r/Schizoid

I’ve heard the term a lot, especially when referencing introverted/extroverted personalities. I don’t really get the distinction between it and other energies, though

When i talk to or directly interact with others for relatively long periods of time (2+ hours at once), i start to feel physically tired. My jaw gets sore from speaking more than i’m used to and my eyes start to feel heavy. However, i don’t really need to sit in silence, alone, for that to go away. Simply taking a 10 minute break from talking and drinking some water makes me feel refreshed enough. I work as a cashier, and while it can be… less than mentally stimulating, I never tire of having to interact with people. It might not be something i enjoy, per se, but I’d much rather do that than any of my mind-numbing college work — that’s the kind of thing i’d need an actual break from.

Are you the same? Or does talking to others drain you mentally? I’m genuinely curious.

I feel lonely. My mom has been gone for 1 month. I'm all by myself.
My only real life interactions are my psychologists and my qi gong teacher.
I wish I had another friend. But people my age will judge me since I live in a different reality and not caring what people my age care about (work, relationships).
Spending too much time alone makes you dissociate from the real world.
I've this friendships quest from time to time. I guess I'll start it again.
Most people don't have the time and patience for me.
I could get another online friend but I want someone I can enjoy real life too.
I thought about volunteering for old people.

Man i never really used reddit much until i stumbled across a sub of peeps that think like me its nice.

Im at work again with little to do with my time aside from ponder or doom scroll but im in a thinking kinda mood with nothing much to think about. I was hoping i could find someone to bicker with at least.

Give me a hot take or your outlook or an opinion on something ANYthing to cure the insistent perpetual bordom.

But I'm not.

I cannot love but I do have crushes and physical desires sometimes (rarely), and very limerent ones. I'm completely depleted of social energy at all times, yet there's someone I can't get out of my head and some demon inside myself urges me to say "hi". This is audacious. What the hell.

Nobody in their right mind would get involved with a nutcase like me. I even feel like the bad guy within this subreddit. I feel like something else.

I'm so sick of hearing this. The worst part is that it's true. For almost all people at least. Unfortunately, this world is made in a way that makes it impossible to live without other people. You have to socialize for literally everything. There are some days that I don't mind being around other people if I don't interact with them, but sometimes I can't even stand having people around me. Their presence makes me uncomfortable.

I have now finished the equivalent of 10th grade of highschool, and I can confidently say that in all these years I don't have a single good memory at school that is related to other people. The only feeling of happiness I could feel was like a second or two when someone made a joke, or something similar. This feeling only lasts so long for me. In general, but especially at school. These last two years were worse, because I feel like the schizoid traits increased. I started tolerating people close to me less, and also like it's more and more difficult to feel emotions. Looking back now, some toxic people (the stereotypical edgy "yeah I like gore" teenagers) drained me even more.

The constant masking made me feel pretty depressed. I just wanted to get to school, not say a single word all day and go home. But of course not.

The academic stuff like marks doesn't make me feel good about myself. I feel like it's all pointless. I don't know if it's just me, but I could never feel like school was something personal.

I talked to my parents about me feeling depressed at school, and they told me that if I make people happy, I will feel happy too, because that's what they do and it works for them. This isn't true for me. I don't care about making people smile. It actually makes me uncomfortable.

I just want to be an identityless ghost that doesn't have to deal with anyone. For me the best year of school was the COVID-19 pandemic, because I didn't have to talk to anyone nearly as much.

Before we begin, nobody has diagnosed me with schizoid PD. I was looking to fit in somewhere over my odd way of being, and I finally settled here.

Regarding my question, I always feel mentally deficient when I compare myself with my childhood friends. My sister is seven years younger than me, yet she has more mental clarity and the courage to make life decisions. I don’t think I’m confused—I actually have good mental clarity about what is going on—but regarding certain aspects of life, I just don’t have the skill set. Especially in interpersonal settings. I can’t even say "hi" to someone I already know.

Let me tell you about an incident. One day, I went to a nearby town that is a little farther from my home than the one I usually go to. I was in a supermarket when an old schoolmate showed up. I knew who she was, but I just ignored her. She seemed extremely happy to see a schoolmate after ten or twenty years. When I was at the cash counter, she came right in front of me and looked at me face-to-face, but I don’t know why I pretended not to know her. I knew exactly who she was, but I couldn't say hello because doing so takes such a heavy toll on me. I think that's how I hurt someone who was genuinely happy to see me. Even after leaving the shop, when she showed up on her scooter, I ignored her. That was about a year ago, and it still hurts me too. I don’t know why I ignored her.

This is just one incident. In most areas of my life, I don’t know how to behave. Even when I consider getting a job, I worry that people will eventually figure out who I really am. I mean, they will eventually notice my odd way of being, and I feel terrified of being exposed like that. I don’t want that, so I just avoid getting a job altogether.

However, despite what the definition of schizoid PD says, I’m not someone who completely doesn't care about having good relationships with people. I do enjoy them, but deep down, I feel like people will move away eventually, so why bother in the first place? I can go years and years without having any connection with anyone outside. For the last couple of years (since I quit my last job), I haven't actually gone out to socialize at all. No wedding parties, no bars, no restaurants... nothing. If I want something, I just get takeaway and bring it home.

When I compare myself to my childhood friends, I see that they have plans, they have skills, and they are building their lives. Instead, I spend years and years criticizing everyone, including myself. For them, interpersonal skills seem to come naturally. For me, even the smallest interaction exacts a massive mental toll.

me quite much. i hate being asked questions about my life. i see enemies in people. i guess if my expectations were met, i'd kill myself. i have weak mental resistance but simunatenously idc what others think about me. i am just scared of mental wounds.

Idk i dont think many others would get where im coning from with this post, not saying my hopes are high that yall would just at least lil attacks idfk.

It has been an insane few weeks.
Theres alot to unpack in the time frame but im here to talk about my pet. My precious girl. She has been a ray of sunshine, and selfishly my reason to get out of bed.. she was also used as a way to control me as dramatic as it sounds. A family member convinced me to stay here by getting me a pet as they were "concerned" about my isolation and my weird life style, she was an excuse to coke check in me etc no they dont care about her and find her gross lowkey. Anyway.

Small town, small vet, small minds ig.. (i sincerely do ask of you to not scramble and pull out random solutions- ive thought of everything possible, ive reached out everywhere i could. Ive done what i can period). This dumbass creature (shes actually freakishly smart, smarter than some people i know)- she began auto cannibalising (literally). She had some lipodema and i guess its been bothering her/ so she decided to start eating it.. one lump legit fell out after i cleaned it with peroxide.... fell out- a chunk- bit smaller than her head.. other one as i was gently dabbing -she twitched, it fucking *exploded... it sounds dramatic and im honestly still shocked bc wtf i just wouldnt recommend witnessing it to anyone.
Oh ofc youre prob thinking "but vet" no shit, that shouldve been the reliable suggestion. Ive brought her over as soon* as i noticed a wound, i brought her over when the wound widened, i brought her over when it fell out. I did. I paid. I talked. He said "shed be fine" he didnt even give her stitches,, he didnt even give her any painkiller NOT EVEN wound dressing. Now im very lucky that a girl im friendly with recently graduated vet uni so she was giving me suggestions, but she hopes i sue for negligence.

Ive slept a bit and taking breaks when shes better, but ive basically been staying up to manually mind her incase shes nibbling, honestly im very glad ive been having no appetite bc id hate to vomit on her.

I do love her, or maybe im incredibly selfish and i need her as an excuse.
But i know that me waiting is cruel.
So the vet said i should diy anesthésia, so thats pretty insane. Idk bout yall but i dont even kill bugs, if any at home i will capture and release. Im not sensitive to gore (shout out to my teen years >!of spending on best gore dot com and olympics!< and shit, honestly dont look anything up especially if sensitive- jve had surgeries and shit we all have innards yk) euthanasia isnt an easy decision as is. Doing it yourself isnt at all either.

And honeslty,, shes alive for similar reasons that i am. Death is heck of a commitment lol,, she has days when shes better, shes eating and she cuddles and i love her and shes strong but i cant be cruel to her. Shes innocent collateral damage in my life and she deserved so much better than me and this and i wish i couldve done better and i still so.

I was given a humane way to do it, and i hopefully will tonight im just stalling. And id looove to off too with her bc i cannot imagine life without her even though shes not really old like that (at least exclusive of her species).
But im prob gonna go on an adventure after, idk i want to live fir myself even if i die on this hill.
But i too deserve better, and i too have been failed by nearly everyone in mylife. And im just a sorry human, im sorry i couldnt provided better ? Im sorry shes hurting, im sorry for making her stay so long?
Idk :/

Does anyone else feel as though they hold some bizarre tension / paradox within them, in regards to age and maturity? When I was a kid I felt as though people my age even would instinctively baby me, like they sensed I was helpless or naive etc. But I also frequently got opposite remarks about my appearance and behavior, that I looked and acted way older than I really am.

Then now as an adult it feels the same, I am in my late 20s and usually work with men in their 40s and 50s who have told me I seem more mature than my actual age, Idk what that is based on though. But I also still feel like some people feel the need to baby me and think I am childish or innocent.

So I don’t know how to explain or make sense of this strange paradox, like I am spiritually and emotionally childish but intellectually old or mature? I don’t know.

Okay, when I go outside, I feel like everyone is looking at me and judging me, and I don’t act naturally at all. I try to avoid looking at other people, and sometimes my vision becomes a little blurry and my eyes start closing on their own. I don’t know if it’s because of the way I look at things or because of stress. I feel like everyone is looking at me, and that makes my condition worse.

When I’m at home, I completely forget that I’m like this. For example, when I look out the window, the way people behave outside seems easy and normal to me. But when I actually go outside, it’s completely different.

I also feel like my movements are slower when I’m outside, and I feel like time passes more slowly. I constantly have thoughts that people are watching me.

Ever since I was a child my parents neglectied and abused me. My dad was the worst thing that ever happened to me but it wasn’t just him. At school I remember the teachers taking an instant dislike to me, treating me differently and picking on me even though I was a quiet well-behaved child.

Numerous grown adults tried to crush my spirit from an early age. Putting me down. Calling me stupid. Sometimes I cry looking at pictures of myself at that age because I don’t know how people can be so cruel, and I wish someone would save her. This continued throughout my whole school life and university. Plenty of teachers hated me and would pick on me. To the point that other people would ask what I’d done to them to make them hate me.

At age 11 my cousin SA me. At age 16 I developed an eating disorder and had to stay at a clinic for a year. The workers there were so horrible to us, they’d accuse of lying, hiding things, shame us etc.

At age 18 I got roofied the very first time I went to a club and blacked out. Same age I started to experience multiple attempted rapes from men. At 21, my first time having sex was being raped.

At any job I’ve had I’ve been bullied by the manager who seem to love tormenting me. I seem to have this special ability to make everyone around me mad and they lose their temper.

I’m 29 now and i feel so broken from this stuff throughout my life. Im so dead inside. I feel no happiness and haven’t in years. I still struggle everyday with these horrible childhood memories, like flashbacks, and just so many memories of people mistreating me when I only gave them kindness. I still struggle with ED too.

I feel like I learned in my early twenties that people are not safe, at all, ever. They will steal from you, lie to you, abuse you and becoming SPD is the result. I try to block it out and forget these memories. Most of this stuff I’ve never even told anyone, but i always come back to getting so angry.

I think all the time about self exiting. Wouldn’t do it but I wouldn’t mind if some accident or illness did it for me. Sorry for the rant.

This question was motivated by reading this post^(1), whose OP's attitude has a lot in common with mine. As my nickname says I am aspie, and as I have already posted^(2), for me being schizoid without anhedonia is not part of the problem but part of the solution. This can be easily understood by having a cursory look at aspies' posts in r/aspergers expressing so much suffering from not being able to establish or keep relationships, mainly of the romantic kind.

Clearly even being a schizoid without anhedonia may entail problems, mainly due to other people's expectations on you, such as workmates inviting you to join them for a drink after office, or relatives asking why you do not have a girlfriend/boyfriend and marry, and so on.

But apart from these problems arising from the external environment, it is clear that the subjective quality of life of anhedonia-free schizoids is radically different from that of anhedonia-laden ones. Honestly, if God offered me to live hundreds of years with full physical and mental health and functionality while still being aspie & schizoid, I'd take it.

Which gives rise to two questions:

First the one in the title: Do anhedonia-free users have Schizoid Personality DISORDER or just Schizoid Personality TYPE?

Then, if the answer is "TYPE", a logically subsequent one: Should anhedonia-free users get the heck out of this subreddit and leave it to users who truly have Schizoid Personality DISORDER?

PD: After posting I learned that rule 8 "No purist attitudes" already answered the second question with "NO".

Links

1 https://www.reddit.com/r/Schizoid/comments/1vnqivu/i_love_being_schizoid/

2 https://www.reddit.com/r/Schizoid/comments/1vf3ftq/on_the_issue_of_asd_and_spd_coexisting_in_the/

Maybe this is a temporary thing, but I genuinely don't enjoy anything. It's been going on for a few weeks now. None of my few hobbies bring me actual happiness. I only do them purely to pass the time between work. I don't even enjoy work anymore. I literally just do chores, and watch fight videos on twitter to feel my blood rush faster (It's actually pretty addicted, I can watch them all night). I don't know, maybe I'm depressed or something, but I don't feel sad; I just feel empty and tired. I'm tired of having to fake my emotions whenever I talk to my coworkers. I have no feeling for anyone or anything. My mom visited me last week and I think that's when I realized what was going on. I didn't feel anything when she showed up. She was just here for a day and she was gone.

Whats up shitheads and fuck faces alike; i come here today to probably ramble on about how nothing quite brings me joy as well as bitch and moan about being sober for longer than id wish to be.

I started a new job an ran thru the last of my dabloons a day or so in, until i get paid in probably a weeks time im stuck using my credit card and WOWZERS im running into more debt than id wish to be. It was and still is going great for the most part- only a iddy tiddy wittle proble- boredom. God i am bored. I finish what i have to do not 30 minutes into my shift than go outside and bask in the sun for 4 hours like a lizard before going back in around closing time to finish up and close shop.

I was writing the first week but that got stale, constantly doom scrolling is melting my brain out my ears, and i ran out of contacts to annoy this friday. Im running out of ideas- i was doing pushups for 40 minutes sunday... why? Theres nothing else. I was on solitaire for 2 hours sunday as well.

Dont get me wrong im getting paid handsomely for my time and ive already been offered 2 promotions that ive yet to take cause im not sure if id rather sit on my ass all shift, look pretty and make a pretty penny or work the line for a 3$ pay bump.

But on other news. Im out of weed. Ive been out for almost as long as ive been employed here and im well aware im addicted but ohmyfuckinggod it feels like im constantly annoyed or in a pissy mood just a smart remark away from fighting someone- i would strangle a man for a pack of Newport reds right now, id put money on a tap out too.

Strung up on being too sober?? I dunno man i got used to not drowning in my head while high an just kinda coasting life cause i refuse to take antipsychotics again but now its like moving through molasses trying to think in a straight line without getting tugged in 30 different directions by the nagging background noise in my brain.

This god awful ringing in my ears isnt helping any either.

Had to scroll back up to see what i was originally supposed to whine about, none of the hobbies i previously enjoyed or at least the ones i can remember really do anything for me now besides fishing. Games fucking suck id rather pluck pubes, having a major art block atm, anything social media is a bore nowadays, my social battery went from 30 to 20 minutes in intervals of 2 minute conversations before i start to stare through whoevers talking, im self isolating without really meaning to, GOD DAMNIT I JUST NEEDA WAIT TIL PAYDAY- and than i payoff all i owe endup with probably a 100 buckaroos left to my name. Yaay. 🥲

It's such a load of bullshit, especially in the world of corporate and desk jobs. They will hire you based on how well you fit their expectations, your "vibe" and how well you sell yourself to them and make them believe you're just like them. That on its own fills me with disgust, but what's worse is that it doesn't end. The performance never ends even when you get the job, it just continues and is expected to develop over time.

I've been working a manual labor job and I would really prefer to do so, if it was possible to afford to live off it. But it's not. So I'm forced to apply for these stupid desk jobs where the performance I have to give is constant and draining. It gives me the fear, the masking, the pressure to present myself as a normal person when I'm not, never have been and don't want to be. But I have to do it. If the masking is brief I find it funny because only I know how much I'm lying to them, the scale of those lies. But if it's longterm, it makes me question what is the point of life.

I am a person with social anxiety. I am very bad socially, and after almost every social situation, I start overthinking, followed by emotional pain from past failed experiences.

Although I have read a lot about how to overcome this problem, it is not something I can simply decide to change. I cannot just tell myself, “I won’t be anxious in social situations,” and make it happen. Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to mentally program myself to get rid of the anxiety and social phobia, nothing seems to change.

However, I have noticed something. Whenever I have good and successful experiences, even if I did not intentionally seek them out, I improve and feel more confident, which motivates me to have more experiences. But when I lose that momentum, either because of a period of stagnation or because of some failed experiences, I go back to my previous state—and sometimes I feel even worse because I remember the things I did and see them as embarrassing, thinking that I should never have done them.

This makes me feel that the treatment for me is to have many successful experiences. But that seems to depend on things that are completely outside my control.

If I deliberately try something with the goal of overcoming my social anxiety and it goes badly, the emotional pain feels much worse than if the experience had happened naturally. In other words, whenever I am around people, I try not to do anything at all. So if something embarrassing happens, it does not hurt as much because I was not really trying to do anything—I just act almost like a machine.

But if I have some motivation to do something, I feel as though everyone can see it and is watching me.

I feel like everyone who reads this is going to think that I live on another planet. Maybe they are right. Maybe it is a planet inside my imagination, whose walls are not made of iron but of… hmm, I don’t know.

I find it so preposterous to spend my limited daily energy reserves playing pretend with a bunch of hairless monkeys.

Forced to pad egos and kiss asses in respect towards the absurdity that is the human social hierarchy. I could do it a bit when I was younger, but now I have absolutely no energy for anything other than immediate survival needs.

People constantly call me rude, antisocial or speculate that I hate them or something, when I'm just neutral to their existence. I don't even have the energy to hate you lol

I find it all so boring and absurd. Arguments/debates always go nowhere, friendship/relationships seem strange and contrived.

There's always a bunch of hidden motives with The Social Game, and it is tiring.

It's just all so absurd what we do to pass the time here as deterministic meat suits.