Need some insight from overt schizoids

A question for you, though. What does schizoid personality look like before and as it emerges? Is it something that's always there, or is it like schizophrenia, OCD, and other disorders which usually appear fairly rapidly around 19 or 20? I don't want or intend to "try to fix him" but is it a quiet, irreversible thing?

It seems to be different depending on the individual. Some people here have mentioned that they developed it very early on, while others started out showing only a few subclinical schizoid traits, and then had the full-blown personality type emerge gradually during adolescence and/or early adulthood.

I probably started to really develop it at 20-21 years old, but looking back, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that it emerged early on in life, and then I tried to bury it under several layers of compensatory behaviours. I think it was mainly because my parents had always said that you shouldn't want to be a loner, should try and make loads of friends, etc. I was always comfortable being apart from other people in spite of that, though, not to mention that I always had a strong unempathetic streak (although where that comes from is questionable, considering that there's several narcissists and psychopaths in my extended family).

It started to unwind in my late teens, but I still did the covert thing up until last year, at which point I realised that pretending wasn't really benefiting me in any way and just embraced my schizoid-ness. The emotional distance and coldness from people set in much earlier though, and has always been there to some degree or other, even in childhood (I was capable of closeness with my mother and a few other people at times, but there was always a degree of ambivalence there, and it was often a very selfish kind of love).

Are you happy?

Hah, content is probably a better word, but I don't have any complaints about life most of the time. Sometimes I do get briefly depressed and start asking what the point is. That comes more from looking towards the future and not seeing a whole lot of opportunity though, which can sometimes be kind of bothering.

/r/Schizoid Thread Parent