Irrational Fears vs Belief - could I be schizotypal?

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If you have irrational fears you usually understand are irrational and try to discard, and lack the ability to form belief, could you still be schizotypal? (For those unaware what this is, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotyp ... y_disorder )

So after all this time (32 years), doctors never did agree on a simple diagnosis for me. 17 years ago they really thought I had Asperger's Syndrome, as well as Bi-Polar, Anxiety, Depression, and possibly ADHD; but I kept having symptoms that didn't fit the criteria. I have a tenant who's diagnosed with Asperger's, and it's clear to me that this individual's symptoms are quite different from me; he seems to really have low awareness of his surroundings and others. We share some traits, but the differences are striking in our symptoms, especially the awareness. Of course symptoms, especially with largely unknown causes, will present differently in people, but this observation is not my only evidence. Doctors have been calling me "strangely high-functioning autistic" for a while.

One of the key criteria that I do not meet with autism is low empathy. I can clearly see in my tenant problems with empathy that I (and others) do not see with myself. If anything, I have an overabundance of empathy. I've always been keen to pick up on body language and react to it. I feel bad, sometimes horrible, when I hear about deaths of people I do not know, even those "that deserved it". I want to know more about everyone, *everyone*, around me. Sometimes I even fantasize about following one person, like as an invisible free-floating spirit, to see what their life is like. In short, everyone's interesting to me. But I've isolated myself almost completely from the world due to fear.

My main problem is irrational fear. Within me, I have a serious overabundance of fear. When it gets bad, everything I do is marked by fear -- eating, I fear I shall die of a heart attack, trying to sleep, I fear I shall never wake up, talking to someone, I fear they shall attack me. It's primal, like a survival instinct, and medication can help. The fears do not always revolve around death, but a lot do. I've always called this "anxiety" or "stress", but it's definitely a fear response: my heart races, I feel the need to flee, hair on the back of my neck can stand up, etc. Now, getting back to the issue at hand.

I have isolated myself from belief. For as long as I can remember, belief has never come naturally do me. Even as a young child, it's like I knew the irrational side of me was too dangerous to let me believe in things (as a kid I called them "bad thoughts"). I am obsessed with logic, trying to find the logic in everything, especially my own thoughts and line of reasoning -- I call this a "sanity check" (for you programmers, of which I am one of). I call them irrational thoughts, but really they are fears, and which sometimes turn into compulsions. Like needing to always tell the raw, whole truth in certain situations. Or not swearing, ever. Or not putting my hands in my pockets. I understood all these things were compulsory, even as a young child, but the added anxiety was bad enough with the natural cauldron of anxiety that bubbles inside of me.

Note: I can identify the "bad thoughts" because they *always* come with a quite strong feeling of fear, even to the point of causing physical symptoms (mostly pains in my stomach and head and neck, though at one point, my bladder was *seriously* affected). While I know I can't feel myself thinking, the pains in my neck and head make it feel like I can, at times, as the pain only occurs when I try to fight these bad thoughts/compulsions.

Now here's a rather easy, simple example of what I mean when I say irrational fear vs belief: when I was a child, up until I was an older teenager, I feared (Biblical) God, even though I don't remember ever *believing* God exists. I reasoned, even as a young child, there wasn't enough trustworthy evidence of a biblical God's existence a long time ago, and, instead, started to come up with my own ideas of how the supernatural may work, if it exists at all. This is probably part of the reason why death was foremost in my fears, as death, for a skeptic, means the *possibility* of oblivion -- and nothing can be scarier than that.

The problem with my treatment is that I was never able to properly express this, as not only were the irrational thoughts quite overwhelming at times, but I also had the compulsion to tell the raw, unaltered truth. If someone asked me to tell them how I was feeling, for a lot of my life, I had to tell them a brief recount of what was going on internally, what I was thinking and feeling at the time, even if I knew it sounded quite crazy. I think partly I *wanted* to believe these thoughts were *not* irrational, for my own sanity, but I knew, quite consciously, they were.

So anyway, my mother, who is a psych grad (returning) student and long-time mental health advocate working with NAMI, has been looking into different diagnosises for me for a long time, never quite convinced that, in my adult life, Asperger's fit, due to the differing symptoms. She recently found some really old stuff from a counselor who had insight on me as a child, and partly from that, she's wondering if I may schizotypal.

It sounds like OCD, with the intrusive thoughts, but could be paranoia too (which is a schizo thing but could be part of other disorders). It's called "catastrophic thinking", but maybe you just have it in specific situations?
Telling the whole truth if someone asks how you are is an aspie thing, but that is more about not knowing it isn't a real question and just social niceties - though I know this (now) and I still do it just because. But I don't know if that comes with some sort of compulsion to tell the truth in other aspies.. Are schizotypals particularly honest? I thought that was an aspie-thing. I'm also honest because interaction gives me absolutely nothing when I'm not (and even then it doesn't give much always), but I don't get any kind of physical issue if I'm not.
Some are better at socializing through really really really really really hard work, so the question is if it comes naturally to you? From what I've read aspies are more interested in people than HFA's are (for those that think there's any difference between the two). But the voyeuristic aspect fits more with schizoids. Obviously schizoid, the way you describe it.
Anyway straight up schizophrenics can still be able to know that the delusions and hallucinations are just that so I don't think it disqualifies you from being on the schizo-spectrum. You know you can be on many of the major spectrums (schizo, bipolar, autism etc) at the same time, right? Having several co-morbids could be the reason you can't pinpoint your "symptoms" to a single diagnosis as they're not separated within people as they are in the DSM and you don't have to fit with every single trait of something.
I recognize a lot of what you say for me too, and I've looked at the schizotypal (and all other schizo-everything) diagnosis too, though I'm also autistic, so I guess you're on the right track there, maybe, autistic or not.

Also the fear you describe sounds like panic attacks, or maybe how the fear-response works in someone with PTSD. Panic-attacks are very physical and can sometimes happen without you being aware of any preceding anxiety but during the anxiety (even if you don't recognize it as such) is worse than it is for those with general anxiety and you can quite literally think that you're going to die. I've been diagnosed with panic disorder and have PTSD too.

Btw you sound like an aspie anyway, but it just might be because I'm paranoid as f**k and that's what I recognize and view as normal and all other aspies wont? Apparently schizotypals can score like aspies on aspie-quizzes and such so it is similar. Or maybe you're afraid of "going insane" and therefore think it's more abnormal than it is? If so I'm not really helping am I? You really must stop guilt-tripping yourself over stuff like that.

Well it could be schizotypal PD, but personaliy to me the first part sounds like avoidant personality disorder and the second like OCD and this combination could look a lot like autism.