Social Anxiety Support Forum banner

Schizoid personality disorder

6K views 30 replies 22 participants last post by  andy1984 
#1 Β·
I was reading about schizoid personality disorder. It is defined as:

neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including being part of a family
almost always chooses solitary activities
has little, if any, interest in having sexual experiences with another person
takes pleasure in few, if any, activities
lacks close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others
shows emotional coldness, detachment, or flattened affect
All of that describes me perfectly, with one exception, people with schizoid personality disorder have no desire for close relationships or sexual experiences.

I do and I don't desire those things, at the same time... but I think the reason I don't desire those things is because of the rejection I experienced in high school. Those experiences convinced me that I would never fit it, no matter how hard I tried and, as a result, I stopped trying. I isolated myself from society and learned to loathe people.

But I obviously do desire those things, because I wouldn't have been trying to get help for years if I truly had no desire for them. I wouldn't be on this site looking for insight and advice. I definitely don't want to be alone my entire life or die a virgin.

So since my lack of desire for relationships with people stems from bad experiences and not my own personality, I guess I wouldn't be considered schizoid.

What would you classify someone like me as?
 
See less See more
#2 Β·
Apart from the sexual experiences part, everything else fits for me too. The biggest one for me is indifference to praise and criticism.

And I am perfectly alright with being celibate through life. So even the sexual desire is not very strong.

I'm pretty comfortable with things as they are. I don't secretly wish that I was gregarious.

So I think I'd qualify for that.
 
#3 Β·
neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including being part of a family
almost always chooses solitary activities
has little, if any, interest in having sexual experiences with another person
takes pleasure in few, if any, activities
lacks close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others
shows emotional coldness, detachment, or flattened affect


Ok, let me tell you one thing. There's normal people having the symptoms above and the symtoms above also occur in anxiety and depression. Just a question, do you feel like having sex when you're terribly depressed? NO, I suppose.

Moreover schizophrenic people hear voices and hallucinate, do you also have these symptoms?

I had a period when I thought I am psychotic, lol, but that's just the anxiety playing around with your mind, rushing thoughts and so on....

True schizoids are quite rare.
there's 2 schizoid people in 100. Not that rare these days.
 
This post has been deleted
#6 Β·
schizoid pd is far from a gift...schizoid isnt just about living a solitary lifestyle or being content being a loner..at the core of schizoid is the inability to feel much emotion or pleasure, and what results from that is basically very little desire to do anything..you see a purpose or need to seek people out if you derive little pleasure from talking to them or if you dont feel any connection to them..you will struggle sometimes to make it thru the work week...schizoids are at complete odds with 95% of people so they have to create a fake personality, a 'front' in order to show people when out in public etc etc..this is exhausting and another reason they just wish to be by themselves..

also, some schizoids do get married or are in relationships, its just their idea of a relationship is much smaller than a normal persons..they desire much less contact than normies..
 
#9 Β·
I have come to see myself as schizoid recently.

I don't interact with people even when it would be easy to do so - my family, my flatmates, people at work. At work I'd rather just work than talk. I do fantasize about relationships sometimes, but thats all. I want relationships, but then the wanting and fantasizing seems to satiate that desire enough to stop me from acting on it. And people are... they feel dirty and unpredictable if that makes sense. Fantasy is always smooth and perfect.

I do like a close relationship though (I've had one) and I like sex a lot. But only sex with love, I tried fooling around with someone I didn't really know before and it just made me laugh at her (in my head). I kinda just want perfectly cystalised events just like my fantasies but people (well my ex-gf, I'm generalizing from that) keep screwing them up so I get annoyed. I can't imagine anyone ever putting in the effort to reduce the massive social distance that I keep between myself an everyone else ever again.

I mostly only ever feel annoyed or worried or nothing. I was happy for a while with my gf. But that was a problem too because it took over.

I've always been like this so I don't think its depression or just SAD. While its interesting to self-diagnose, it doesn't make any difference anyway because I don't think I'm going to see anyone about it. People at work and the people I live with might think I'm weird but they seem to be wiling to tolerate it.
 
#10 Β·
i think the goverment are the ones to blame. shziod is not a disease just people who want to change the world into the world it never was with peace and all that stuff and more, the other side of what life was to be but since a border of present pressure of reality stepped into the way of a action of a person like that then one starts to not care about anything anymore, so why shall they care about anything if they are not prepared to live in the world they dident be born to breath in? huh? when will people realize all this is not a disease but a reality that has been unseen on
 
#14 Β·
You may have AvPD.....Avoidant Personality Disorder....This very closely resembles Schizoid except that they desire close relationships but their extreme anxiety and fear causes them to just avoid most social interaction. etc. Also look up "Cluster C" Personality disorders which include AvPD.
 
#19 Β·
avoidant was once previously in the dsm in the same category cluster as schizoid, cluster A. personally I relate to some extent to all of the cluster A disorders. I did wonder if I was being a hypochondriac but I don't relate much at all to the other cluster's aside from anxiety.
e; just realised how old this thread is.

when I had a higher sex drive I had interest in having sex, but then I stupidly also thought sex would solve all my problems, like most horny adolescents tend to assume (no offence to the horny adolescents). these days I don't really care, I do still have a sex drive but I have no real desire to pursue sexual relations. i'm also kind of weird sexually and don't really fit in anywhere in terms of that sort of thing. I don't have any interest in making friends, I don't have any interest in having a relationship. I would rather be alone and it seems more people have a problem with this than I do. I often see people expressing emotions outwardly and assume it's fake, like I never understood for a very long time why people react in a very dramatic way and thought it was all an act rather than genuine reaction. I think people are surprised by how little interest I have in living a full life, there is not much I actually care for and I am very 'minimal' in terms of lifestyle. I have a rich inner fantasy world and would rather live in that. I tend to get into "magical thinking" and I am incredibly paranoid, there's a lot more I relate to in the cluster A disorders categories which would probably take too long to explain.
 
#15 Β·
The definition fits me perfect, except for sexual desire part.
The drive has always been very high ever since it started and going stronger ;)

But for the rest of the definition, yeah I feel like I don't belong to this world. I feel so detached from these relationships and families.

If it wasn't for sexual needs, my wife's love for me and my responsibilities towards my wife and kid, I would had fled to some deserted mountain.
 
#16 Β·
cflage said:
I saw a schizoid once. The first thing that stood out is that he looked terribly unkempt, hair cowlicked in just every direction, shoddy appearance. He spoke like a robot. You had no idea what he felt about anything. Wasn't scared of talking, didn't freeze up, wasn't excitable, wasn't happy, wasn't sad, wasn't angry. That's what they mean by flattened affect. He ran a projector in a movie theater (it was a job where he could just be alone and not have to interact with others). His manager tried to promote him for doing a good job, and he said no. He preferred running the projector.
Not saying that I definitely qualify but I do pretty much all of that.

Most days, I'll be unshaven and wearing unflaterring clothing. I do speak like a robot. In fact, people at work have nicknamed the 'the robot'. I have little idea about what I really enjoy and what I don't. My employer is tired of asking me a billion times "what do you want to do, what excites you professionally" and I pretty much always end up saying that I'm okay with doing pretty much anything as long as I get paid well. I am indifferent to a lot of things. I hate failures, but it doesn't take me very long to get over them. I don't care for praise or criticism.

My job involves sitting and staring at a computer screen and writing code for 6 days a week. A lot of the time I don't say a word to anyone at my office. Been doing the same ****ing thing for six years. I hate it because I feel like I'm going nowhere, but at the same time I am kind of relieved to not have to deal with people often.

I've tried so many times to get out of this malaise, yet at the same time it feels comfortable.
 
#23 Β· (Edited)
I used to follow some of her posts on quora, they were pretty useful.

The exit part is very relatable to me and describes my relationship with employment and other social interactions. I always need an easy way to escape. My anxiety is too bad these days to really draw distinctions but historically it's also been easier to move somewhere and form connections because it's new. I can't form connections in certain spaces or geographical locations because I want to avoid feeling trapped though that also overlaps with ptsd-like symptoms in certain cases.
 
#20 Β·
I spent so much of my adult life so far defining myself as one and am disappointed on how much I’ve wasted my life on it. While yes, it all may fit me to a T, but why would anyone want to box themselves into it for? If I wanted to feel empathetic for someone, I ****ing will. Thinking that I was just some emotionless robot and accepting the matter does no good for myself or the people around me.

life is really what we make it, we have control over our emotions and minds. Anhedonia may constantly cloud my perspective and wonder if this is just a mundane routine not worth pursuing, but then where’s the fun in being dead? At the same time, where’s the fun in being alive lol.
 
#21 Β·
I spent so much of my adult life so far defining myself as one and am disappointed on how much I’ve wasted my life on it. While yes, it all may fit me to a T, but why would anyone want to box themselves into it for? If I wanted to feel empathetic for someone, I ****ing will. Thinking that I was just some emotionless robot and accepting the matter does no good for myself or the people around me.

life is really what we make it, we have control over our emotions and minds. Anhedonia may constantly cloud my perspective and wonder if this is just a mundane routine not worth pursuing, but then where’s the fun in being dead? At the same time, where’s the fun in being alive lol.
its the same as SAD. i approximate with someone with SAD, therefore i come to SAS and find some relief. boxes are cool, all the cats sit in them. i'm finding a lot to relate to in this dudes youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCATqJDPEzNIyT7Q3pWYj2Rg - these internet phenomena are interesting, and can involve successful communication and revelatory information, as its a peer driven thing, not something that is just about pathologising people's varied psychological situations.

life might not be very fun very often but at least it can be interesting.
 
#25 Β·
I was reading about schizoid personality disorder. It is defined as:



All of that describes me perfectly, with one exception, people with schizoid personality disorder have no desire for close relationships or sexual experiences.

I do and I don't desire those things, at the same time... but I think the reason I don't desire those things is because of the rejection I experienced in high school. Those experiences convinced me that I would never fit it, no matter how hard I tried and, as a result, I stopped trying. I isolated myself from society and learned to loathe people.

But I obviously do desire those things, because I wouldn't have been trying to get help for years if I truly had no desire for them. I wouldn't be on this site looking for insight and advice. I definitely don't want to be alone my entire life or die a virgin.

So since my lack of desire for relationships with people stems from bad experiences and not my own personality, I guess I wouldn't be considered schizoid.

What would you classify someone like me as?
I firmly believe we become what we manifest and there is no classification that can contain us.
 
#28 Β·
For a while I lurked a schizoid forum board a lot and tried to join in the conversations. Quickly realised that I am not like them, although I find Salman Akhtar's covert schizoid characterisation interesting and it seems to fit me somewhat (in an armchair psychologist kind of way, obviously). I also wonder if you're fearful-avoidant for long enough, and if your life enables you to continue the avoidance behaviours unhindered, then you might eventually "harden" into a schizoid with super low desire for human contact, and so then you would feel less emotional distress and just be in a kind of "blah" state most of the time(?).
 
#29 Β·
yeah that's basically me. it's more AvPD but that's a really fear based disorder that I dont want whereas schizoid is all the cook kids. I have some schizoid adaptations but it's all based on AvPD. from setting myself apart for a long time I have deviant views on things so it looks a bit like schizoid. and I kill my emotions most of the time, but when they get turned back on i realise i dont identify with that disorder so much.

although I'm not covert at all. I just cbf talking to people anymore. I think that happens as you get older. this is how I am and everyone can just deal with it.
 
#30 Β·
i think it's hard to diagnose schizoid. some symptoms seem to be environmental, and as a result of adapting. in my case a lack of interest in social relationships seems to be because i have gotten used to it. Others like apathy or tendency toward solitary activities seem to be more genetic. I think if it is hereditary, i got it from my dad.
but it seems very complicated with many factors affecting it. it could be because of a non conformist or rebellious personality. Or low serotonin and oxytocin levels. fear of being judged. If it's just based on symptoms rather than the cause then i am probably schizoid as well.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top