01/04/2012
I read this article a few days ago, and I have been thinking about it since.
It was interesting to see a new take on schizoid PD, since it is probably the least-studied personality disorder. This is because people with schizoid PD are “untreatable” because they “neither desire nor enjoy close relationships.” Because there is so little information about this (these?) disorder(s?), I have always felt incredibly freakish. I haven’t been diagnosed with schizoid PD, but I think if I ever went to a psychiatrist, I would. Of course, I won’t go to a psychiatrist on account of the “schizoid dilemma”.
The master-slave relationship, the loss of self, and the “schizoid dilemma” are all mainstays of my life. To read about them so casually in print was surprising. It almost made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
“The fear is what happens when our conditional relationships don’t work; when they fail. When we’ve either been, for the most part, brought up, taught that what we think and feel and how we act really doesn’t particularly matter to the other person. Whether it be to our caregivers, whether it be to our parents, whether it be to whoever was responsible for our emotional growth and development, that it basically doesn’t matter; that the other person’s needs and agendas and thoughts and feelings take precedence. Not because everyone else is narcissistic, but because everyone else is a human being with their own agendas and needs and frustrations and anxieties and conflicts and therefore the people they relate to—their children, their closest loved ones—somehow their needs, feelings take second place; put on the back burner or actually taken totally off the stove, put in deep freeze.”
“The intrapsychic world of the schizoid individual is extraordinarily conditional. It is conditional upon the idea that others, others have the control. The fundamentally bottom line, 51% to 99% others opinions, feelings, wishes and needs take priority over ours. And our wishes, needs and feelings, if they’re 49% we’re lucky. They can go down to 1%.”
Probably “I don’t matter,” “what I want doesn’t matter,” and “what I think doesn’t matter” are the most commonly used phrases in my diary. They are an ongoing refrain, the chorus of my life. I say these things so often that they begin to lose meaning, turn into an endless whining tidal wave with no beginning and no end. I know I’m repetitive. It is because my unimportance in my own life is the rock on which my entire psyche is organized.
Exile:
“Exile has many dimensions. It can include the prototypic idea of the person Thoreau who wishes to be alone; leave me alone. That’s what gave schizoid individuals a bad name. they took the exception, the person who had to go such into exile as to retreat from all relationships to others, which is about one percent of all schizoid individuals; maybe five percent maximum. And they haven’t lost their desire. Their terror is so great that no accommodation can be made. Otherwise, we make all sorts of accommodations in exile. We become self-reliant. That’s like “I’ll do it myself”. We become self-contained. We have a rich private life. We allow our attachments to exist not just with the world but with our rich inner life. No one has as rich an inner life as schizoid individuals. Doesn’t mean we all don’t. We all have imagination and creativity; a world that we create of memories, of experiences, of thoughts and feelings about who we are and whether other people are alike, but no one like a schizoid individual. And the more profound the schizoid disturbance, the more internalized is that world; the more they live in their head. With all of its joys and all its potential loneliness. With all its ambitions and all its fears and agonies.”
The guy I used to work with said I was the most self-reliant person he’d ever met. I don’t ask for help. I don’t like depending on people. Because then what is mine becomes theirs…or if not theirs, then less mine.
The private internal world…I never talk about. Not even here. “Rich fantasy life” doesn’t quite encompass it. “Disturbing fantasy life” may be closer. The second-to-last sentence is troubling: “And the more profound the schizoid disturbance, the more internalized is that world; the more they live in their head.” That I will not even tell my anonymous diary these things is, perhaps, an issue.
The schizoid dilemma:
“I will identify, track with patients their exiling; their movement away. The gaze aversion. The silence. I’ll describe it. I’ll track it. I’ll describe what just happened that they perhaps felt that they had exposed a little bit about themselves, began to feel a little unsafe. They found themselves knee deep, waist deep, neck deep in a schizoid dilemma. Whoops, I’ve gotten too close. I’m going to drown. I better get the hell out of here. Fall silent. Change the subject. Do anything”
The number of times I have done this in my life. I have friends I have known since elementary school who know nothing about me. They try to get closer; I run away—usually figuratively, but literally at least once. Sometimes it’s done smoothly. More often, it’s awkward and obvious. It doesn’t matter, though, because I cannot let others in. The world might end. What
is mine would become less mine. And I have ownership of so little.
Anyway, I found this address interesting, and gave me hope that someday there might be psychiatrists and psychologists who won’t just brush me off as untreatable. At least one person’s working on it, right?