@SorryForMyEnglish
Wow I like what you have to say about the ''libidal ego'' and the ''persona.'' That is very interesting and I can understand more now about the movie and about myself, thank you. I would also think the same about other people, I would wonder if I could be more libidal than persona and if others are that way with me. And I think I can see it in therapists too when they become persona or when they just use their libidal ego on their patients/clients.

Yeah, same with therapists

I noticed how when I started to open up to mine, it's only our two libidal egos (minus her contertransfering stuff and maybe something else) are talking to each other. That's because of her therapuetic technique.
I started to notice my anti-libidal tendencies more now. It shuts down my emotional/libidal ego completely. But whenever I have more connection to it, I identify with it and I feel pretty much like a different person for the most part. My emotions feel much more genuine as opposed to how I feel when I'm not connected to it. But that's only thanks to my therapist and the approach/technique she uses, what she sees in me that I can't see, what she encourages in me, mirroring of my emotions etc. Society, caregiver, relatives etc encouraged other things and made me the way I am before/without therapy. That's also why this forum is not so helpful... Because there's lots of people like that (like me too), plenty of self-hating ones who apply their philosophy to others (but that's because they think actually things are this way, and I'm not talking about pessimism and depression btw, it's more like repressiveness what I'm talking about).

Harry Guntrip said anti-libidal ego and false ego are not exactly the same things though. Anti-libidal ego ego is strictly anti-libidal while false one is more like a personality each one of us has with good and bad traits for survival. He says there's no point to render it completely useless because unfortunately we can't start from scratch and rewrite our whole personalities oh hiw I wish we could though) because it's impossible to recreate the process of developing in childhood, that environment in therapy fully

Um, yeah, don't know why I'm resurrecting this thread. I just happen to be reading the book SFME was reading and wanted some place to quote-dump. It's weird. Because the DSM5 description for schizoid doesn't really sound like me, I've always just kind of put off reading about it. But the kind of person Guntrip describes in his book (Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self) sounds almost exactly like me. DSM5: Not schizoid. Guntrip: Schizoid. Whaddayagonnado?

Anyway, p 216:

Idk what the DSM5 would call this, but this is me.

Edit: Copying some stuff over from the other thread so it's all in one place...

Nancy McWilliams:

Funny, because I'm reading Guntrip's book and his description of the schizoid type sounds an awful lot like me at times. And I am very much a psychotherapy nerd.

I have about 20 or so on the go right now. And I own well over 1,000 and haven't read half of them. But, in my defense, I do often finish reading them.

Edit: Is it possible to be a schizoid hysteric?

There it is. This explains why I keep going back and forth between feeling more schizoid or hysterical.

Being seen as one really is, and being accepted as one really is, is, imo, the very foundation of mental health. You have to have that foundation if you want to build a healthy ego. Without it, you will always have some kind of sickness.

Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self, p 178:

Slightly OT gender-related stuff:

@truant

the dsm criteria for schizoid is pretty rubbish and seems to be based on external judgements (I also get the impression there isn't much in the way of treatment for it, and plus most schizoid people don't present for treatment.) Although I think older definitions of schizoid incorporated AvPD and schizotypal PD as well into the definition of schizoid then they separated them into three personality disorders in the 80s. Not sure every work on schizoid personalities is based on SPD either.

I can't remember if I read any of that book or not now, a while back I was reading a bunch of stuff about schizoid personalities and also read the schizoid part of The Divided Self and found a bunch of that relatable. Also some stuff some therapists were saying about the disorder on quora.

I also found the stuff written about sexuality on the wikipedia page interesting (and relatable because my own sexuality is weird and often dissociative.) People kept misquoting it to remove the homosexuality part from the source (because it's 'not a paraphilia like the other things mentioned') and I got into some editing war at some point over it. The entire section was removed, then it came back misquoted again I then brought it up on the talk page and just didn't go back to it for a really long time until now. It seems around November someone decided they agreed with me and then later that entire section was removed (again) since there's no section on sexuality on any other personality disorder wikipedia page but tbh I just wanted it to be quoted correctly... I guess we'll see if it comes back or not lol since it has several times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php...0393#Sexuality

and that's the full quote:

edit: another thing is, and it's actually brought up on the wikipedia page, almost everything written about this is really old now. Like 40+ years old.

I think masculinity is weaker because it has very fragile ego boundaries and the perception that it's always being encroached by the other. That's why people use the term 'fragile masculinity.' So a lot of it is just framing of masculinity as strong and femininity as weak. People who are very into manosphere ideas, also tend to be into fascist texts particularly Evola, because that's the male political form of this fear (obviously radical feminism is the female form.) Paradoxically femininity can also be leveraged sadistically in this way by playing into the idea of femininity as a destructive force.

Something like that. I guess that ends up in more of an androgynous space though symbolically if you're doing that actively but it's predominantly feminine. (Because people see pursuing power/control as being masculine in itself.)

Anyway I wonder if anyone who is 100% feminine would care about that, it seems more hypothetical though since most people are pursuing power in some form at some point in time, sometimes defensively perhaps but nevertheless.

Had to trim a bit because I ranted.

The book was published in 1969. I like it maybe partly because it's doing such a good job describing some of the problems I have. But I'm not really anything like the DSM5 description for SPD so they're different kinds of things.

It's frustrating being so messed up and yet not meeting the criteria for a single diagnosis. If they can't diagnose you, then you just don't have any problems; there's nothing wrong with you, so you're just supposed to get on with things and stop malingering. Wish I could kill myself, but you can't get approved for assisted sui if you can't even get a diagnosis.

Even the description for GAD, which is maybe the closest, sounds sort of off in ways I have trouble putting my finger on. Look at this nonsense (pulled randomly from the internet):

Now, what do I worry about?
"What if that person pushes me in front of that truck?"
"What if I push that person in front of that truck?"
"What if my heart stops beating and I drop dead right now?"
"What if my house catches fire in my sleep and I burn alive?"
"What if a phorid fly crawls into my ear when I'm asleep and lays eggs and the maggots get into my brain?"
"What if I get flesh-eating disease from a yellow sac spider bite?"
"What if I stab my eye out with this fork?"
"What if hang myself from the railing?"
"What if, when I'm homeless, I get frostbite and they have to amputate my hands and feet?"
"What if that dog attacks me and I get rabies?"
"What if someone asks me on a date and then murders and eats me?"
"What if someone jumps off that 10th story balcony right now?"
"What if there really is a giant beehive in my ceiling?"
"What if ghosts are real and I'm not imagining the face I think I'm seeing in my closet right now?"
"What if aliens are real and they abduct me?"
"What if that spot on my cheek is cancer and they have to keep amputating more and more of my face?"
"What if they put me on SSRIs and I have a psychotic break and go on a murder spree?"

I can't possibly imagine worrying about things like, "What if I go see this movie and I don’t like it?" With so many much more interesting things to be afraid of, how does anyone have time to worry about whether or not the checkout girl thinks they're a weirdo or if "in 20 years I don’t have enough money to retire?" I'd be bloody well surprised if I did have the money.

If the kinds of things I worry about on a near-constant basis is quite normal for people with GAD, then sign me up. These are the kinds of thoughts that preoccupy me. I get actual physical urges to do a lot of these self-destructive things. Like drink bleach or stick a knife in an electrical outlet. So my fears feel very well-founded. The fact is, I'm not sure I won't hang myself from the railing or walk in front of a bus. If I could be sure I wouldn't do it, I wouldn't worry about it.

But if most people with GAD worry about being late for appointments and failing tests then maybe it's not the right fit. I'm much too worried about whether or not I'm going to stab myself in the eye with the pencil to worry about what kind of grade I'm going to get. It starts to border uncomfortably close on psychosis. And my dreams are all the same way. Except that, in my dreams, the things I fear will happen IRL do happen with rather depressing regularity. But I'm not paranoid. I don't actually believe there are plots to kill me or anything.

The stuff I can relate to from the book are things like the feeling that, if someone knows what I look like, or hears my voice, then I will suddenly cease to exist as a real person in their mind and everything they say will be directed toward this other person who just happens to be the one with the body. Like, that my body will replace me. The relationship stops being real. I get trapped in the void and it feels like living death.

I interact with the world through this persona, which is nothing like the person I am on the inside, and it feels like the two worlds barely have anything to do with each other. My fantasy/mental life is this vivid, detailed nightmare world, where I have a body and voice that are nothing like my real body and voice, and the whole psychic terrain moves in parallel with reality without ever really touching it. Often, the real world feels like it's the dream, because it feels so unreal and insubstantial. Is this derealization? Is feeling unreal if someone knows what I look like depersonalization? How does one classify the feeling that, when one is looking in the mirror, one is actually looking at a stranger ... who is looking back at them? Is this dissociation? Is this Schizotypal PD? Idk.

My sexuality is pretty messed up, too. It's sort of like my fears in a way, in the sense that, I can make almost any given situation into a terrifying possibility, but I can also make almost any given situation into a sexual fantasy. And with the same kind of compulsiveness. (I can't write the "what ifs" in this part of the forum.) I have a hard time not thinking about sex the same way I have a hard time not thinking about violence. The thoughts intrude on me all the time. Except that my fantasies rarely involve anything that could be considered painful. I may fear that I'm going to cut myself with a knife but the thought of being cut is the opposite of erotic. The exception is rape, which seems to combine the automatic sexual fantasies with the automatic violent fears. Except that I never actually get hurt in those fantasies because then it just stops being erotic. I don't have any paraphilias, if by paraphilia we mean a fixation on some specific kind of fantasy or object in order to experience arousal. The whole world is my playground.

Masculinity is weaker, because it's harder to be a "real man" than it is to be a "real woman". A "real man" is a man who can "rise to any occasion" and succeed. How many people can actually do that? No wonder so many men have fragile egos. By contrast, it's quite hard to fail as a woman. One can be so masculine physically and behaviorally that people stop thinking of you as a woman, or mistake you for a man, but that's relatively rare. One can be so ugly that no man has any interest in you. I think that's one way that women can feel like they've failed to be a woman.

But I meant that the trait itself pairs with masculinity, not femininity, in our culture (the "framing"). The stronger a person is, the more masculine they seem, regardless of how fragile masculinity is in practice. It's also paired with being an adult (vs being a child). Adults are supposed to be strong, only children are allowed to be weak. That's why we say that men who break down under stress are "acting like little girls" (the two pairings put together). When women criticize other women for being weak, they say "put on your big girl pants" but they don't generally say "stop being a man".

@truant




Yeah I guess that's a side effect of medicalisation. Problems don't exist unless there's a specific category that someone created. If the concerns you listed actually bother you a lot then I guess it could be schizotypal pd (particularly things like the alien invasion and ghosts.) I think schizotypal people usually don't have delusions and just interpret events weirdly in a way that suggests it has personal meaning. A lot of what you're describing sounds like OCD though like the thoughts about stepping in front of a bus or killing people are pretty common intrusive thoughts that most people get sometimes, and then at the extreme end is more common in OCD. I guess it depends on how weirdly you interpret events in reference to yourself and the degree of magical thinking.

I think a lot of my brother's anxiety comes from the possibility of being attacked in public and things like that which seems different to generalised anxiety which is more worrying excessively about every day things (although the movie example seems bad, not sure that would apply to most things.) He also had random concerns over the years like not wanting to go to the bottom of the garden into the shed alone but not saying why.

I think this YouTuber has schizotypal personality disorder (though it could also be schizophrenia really also this is the first time YouTube has ever been down for me so I think this is the video she had another one where she was talking about how sugar being poured into a bowl sounds violent which seems like a schizotypal thought to me. Like there's a weird interpretation but it's not exactly delusional or conspiratorial it's just the sugar sounds violent to her.) I stumbled on this person a while ago while falling down some weird YouTube rabbit hole.

(OK the video I was going to link called organic portals, and how to recognise them I can't embed because it's age restricted on YouTube, not sure why since the content isn't 18+ at all but I'd guess it's just because it's borderline controversial since that term seems related to the 'NPC' concept which is politicised. That's all I have I've seen them do this with certain things. So I just linked her channel instead.)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzv...tOE89fGsWfy1Pg

I don't think the body/mind split you're talking about is schizotypal though, it seems like a form of dissociation (the differences/definitions of derealisation and depersonalisation never really stuck with me. I guess with one you feel unreal and then the other the world does I dunno.) I think that's pretty common for trans people anyway because they have to live in their head most of the time. Some people have written about that (I think she's written quite a bit about it maybe on her website but just found this link quickly):

https://medium.com/@zinniajones/5-th...n-8d0e27d29947

I guess I don't exactly relate to the body thing like I know people base opinions of me on the body because they do that with everyone, and I think I dissociate from specific parts of it, but there's some qualitative difference I think I pick up from your posts that makes me think it's different. I'd have to think about that more but I think there's a bit less of a complete schism. Even though I'm frustrated by other's opinion, feel weird around others (because of the height thing mostly,) and have some weird thoughts about my body at times. Actually something weird happened earlier today? Although it now feels like I was dreaming. It was very upsetting I think but I kind of shove those feelings down very quickly so they're also not. I don't want to talk about that here. I have a very weird relationship with parts of my body. But I still feel like it's not quite what you talk about. Like they're not completely severed for me.

I seem to eroticise weird things sometimes. Seems to be some fear component occasionally.

I think it's pretty common if you have the right mannerisms. It happens to butch lesbians a lot, some of them get it all the time. Some aren't that butch (probably easier if you're black or mixed race though):

https://@www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxkNoqd7zKU

I think it must be mostly about body language too since that's the only time I've been compared to a guy something about my body language seeming like a guy (this only happened once because I'm very feminine but some people have different models or whatever, and I guess it varies at different points in time and in different locations. Many people online think British women are ugly or masculine as a generalisation. East Asian and Eastern European women are considered more feminine. Also that example that happened to her would basically never happen here because I said this before but nobody in shops uses pronouns here as far as I can remember. Like never. I started to wonder if it was just my personal experience but it seems not I guess sir is used more than female pronouns. I guess maybe you have to go somewhere fancy? I dunno there's definitely class connotations there.)

I guess it is easier to have people say you're acting like a girl then the reverse though yeah. The kind of superficial things that make someone 'like a girl' culturally don't apply in reverse. Nobody is going to say Simone Giertz is acting like a guy (I guess they might say 'hey it's cool that a girl has these interests' or something:

https://@www.youtube.com/watch?v=9reSQXZy77U

but I think her friend in the same video who is a butch lesbian, would probably get comments to that effect occasionally being more masculine overall (Also this video subject is probably the worst example too since it's explicitly female oriented lol but they're both in the same video so.)

Another thing is if they respect you, which they're more likely to if you're established in a masculine field, they probably would want to highlight your femininity as a kind of compliment or at the very least not make comments about you being a man if you don't look like a cis guy. You can see that somewhat in the comment section:

Yeah being strong is seen as a masculine trait.

I think the problem is that I don't know for sure whether or not something is possible. I don't really believe in ghosts or alien abductions, but when my anxiety is high I feel that they could exist and I feel like I am about to be haunted or abducted. When I'm in movie theaters, or look up at tall buildings, I'm afraid that I'm going to "fall" up. I know that's impossible, but it feels like it's really going to happen, so I have to hold onto things. They're not actually delusions, because I don't normally believe these things are possible, it's just that when I'm afraid, I believe.

When I was younger I was really into Crowley and witchcraft and Castaneda and UFO abductions and stuff. I was convinced I was hearing bees for months. I dressed weird in hs (according to other people) and dress like a bum now. I have the paranoia about other people wanting to hurt me. Idk if people think I speak weird, but I know I have idiosyncratic uses for certain words. And schizophrenia runs in my family. So I feel sort of on the edge of being schizotypal. But I feel like I'm on the edge of a bunch of things.

The first woman in this video sounds like me:



I once had a thought that someone I knew was going to get into a car accident, and then they DID get into a car accident that same day. That really messed me up because the moment I heard about the accident it was like something snapped and I thought I'd caused the accident. After that, I thought my thoughts could influence things, so I had to be careful about what I thought. And that's when I became terrified of my thoughts about violence and stuff. I won't look up at balconies, for example, because I'm afraid that if I do someone will jump. Not that I'm making someone jump with my thoughts, exactly, more that it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't looked. I know intellectually that makes no sense, but I feel like "I'd better not risk it".

So it's not just that I have these terrible thoughts all the time and they make me feel like a bad person; it's that I can't be sure my thoughts won't cause the thing I'm afraid of to happen. That's why my life feels like Hell World. I can't be sure, when I look at someone and I think, "They're going to stab me," that the thought won't cause them to stab me. I know that doesn't make any rational sense, but on some level I'm not sure that the world doesn't work that way. When I'm dreaming it does work that way, and maybe reality is just a really convincing "dream"? Maybe thinking about aliens is what makes aliens take an interest in you? It's not that I believe this stuff, per se, but that I can't rule it out. So the more anxious I am, the more it feels like a real possibility.

That sounds like me. I hate being alone. I feel much safer if there's another person around. If I'm by myself, I'm more likely to get thoughts about ghosts, abductions, etc. My cat was never very affectionate, but I was so glad to have her around because if she was relaxed it meant there probably weren't any ghosts around.

I haven't had time to watch more than a few minutes, but judging by the titles I have an idea. This sounds more like my sister (who I'm pretty sure is schizotypal -- she has basically all of the traits). I feel like I'm not quite at this level. I don't believe that all this stuff exists, I'm just not sure that it doesn't. "Sugar poured into a bowl sounds violent" is the kind of association I might make, though I probably wouldn't say it out loud.

I know about the dissociation trans people experience. But I feel like it's worse for me somehow. Like, how do you learn how to apply makeup if you can't even look in a mirror? How can you share photos of yourself asking people if you pass? How can you make videos? If they felt like I do, they wouldn't do it. Though maybe it's that they don't also feel ugly the way that I do. Maybe it's the combination of dissociation + ugliness.

If I text someone, and they don't know what I look like, then I feel like they're relating to me directly. My body isn't distorting how they respond to my texts (to the same degree). But I feel like if I share a picture then suddenly they're relating to that picture and not to me and I no longer have a real relationship with them. Their attention shifts from me to that image and the ideas they have about me are based on that image. I become the "third wheel" and I watch them have conversations with that image instead of with me. I think this happens because I don't feel like my body is me, but someone else. So if I share a picture, it's like I cease to exist inside the other person's head and that image exists there instead.

I suspect the problem is that the discrepancy between how I picture myself in my head and how I look IRL is so great that I've lost the ability to identify with my own appearance or something. My body has stopped being "me". But idk how it got to be so bad. I'm not sure that's how most other trans people feel. If I were to put on makeup, etc., I would be making my body more feminine/attractive (maybe) but I wouldn't be making myself more attractive because my body isn't me. My body is a vehicle that I move around in.

I was watching some video about "pure O" OCD and they brought up that intrusive sexual thoughts were often about people you weren't attracted to. Which is something that happens to me all the time. I get thoughts like, "What if they try to have sex with me?" And sometimes it's hard to stop thinking about it. It doesn't really have anything to do with what the person looks like, more the context of the interaction. Like, I'll think that way about my doctor in the consulting room. Basically any kind of situation where someone could try something inappropriate.

Yeah, body language has a lot to do with how people perceive you. And I don't mean to imply that just because you have some one trait that is commonly associated with the opposite gender to a pronounced degree that people will stop seeing you as your gender. If you're afab and you happen to like fixing cars, no one is going to see you as masculine based on that one trait. It takes a lot of simultaneous cross-gender traits, and mostly the visible ones (anatomy, body language), to shift people's perception. Until that threshold is reached, people are going to treat you more or less the same way they treat everyone else of the same gender. So they're still going to call you "beautiful" and point out all your "feminine" traits because you're still that gender to them. But at some point you cross over that threshold and their brain just sees you as a man. It's much easier to fail to be a "real man" than it is for people to stop seeing a female as a "real woman".

Oh like Casadastraphobia? My brother mentioned he used to know someone with that phobia.

Yeah that sounds difficult to deal with. I guess your brain just makes you aware of all the possibilities even if it's very unrealistic. I guess there's a fear of losing control and feeling like you have a lot of control as well like you're responsible for other people's actions.

That's pretty sweet. I guess pets are helpful that way.

I kind of get where she's coming from yeah, that's probably why that example stuck in my head lol. I have a lot of weird auditory processing stuff. I hate the sound of vacuum cleaners.

Mm I'm not sure I guess it's because they're satisfied with the end result somewhat like it's an improvement even if not ideal. So even if they dislike how they look before they feel better later. I actually don't here many people talk about these topics that often though. Most common thing I hear is people crying in the shower/while being naked but not much about when they have clothes on (and also it's mostly trans masc people I hear that from so that might be different.)

Yeah that makes sense. I identify with my body somewhat so when other people interpret it I often dislike their conclusions/how they react to it but I want them to basically view it/me differently like the reaction it gets bothers me, but I don't see it as separate mostly. The only time I see it more as a separate person is when I'm topless/naked sometimes if I'm paying attention, because it's very different than with clothes.

I also don't have a clear idea of who I am internally like self image wise. Sometimes I'm someone who's significantly different but it's not impacted the body thing too much. What I think happens more is that I become what I've internalised about my body around others, which I also dislike (although it doesn't always happen since some people can see through that or around it,) but that's part of why I prefer being alone.

Yeah I had that as a teenager for a bit, but don't really get them now.

Yeah I know, I brought that up I guess to say that if a man did something equivalent like he was really into makeup etc it's more likely that someone would comment on him being feminine or something or consider him less of a man. See the complete freak out to Harry Styles simply wearing a dress lol. Often from women who wear trousers or suit jackets. Not just that he seems feminine but that he's forcibly emasculating the whole of America somehow. (Despite being English. I'm so proud. I might even start listening to One Direction's music which has never interested me at all. No can't quite bring myself to, but still kudos.) Actually it's 'the West' I think. Conservative Americans really think they're emperors lol but going off topic.

But yeah if you have pretty masculine body language I think you could be feminine in numerous other ways and it wouldn't count as much because I think body language is more weighted in terms of perception of masculinity for some reason. I've also had people comment on my lack of makeup but I think that mostly makes you seem young not masculine and wearing certain clothing makes you seem less attractive not masculine or like a guy.

@Persephone The Dread

I moved the conversation over to the OCD thread, since that's what it's become about.