Detachment

I’ve started this post and deleted multiple times since I first logged in. Because the truth is I read the description for schizoid personality disorder but I haven’t been diagnosed, and if I do have it, I probably won’t be diagnosed because there is no way I’m going to talk to someone about this. And no one will probably guess I feel this way because of the way I act. Nearly all the time around other people I can smile, joke, and get along just fine. I don’t feel anxious talking to people and can communicate fine, about things that don’t matter. Work, school, the weather, jokes, what do I care if we talk about things like that? They are easy to relate to, bring up the topic and I’m good. But feelings, personal plans, thoughts that I care about? Those are walled up and no one gets them. I clam up if someone brings them up and do my best to change the subject or just nod my head in agreement about what they’re saying.

The description reads, “a pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings.” Which kinda fits. I do not get angry, and if I do its over something inconsequential that after thinking about it for a little while I’ll get over and default to normal quite quickly. I hang out with people outside of work and school probably once or twice a month, and I am almost never the one to initiate it. They show up at my door or call me saying they miss me and I go along for the ride. I do end up enjoying myself for a bit, but if I’m out of the house for too long I withdraw and get “angsty” as they call me. If I’m ever hanging out with a large group of people, I wait until no one is paying attention and then slip away to be alone for a bit and psych myself back up to deal with them. Because I don’t feel anxious talking, but people do make me anxious. I get claustrophobic in crowds very easily. If I’m surrounded, I start to stress and even get a little afraid until I sneak off.

A big part of the description that rings true to me is the introversion, “By the very meaning of the term the schizoid is described as cut off from the world of outer reality in an emotional sense. All this libidinal desire and striving is directed inward toward internal objects and he lives an intense inner life often revealed in an astonishing wealth and richness of fantasy and imaginative life whenever that becomes accessible to observation.” I get caught up in introspection a lot. I will over-analyze everything I do and constantly yell at myself for screwing up, that I know I can do better. I spend a lot of my thinking time about things that could happen one day. I have some fantasies, mostly of being rich and not having to work anymore, but I know they are not likely to happen. But the largest part is about things that could happen with other people. I practice conversations in my head all the time. It really helps to talk to other people if I’m prepared for something they’re likely to say. And it works for me, the conversations I actually have with the people I practiced in my head don’t always fit, but having practiced it, I know what I’m going to say and can change it up for the actual conversation with a smaller effort than it would have taken to respond to an unpracticed conversation.

Another part of the description is a feeling of superiority, which I hate. But even the description fits well, that “”a sense of superiority naturally goes with self-sufficiency. One has no need of other people, they can be dispensed with…  It is a feeling of being vertically displaced, rather than horizontally at a distance.” That I do feel superior to people every now and then, though I always berate myself for a time afterwards for thinking it because I know I am not superior even if I think it at the time, but its mostly in the things that other people seem to need that I don’t. I feel the tiniest bit superior whenever someone talks about their latest relationship disaster, their caffeine addiction, the want to get drunk/high, their need to get a boy/girlfriend soon, about how they feel about not being invited to a party, how they couldn’t get the latest phone/computer/game, or about how they feel awful for not talking to someone for a while, etc. I feel awful for thinking it, but I do. Because they’re all things I can do without quite easily. The battery on my phone died three weeks ago and I left it at home. I still haven’t charged it. I don’t feel the need to carry it with me, I had only been getting invitations from friends I’d been ignoring so I just stopped using the phone. Its a six year old flip phone, and every time someone talks about their newest smart phone or their insane bill, I feel just a bit superior that I get by with my old phone just as well as they do. And now, with no phone at all.

And the final part that I can talk about that really rings true is the self-sufficiency with, “The more that schizoids can rely on themselves, the less they have to rely on other people and so expose themselves to the potential dangers and anxieties associated with that reliance.” And I hate relying on other people or asking for help. They don’t owe me anything, and I feel awful for inconveniencing someone else. Its the reason I’ve been paying all of my bills since I turned 18, the reason I haven’t applied for financial aid (I get by well enough without it), the reason my bosses like me (I do plenty of extra work to make sure I can finish everything), the reason I can’t let someone buy me a meal or a present without a fight (or at least I just walk away and pay for it myself before they know what I’m doing). I aim for self-sufficiency. Its one of the few goals I actually keep up with, because if I can’t rely on myself then what happens when someone I do rely on asks for something I can’t do or I find I can’t deal with them anymore?

I guess the point is, does anyone else get this way? I just wanted to finally say this somewhere and who knows… maybe it will help.