Ptsd & Schizoid

[DissociativeJunkie]

It seems to me that PTSD and Schizoid Personality Disorder could be interconnected. I have no close ties with family or friends. All my friends are online. I have little to no interest in a romantic partner, getting married, having children and so on. My sex drive is non-existent.

When I do try to get into a relationship, generally during a hypomanic episode, it's very awkward and terrifying. I can't get comfortable with me. Its easier, being with women, but harder to find women in my rural area. I consider myself pansexual by the way, and genderfluid. About three months in the relationship, when they start getting serious, I bail. And I can't have sex with men. At all. So it's all rather pointless. I'm 29 years old and unmarried without kids. I can't picture myself ever getting married or having children. I kind of missed the time period in my life when that's supposed to happen. Everyone my age is taken. Older men scare me, though I find them attractive.

Friendships are intense and like a roller coaster ride. I'm also Borderline Personality Disorder. So I have this working against me too. I'm not sure how to have a friendship. How they work. They are almost just as awkward. I have been under socialized since my psychotic break. Especially since I don't drive and my parents find me burdensome to take me places. They bitch about having to take me to appointments, which I need for my physical and mental health. I'm not sure if I'm okay to drive now, I have to get tested for...I'm getting off topic. Anyway.

Me and relationships are very difficult. Anyone relate?

 

[The Albatross]

"It seems to me that PTSD and Schizoid Personality Disorder could be interconnected." How so?

 

[Justmehere]

What you describe fits well with avoidant attachment styles that can result from trauma.

 

[Friday]

As far as I am aware... PTSD can affect people of every/all disorder types. There may be some disorders which exculde PTSD naturally, but if there are? I don't know what they might be. Excluding people who have been misdiagnosed, on this site alone there are people who are comorbid PTSD with ADHD, Anorexia, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, DID, Depression, DualDiagnosis ChemDep., Dyslexia/calcula/graphia, GAD... List goes on.

It's one of the things that makes PTSD so difficult to medicate effectively; when baseline neurology runs the whole gamut!

As @Justmehere says, though... A lot of the time comorbidity can be difficult, though... As there is a lot of symptom overlap between disorders. What might be viewed as Schizoid (or any one of several disorders) without accounting for trauma? May well be better accounted for as symptoms of PTSD once trauma is accounted for!

 

[shimmerz]

May well be better accounted for as symptoms of PTSD once trauma is accounted for!

Yes, this is the way I am working my through. It made it much simpler and way less overwhelming. I think many of these comorbid diagnosis are the trauma peeking out.

 

[Chava]

If you have both issues, they are interconnected for you, like how alcoholism and anorexia get interconnected with my trauma. You describe your relationships as intense, yet having no interest. I don't know enough about BPD to know if that's common, but it seems like a paradox. I think you could be avoidant and a bit schizoid, or borderline and a bit avoidant (I don't have any personality disorder but have some borderline traits and some schizoid traits, but quite a few avoidant traits. And all of that is sort of interconnected to both my personality and my trauma...it was all shaped together.

Is it that once you are interested in person it's difficult to manage the relationship in a balanced way? True schizoid personality rarely has intense relationships. They are more just non-existent and very low key if anything.

 

[DissociativeJunkie]

It depends on if I'm hypomanic or not. When I'm hypomanic everything is intense. When I'm normal or depressed, there is no intensity whatsoever. But seeing as I'm not hypomanic most of the time, I would probably go with the lack luster, bland, no passion flavor of my relationships.

I'm trying to discover if its trauma related or not. I had one really intense, passionate relationship...the only one I could ever be intimate with someone. But I was hypomanic at the time. She dumped me. I haven't been able to have a relationship like that since then, and its been almost 7 years. I just don't think I could give myself to someone again, like that, with the risk of getting my heart broken a second time. But maybe. In time. I'm not closed to the possibility. I'm trying to get myself interested in dating again, but I feel like I'm setting myself up for failure because I can't trust anyone enough to be intimate with them. Which makes me think it really is based in trauma. Intimacy terrifies me. I can't relax being alone with someone in private. I feel extreme panic and just want to leave the entire time. If its a public setting it isn't so bad. Being with people is so frightening.

I meant a connection between PTSD and Schizoid because of the avoidance for relationships. That's the connection I drew.

 

[joeylittle]

Intimacy terrifies me. I can't relax being alone with someone in private. I feel extreme panic and just want to leave the entire time. If its a public setting it isn't so bad. Being with people is so frightening.

I'd question whether you have Schizoid Personality Disorder - only because this isn't really in line with what is prevalent in the differential diagnosis of SPD. It absolutely lines up with avoidant personality, though, with does connect with PTSD.

Friendships are intense and like a roller coaster ride. I'm also Borderline Personality Disorder.

This, too, makes it sound more likely that your SPD was perhaps mis-diagnosed trauma response. Schizoid and Borderline are quite in opposition to each other (according to the five-factor model, anyway).

Personality disorders are wicked complicated, and I'm really just a stranger reading you on the internet, so take me with a grain of salt. But you might have a little bit of over-diagnosis going on. I'd also not really trust any personality disorder diagnosis without the diagnostician also being clearly aware of the possibility for PTSD, and the Bipolar II. Were all these given to you by the same doctor?

 

[Chava]

I relate to a lot of what you say, except I can't even say I've had any intense or very passionate relationships. I can really like someone but, even if we're dating I feel like I create a lot of distance or a bubble around myself which destroys the relationship. So I have mostly given up because isolation is much more predictable and doesn't involve the same feelings of fear, rejection, vulnerability, confusion, etc. I tend to trust people far too slowly to make intimate relationships work. The other person gets impatient or feels like I don't care because of the distance I create when it feels like there is pressure to get closer. In one relationship with a guy I really liked, I felt freaked out about the relationship moving forward and started starving myself again to numb out. That's not normal, but it's not schizoid either. I sabotage relationships and withdraw for entirely non-schizoid reasons. That I feel safer in isolation might appear a little schizoid...it just absolutely isn't....

Some of what you describe also sounds like numbness, or shutting down in response to your other approaches to relationships not working. Schizoid does not fit well with these patterns. And I'd like to think that's a good thing...also very important to not self-diagnose or even use a schizoid lens because it really might not help you find the right path for healing. Your avoidance does not sound like it comes from a schizoid place.

Sorry if I missed somewhere on here, but do you have a diagnosis and/or are you currently working with a therapist?

 

[DissociativeJunkie]

JoeyLittle: I had a psychological assessment by a neural psychologist and those were the conclusions he drew by the tests he gave me. He diagnosed me with PTSD, BD Type II, SPD and BPD. Could he be off? Yes. There is always a margin for error, those tests only reveal so much. I am going to discuss all this with my therapist at my next session. I think I'd like to go back to seeing her weekly instead of every two weeks. Actually this time it will be more than two weeks. And I haven't been stable.If I'm going to work through trauma I know I'm going to need extra support.

So BPD and SPD don't normally go together? Hm. I am a complex person. LOL. Maybe because I'm a Gemini. All joking aside though, this is....this is doable. It's going to be okay. Because I'll put in the work and effort to make it so.

There's actually two people I sort of like right now...but I'm too scared to get into anything other than friendship because of all of the above. But it isn't often I feel like I could love someone, and I feel like I could love my friend Heather if I wanted to and gave it a chance. Or rather, if she'd give me a chance and that is doubtful, so I don't let my emotions go there. But I could. That is encouraging. I haven't felt that way for anyone since May.

Chava: Everything I've mentioned is from a new diagnosis, and I've been seeing my therapist for a year. :) I am not diagnosing myself, I know I'm not qualified to do that. I always get a professional diagnosis. Psychological tests are only black and white. When I see the psychologist again on Tuesday for a more in depth explanation, I will tell him what I think in regards to trauma if it still makes sense to me.

But its comforting you can relate. When relationships start to get serious I just bail. I'm actually a serial dater. I've dated several people over the past 5 years, and most of them either lasted a couple of weeks or 3 months before I ditched them. Some of it was because I get a buzz off of the chemical reactions that occur at the beginning of a relationship. In the beginning it gives me a sort of high. But once it gets serious, and I need to get intimate, I bail. It's wrong, because I go in knowing I can't be intimate with these men but do it anyway. This is why I haven't dated since May. I'm trying to get better and reform myself. With women its different though, but finding women in my area isn't easy. It's very rural. It's much easier for me to trust women and be intimate with them. They feel so safe. My most passionate relationship was with another woman, and I truly, truly loved her more than I've ever loved anyone. That was a long time ago though.

 

[Chava]

Psychological tests are only black and white. When I see the psychologist again on Tuesday for a more in depth explanation, I will tell him what I think in regards to trauma if it still makes sense to me.

Yes, the written types of assessments, especially when several issues going on (trauma complicates many things), still requires a really smart human intake and assessment to put the pieces together. I could answer as not very interested in relationships. In the wrong kind of assessment and intake that could put me somewhere along the schizoid path, but like I said it's not true. Only based on what you are describing here, it doesn't seem schizoid but also not clear-cut avoidant either.

Maybe ask your therapist how and why SPD and BPD would overlap (not saying it's wrong, but it's so unusual that I would also wonder if some trauma symptoms are being lumped into this). Do you have early traumas or complex trauma? The symptoms can present more globally.

The main thing is understanding where our real challenges are (in relationships or elsewhere) and finding ways to grow towards a more comfortable balance. For understanding relationships, you have an unusual mix of diagnosis. So hopefully talking more with your therapist can help you frame what the key issues are and how you can move forward in your therapy work, as well as ways of connecting with others, whether the diagnosis are perfect or not.

 

[joeylittle]

Thanks for the clarification, @DissociativeJunkie - and, of course, how you interpret and work with those diagnoses is totally your business and absolutely not mine :)

It's possible that you mathematically computed to the potential likelihood for one or more of those alphabet soups, and the neural psych went with the math. I'm really only sticking on it because SPD is incredibly rare, so much so that there is debate over whether it is, in fact, a diagnosis at all. One of the major hallmarks of SPD is a lack of interest in any relationship or connection - coupled with having no concern with that state of affairs. One of the major points on BPD is a consistent craving for intense connection, and an uncomfortable feeling when that connection is not accessible.

Avoidant folks usually want connection but also are afraid of it, either because of past experience or present danger, or both.

PTSD and BPD are often confused for one another, as are PTSD and Bipolar.

I guess my suggestion (maybe) would be that you not allow yourself to write your story according to your diagnoses, but remember instead that it's symptoms we are working on, and knowing the name for your symptom set is meant to help, rather than complicate, treatment. So, instead of wondering "is this something SPDs do?", you can say, "I do this, which might be part of any one of my diagnoses - but what's the best plan of attack?"

It's great you'll be working with a therapist again, and that you have such a clear sense of your own symptoms. I hope it goes well for you.