities stay safe for everyone!
I work hard to keep things lighthearted on my blog so I apologize for the brief serious post, this is just really important to me. Having had my paranoia triggered when a few of my memes were reported, it caused me to leave a few social media platforms and I think this is a suggestion that would have helped mediate a lot of the pain I went through.
TW: mention of psychological and physical self harming
Questions:
Have you ever tried schizoid self-conversion (trying to convert yourself to be an extrovert and social)?
Did any of you view this time period as traumatic in a way, since you’re inducing emotions like engulfment, and feelings of being psychologically smothered or buried alive?
I ask because I’m going through this right now. I don’t have a GED, no job, and I’m not in college. I can’t do any of these things due to disability. But I want to make my mom proud of me by reaching at least one milestone, such as friendship. Also, all of my relatives have insulted her and called her a bad parent. I want them to admire my mom.
But I feel like this self-conversion attempt is a form of self-harm. I used to cut and burn myself and this feels the same. I’ve made an online friend (who I’ll be meeting in-person tomorrow) and my mental health is suffering. I was so much more content before this and I want to go back to being isolated. But I feel so selfish because I know my isolation hurts my mom.
I don’t seek out romantic relationships and they feel boring and stressful to me. I don’t think I’m 100% aromantic since I can still feel romantic attraction, I just lack that drive to act on it and prefer to create the relationship as a fantasy instead, rather than acting it out in real life. And that’s fulfilling for me.
So I have been having trouble figuring out a label for my romantic orientation. And I decided on lithromantic.
I wonder how common this romantic orientation is in schizoids. Anyone else relate?
