Any other aspies with a lot of schizoid personality triats?

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What I itended to say was that you should not give much importance to my opinions.

I just found out the other day what that meant, and just used it in an earlier post. I felt so proud. lol

Actually I was the one that used that phrase in reference to the wikipedia article.

OK...

I'm pretty solitary. I have few friends apart from the ones I have online, and I would never confide in my family of origin. I'm extremely sensitive to criticism, but find it hard to respond to praise, and I used to try very hard to conform; these days I'm increasingly finding that being what many people would call 'eccentric' is far more conducive to good mental health, for me (i.e. not being anxious and depressed). My sexuality is intense, but took a long time to wake up. And I have emotions, and they run pretty deep, but they're hard for me to express. This is probably down to upbringing; neither emotions nor sexuality were considered appropriate things for human beings to express in my family of origin. (Also, marshall, I'm intensely private in the way you describe, but I suspect that's also down to the fact that I grew up in one of those families where everything you did was scrutinized and usually criticized.)

I often find my fantasy life is a lot richer than the 'real world' for me. This is only a problem if other people insist it is. Which they used to; I was always getting accused, as a kid, of living in a world of my own. Nobody thought to realize that I was doing it because the 'real' world was a pretty consistent hellhole.

I'm really not with them on the narcissism/sense of superiority thing, though. I don't recall ever feeling that way. It wasn't so much that I didn't need other people because I could withdraw; it was that I withdrew because for whatever reason, they didn't need or want me. At least, that was how it felt.

You may make of this what you will.

I'm pretty solitary. Apparently, though, I care too much about people--even when I don't care to spend time with them--to be truly schizoid.

Because in order to have a personality disorder, you need to have a series of extremely rigid and deep-set behaviours. As far as I know, most psychiatrists do not believe all that much can be done to change these behaviours, particularly with schizoid PD, which is probably the most rigid of the set. So there are no medications which can improve your functioning (in most cases) and very little therapy is available (in most cases). Also, I don't think you have much chance of getting disability benefits or anything if you have a PD. You just end up unemployed with no friends, and you don't need a diagnosis to find out that you're unemployed and have no friends.

That's a bit of a simplification, but you probably get my drift.

Possible advantage of a diagnosis of Schizoid PD:

Imagine that, in a family gathering, some relative of yours (your niece, for example) says:

"I think that TPE2 should be seen by someeone, I mean, some doctor. This is not normal: a person that don't say nothing during hours, that don't participate in conversation and in the world around him"

You can answer:

"I have Schizoid PD; most psychiatrists don't believe in a cure or an effective therapy for SPD, then it is pointless to worry about that; pass the butter"

[Probably, for that point, "Asperger Syndrome" is so good as "Schizoid PD"]

I think the two have many overlapping characteristics. It's just that schizoid isn't a useful dx. I think that personality disorders are only useful if nothing else applies. People with personality disorders don't usually seek help, in my understanding. Also they aren't usually dxed in children.

--des