r/Schizoid

There are VERY few things I enjoy (and even then the enjoyment is probably like 10% compared to normal people).

When I hear people saying how enjoyable exercising/sports is I just cannot wrap my head around HOW you can like that?

Getting tired? Thinking of your body?? I would prefer not to have a body at all…

And also apparently in contrary to most of schizoid people I don’t mind eating and actually chocolate gives me a little bit of happiness so removing it from my life and having to exercise is making me depressed

Do academics, mathematicians, scholars still need someone to talk to after a long day?

Is their brain hard-wired to always have a nagging feeling of loneliness present?

Are we truly unique in this regard?

I've been pondering this question as it's hard to believe nobody else truly feels this way.

Im just thinking about the possiblity that the most type of people who get differentiation from the sociaty is just the real human being?!

just think with me, the sociaty doesn't care if you are peaciful or aggressive, if you are very kind or super vanity arrongant, if you dogmat or free-mind and all the traits and it's opposite,

the sociaty just care if you participation in him, no matter what's the role you playing eithet negative or positive, He just want you to play in sociaty game

at the end sociaty needs bad people so there will be good people in opposite

and the only type of ppl who refuse to play to this game is the schizoid people, the only type of people who just doesn't care and doesn't wan't to participate

they are just mogging the sociaty and said nuh I good Im whole sociaty with myself

the message here for every schizoid you are really the most healthy human being, don't care what the sociaty saids abt you, the sociaty are the real sick madness and as the community refuse you, you can't refuse him too,

How do you spend your alone time?
I can’t seem to find anything I want to do, ever. I go to work from 8-4 I come home around 4:30 and till my sleep time (which is around 10) I’m just laying down in bed. Doing nothing. Maybe listening to some music in my phone. That’s about it. Years and years of this.
I have no drive towards anything. Also I’m so picky when it comes to series/movies I rarely find something interesting, plus I really struggle to keep my concentration and be engaged.
I like reading (specially psychology stuff) but I don’t read like a normal person, few pages and I begin to feel restless and shut down.
I don’t go out of the house unless it’s something necessary. Other than that maybe a restaurant once a month. That’s it.

I am really BORED and empty. Everything feels pointless, there is no pull towards anything.

Relationships are the worse. They bore me to death. Every interaction feels fake and made up.

I always hear that schizoid people usually have interests they lose themselves in, like IT, programming, playing an instrument etc. I have no interests at all!!
I am not good at anything.
Even if I do something I can never lose myself in it, I am always self conscious watching myself from the outside, can’t ever let go.
I would love to lose myself. I’m tired.

I do mean that in a good way. I miss being in the mental hospital, it's always nice in there when I've gone. Reading and making posts here almost feels like I'm back in the lounge area of one of those hospitals.

I have autism, but what makes me have schizoid is the utter lack of desire for closeness. I require solitude, I require distance. I fantasize about being a hermit. To the point where when someone tries to be close to me, I get extremely uncomfortable. This is the case even with antipsychotics and antidepressants in me.

I'd like to hear other povs

I’m 22 F dx with bpd years ago. I always accepted my dx but never felt truely confident in it. I have some of the main traits but more of my issues I’ve found to struggle with is social interaction and doing anything at all. I lost my probably 15th job, sit alone all day in the house I share with my fiancé and ignore every single person I know because the worst thing I could imagine doing is talking with or hanging out with people. I have no desire to change and spend my days sleeping to avoid people and life and my nights binge watching shows alone. I’ve even started avoiding going on social media as it makes me anxious and uncomfortable I don’t like hearing about other people’s lives or interests it feels exhausting to me. I don’t know if it’s worth telling my pysch that I think I my personality disorder is the wrong one. I was wondering if any of you here resonate with how I feel ofcourse not asking for diagnosis or medical advice just interested if it sounds worthy of talking to someone about. Thanks

How are you doing? I just feel so scared whenever I have to have small talks with anyone feeling like I would get called out as the odd one out and somethings really disturbingly off w me. Also I feel like you have to get to know each other later as time passes and can't use the I'm new here card as an excuse and feel like everyone would hate me so so much and make the whole room uncomfortable and awkward for not being able to be one of them and not being able to be a real human being.

I’m a 25-year-old guy living in Khabarovsk, Russia. I’ve been treated for depression and during my hospital stay I was diagnosed with “schizoid accentuation.” Personally, I think it’s closer to schizoid personality disorder—I’ve felt like a stranger my whole life.

I have no friends, no real dreams, no ambitions. I’m not interested in making a lot of money. I can’t seem to find a job, even though I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree and I’m not stupid. My hobbies are mostly intellectual—chess, Linux, languages, heavy music.

I can’t handle small talk or play social roles. It’s exhausting and feels fake. Finding a partner is especially hard because in Russia (especially in a provincial city like Khabarovsk) social expectations are very rigid. My personality type just doesn’t fit into the usual boxes.

For the past few years I’ve been living in near-total isolation. It became much worse after my brother moved out and I was left completely alone.

I’m not sure what I’m looking for here. Maybe to hear if anyone else feels this way, or if there’s any path forward that doesn’t require becoming a completely different person.

(For context, I've been diagnosed with schizoid and obsessive tendencies, possibly full blown schizoid personality disorder at this point. I started going to therapy because of panic attacks and got diagnosed with panic disorder. My schizoid tendencies have been left undiscussed and I've only realized all my panic attacks trace back to interactions with people recently. I suspect I might have the covert form — I'm highly functioning, my face and tone expressive, but it's all trained and turns off as soon as the social interaction ends. The only person I don't put on this mask around is my mother who I've given up on. She often calls me cold and emotionless. I'm currently waiting for my appointment to share this epiphany with my psychologist. I've only been happy when I've been actively isolating myself in the past 4 years and as soon as I get any closer relationships, I get panic attacks progressively more often. I can't believe I didn't realize this was happening for that long, it felt like nothing was wrong since my panic attacks started to go into remission about a year ago. I felt genuinely happy, but in reality, I was just isolated from what triggered them.)

Looking back at my relationships, I've only ever felt natural around and connected to other people with schizoid tendencies. They share my aversion to society, have a rich world I can merge mine with, and although I still feel like an alien, my brain subconsciously registers them as one of my own. It is a rare occurrence to find someone whose mind feels safe, familiar, comprehensible and habitable to me (that's the best term I've been able to find so far.)

When I do find someone I like, my obsessive tendencies take over. I become hyperactive, showering the person with tons of affection, overwhelming both them and myself. It is exhausting to be in any kind of relationship, whether I feel connected or not. It almost feels like I have been so deprived of love my brain switches to a mode where all this care I've accumulated deep inside my brain throughout my life bursts through the walls of my fortress the moment I feel safe. I've had nowhere safe to put this care and love. As a girlfriend or even a close friend, I experience intense emotions that fuel these obsessions. It needs out, usually in the form of collecting details about what the person likes (not just general information, every single detail they mention), making gifts (I love crocheting plushies based on the information I collect) and I tend to cry a lot just out of the intensity of the emotions and love I feel.

The type of guy I'm attracted to is very specific:

1. doesn't have many/has zero close relationships because of this shared difficulty to connect

2. has a rich inner world (hobbies, thoughts, opinions, passions... I tend to gravitate towards philosophy, reading and unique hobbies)

3. isn't initiative — my attraction seems to be primarily fueled by having to "fight for" a guy, I'm highly dominant

4. intelligence — usually comes with the rich inner world, intellectual stimulation is a must, although it doesn't seem to be enough to spark attraction in me on its own.

As you can see, despite being a schizoid myself, I'm attracted to traits that directly clash with my obsessive tendencies and intense emotions.

Most of the time, meeting someone I can even connect to feels impossible, I've only met 2 people like that throughout my entire life. I often get frustrated and cry because of the pressure I feel from not being able to release all that care and love that's accumulating in me. I feel extremely apathetic towards 99% of people, and even when I cognitively find them interesting, it doesn't reach the emotional level. It is only when the person shows the traits listed above that the intense emotions and connection passes through this apathy.

I do not know how to stop this from happening.

I do not know how to feel connected without obsessing. A pressing urge is pushing me towards hyperactively tending to any speck of connection I feel 24/7 and it feels unsafe if I don't. I feel the need to hold onto it tightly, like it's so fragile I need to hold it together so it doesn't fall apart, or as if it was a bird that would fly away, never to be seen again, as soon as I stop holding it. And it is unbearably suffocating. I'm even suffocating the schizoid side of myself and I feel terrible whenever I like someone just because of this. It almost feels like I need to protect the person from myself and save them by leaving.

And disappearing is the only way I know how to deal with both my obsessive and schizoid side. I only know how to starve obsessions by distancing myself from that person. It's either the schizoid extreme or the obsessive one, I can't seem to establish anything in between.

I have no idea how common my experience is, I feel indescribably lonely and isolated. The only connection I reliably feel is with books, that's why I read a lot. It is satisfactory enough to keep me functioning, serving as a substitute for real connection with living humans, and I've noticed I become extremely unstable and emotionally fragile when I stop reading for more than a week.

Voluntary physical isolation doesn't bother me, I feel the need to retreat back into my cave and spend time with myself often, but the involuntary isolation caused by lack of connection when I really want to connect is causing me a lot of distress. I mostly wrote this to let it out and I do not expect any solutions or replies, just understanding, even if it's silent.

It's been a while since I've been active on here, but I thought I'd write to document my possibly becoming psychotic. Not really looking for help. I'll make an appointment with a psychiatrist tomorrow.

My mind going nuts comes with the perk of the world being more beautiful. The transition of a wall dipped in sunshine and shadows is lowely, the distant forrest breathtakingly dark and the sparkles in the ripples of the nearby river's waters are trying to tell me something fundamental. The latter was one of my tip-offs that something is wrong with my mind ;)

My cognitive functioning is impaired. I am a software developer and using software myself to code is becoming very difficult. It's as if the features of my IDE are playing hide & seek and what was once one click away is now a google search away. Day-to-day I leave rooms with a scattered mind forgetting what I left them for. I came here, even, on a different purpose, and now I post. My mind is deep under water. My emotions flat as a puddle. And after 5 years of therapy and much increase of social interactions and capability, I am rapidly withdrawing.

One of the absolute worst things about having an introverted and withdrawn personality is that more extroverted individuals will inevitably mistake your reticence & reservedness for shyness and will treat you as their own personal project, to attempt to try and get you to "open up" or "come out of your shell."

These individuals typically have large and inflated egos and this manifests as them mistakenly believing that they alone have the key to the locked box that is your true personality. And they are going to make a seemingly endless amount of attempts at getting you to open up, and may eventually become frustrated with you as you continually disappoint their best efforts and put a dent into their ego, once they come to terms with the fact that they are not in fact uniquely capable of completely altering someone's personality.

Because at the end of the day, their best efforts are nothing more than a futile exercise in trying to change someone who was never asking to be changed in the first place. And they'll soon (if their self-image allows it) come to realize that instead of viewing them as charismatic, special, and empathetic, you find them to be little more than patronizing and condescending

A few things have been going good in my life and it does almost make me want to celebrate, but even acknowledging that makes the feeling go away. I don't usually feel the need to do anything different just because things get a little easier. I don't truly understand the need to celebrate things which have nothing to do with you, such as most holidays (including my birthday, which I generally try to avoid celebrating).

Hi. I just want to know how your day is going and take my mind off things for a bit, stop feeling like my own brain is trying to eat me

Only this

Started therapy 6 months ago but had to stop the last few weeks as my life spiraled out of control and my mental health declined rapidly.

This really built up over the past 6 months, but it all culminated recently when I snapped and starting considering whether I am in fact essentially "disabled" and what that actually means to me and what lens I want to view myself through.

I realized every aspect of my personality is deeply built on various psychological and philosophical coping strategies I've developed over a lifetime, in order TO AVOID living in the completely hellish nightmare that I would be in without those schizo coping strategies.

Now, therapy has made me confront all my shortcomings and had me deconstructing those coping strategies, basically using the rationality of a "normal well-adjusted" person. Being forced to think and feel in this way has triggered extreme depression and anxiety but in a way I've never experienced before. My past depression and anxiety were always dream-like and disembodied, but now after therapy it's a direct, embodied experience of emotion that I'm not used to. Therapy pushed me to focus on, embody, and rationally analyze my deepest feelings. All of this has me in a state where I'm constantly reliving past experiences like a nightmare. I'm in a constant panic attack. I feel like I opened the floodgate to 25+ years of unprocessed emotional trauma all at once.

This doesn't feel healthy. What good are these emotions and realizations to me? Why would I really even want to analyze how disabled or non-adjusted I am according to societal norms? What if my old disembodied emotional experience, coping mechanisms, and "schizo-adjusted" rationalizations were the only things keeping me sane and functional? What if "well-adjusted" rationality is not healthy for me?

Does anyone have a similar experience with therapy?

(Things actually got so bad that I went to the ER and I'm now on some heavy sedatives, which help a lot. I'm currently trying to find a medication that will work long-term.)

Peaked in high school? Nah. Peaked in primary. Tell a child they're the smartest in the room. "You're so pretty", "your hair's so long and wavy and blonde", "You read so much we'll let you into YA", " You're so smart we'll send you to the STEM program" Sending me into high school science classes when I was years younger than anyone else in the class. Expected to build robots while our classmates were learning how tie-dye works. Criticised for not understanding the soldering iron I'm 10 years old and I've never seen silver before and I've burned myself. Draw on the red folder to not feel dumb but I do because I am not smart enough to understand the science intended for people years older than me. Why am I here when I don't want to be? I ask. I want to have fun, not find the cure for cancer; I'm a kid, why am I in a laboratory? Am I high and pushing all my problems onto Reddit? Yes. Have I been traumatised by constantly being expected to perform far above my level? Maybe. Do I have eternally unachievable goals because of this ingrained expectation? Yes. Am I the one stalking primary school besties online at 4am in the morning? Yes. I'm a failure of wasted potential. I don't blame myself. I blame the world that pushed me. I know I could have done great things in any field I wanted but you pushed me too hard too early and now I'm nothing. Worthless. A grain of sand compressed into coal instead of diamonds. Everyone else moves on except for perfect old me. A static light, a muse to look back on and let fade to memory. Do you even remember me. in the same way I remember you? Idknow. Maybe we meet again someday and you can use me as a milestone marker for how far you've gone. While I sit still like a static meteorite.

My whole adult life I have felt this weird sense of distance, of being cut off from everyone and everything, of estrangement, of being fundamentally and utterly different and alone. I used to call it “rejection” , when I am with people I feel that my core being is being rejected, not the classical (i am unwanted) rejection, no, it’s (me being here is wrong) rejection. It’s like existence itself is constantly rejecting and persecuting me. 35 years of this.

Then, a couple of years back I started digging more in this feeling. And because I read a lot of psychoanalysis literature. I came to realize that this way of being has a name. It’s called (alienation).

And by searching, reading dozens of books and articles I came up with a list of symptoms that capture my alienation experience. I thought of sharing it here.
Maybe you will find it relatable, too.

-Feeling like a spectator in my own life:
I watch myself do things but don’t feel like I’m doing them. No solid sense of (I) , my living feels like a performance I am watching from a distance.
-Emotional deadness:
Difficulty accessing feelings. I know, intellectually, that I should feel something, but there’s a flatness. It’s like being cut off from my own aliveness. The bright side: I can’t even feel my (suffering) , I suffer from a distance.
-Compulsive conformity to an external image:
I live through what is called “ego ideal” , what I think others want me to be. My choices track social scripts, not desire.
-Split between thought and feeling: Intellectualization. I can analyze everything about myself but feel nothing. Or I have intense feelings that seem to belong to someone else (there is a felt gap between my sense of self and my experience of life, between my mind self and my body self).
-Others feel unreal or like objects:
People are roles, “my boss” “my mom” etc, not subjects. I can’t quite meet their interiority. They are more of 2D pictures.
-Instrumental relationships:
I relate to people for what they provide: validation, security etc, not for the relationship itself. The moment they are no longer of use to me I discard or ghost them. Guntrip talked about this, how the schizoid person is a bit cruel and lacks sensitivity to other’s feelings. It’s not classical narcissism. It’s more of (people don’t register as relevant, I don’t feel a need to keep them around, it takes massive mental effort to keep a relationship alive).
-Isolation despite contact:
I can be surrounded by people and still feel profoundly alone. Small talk is exhausting because it highlights the gap between my surface and my depth or what they call the real self.
-Paranoia or excessive compliance:
Either everyone feels like a threat/judge, or I merge with them and lose boundaries then panic about it. Both are ways of not meeting the other as a subject.
-Empty speech:
I talk but feel like I am saying nothing real. Talking feels cliche, borrowed or performative. The signifier doesn’t touch my experience (Lacan).
-Meaninglessness / absurdity:
The world doesn’t make sense in a lived way. I can explain ideologies or belief systems, but they feel arbitrary and unreal. A constant “why bother?” mode.
-Being spoken by the “big Other”:
I hear constant internal commentary (society, parents,etc) judging my every move. My inner monologue isn’t mine. And it’s harsh. There is a sense of an inner eye watching me the whole time.
-Body as machine:
I relate to my body like an object I possess, not inhabit from the inside. There is a sense of being localized above the neck, in the eyes segment. The rest of the body feels distant. A constant fatigue and loss of energy.
-A strange relationship with time:
Time doesn’t feel linear, as if everything is happening in a constant “now”. People and events stick, they feel as if they are always here.
-A feeling of being ageless and genderless:
This is a part of being alienated from myself. I don’t feel my own age, I don’t feel a 35 years woman, i feel formless, small. People relate to me as a grown woman but I don’t feel that, it’s like my outer physical character and my inner experience are severed. The inner experience is frozen. As if I haven’t been born yet.
-A constant sense of existential dread:
Feeling cut off as if I live in a sealed bubble nothing reaches me. And I always run from this feeling by not being still for a long time.

Another point is that I feel as if I am living (manually), I am generating the reactions and emotions and movements in real time, specially in relationships. It’s like my inner spontaneity is dead or frozen. I have to animate myself around people and that’s just exhausting.

That’s it. I felt like sharing the pain. Thank you for reading.

Say how you are doing and what you are doing.

I was diagnosed with Schizoid Personality Disorder a week ago, at 42 years old. Since then, I’ve been looking back at a lot of my past behavior and many things are starting to make sense. But there’s one thing I’m really struggling to understand.

When my grandmother was dying, I wasn’t able to go see her in the hospital, even though I knew she only had a few days left. I also didn’t go to her funeral. It’s not that I didn’t love her — I loved her very much. I feel bad about it, not only because of her, but also because I wasn’t there for my mother during such a difficult time. Still, I chose to stay home alone.

What confuses me is that I can feel a lot of empathy when I watch sad videos or movies about people I don’t even know. I get emotional and sometimes cry. But when it came to something real and close, like my grandmother dying, I completely shut down and couldn’t bring myself to be there.

Is this normal with schizoid personality disorder? How can I feel empathy for strangers in stories, but not be able to show up for my own family when they needed me the most?