Schizoid traits and ASD

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I'm not sure those are autistic-style meltdowns. As far as I know (I'm no expert, though) autistic meltdowns are due to things like routines being changed or too much sensory input (noise etc) or too many people being around and stressing the person out or unpleasant physical sensations etc. As far as I know schizoids are supposed to have difficulty expressing anger so really terrible anger outbursts would probably not be a sign of a schizoid personality. The situations you describe are more like uncontrolled emotional reactions. If they are linked to specific people (ie parents, for example, or other family members) that would suggest more of an emotional origin. But I'm no psychologist. I know what you mean about identifying with all these mental issues and personality disorders. Maybe in the end I'll get tired of all this self-diagnosis stuff and just get on with my life .

My take on SPD is that it comes from before there was any knowledge or recognition of AS. It's a bit of a placeholder, too. I think what it actually is, is just a demographic of AS individuals who did not present for treatment and couldn't be classified when they did. It's been retained simply because to get rid of it one would need to demonstrate that the individuals it describes have AS and since they don't present for treatment, and tend to be evasive when they do, this is extremely difficult.

If you read the descriptions on it, it sounds to me very much like what you'd expect them to say about a group of people with AS who are reluctant to get help or who have difficulty with the process, and therefore can't be identified.

Probably i'm a little traumatized because i've been bullied so many times in school. I go thuesday to a terapist to see what he has to say about me (whether i'm crazy or not). I were already to 6 psychologists and they all told me i'm normal - except one who said that i'm highly sensitive - but my mother still thinks i'm crazy (just because i don't like people around me and i have these anger outbursts)
And yeah, i see no reason to worry about - if you feel good in your body and you sleep well, probably you are just a loner

Thanks for answering.

Maybe. I would like to think so, because it would simplify the task of identifying which group of disordered individuals one belongs to . The only problem with the theory is that nowadays a lot of people who go for testing for ASD get diagnosed with schizoid personality instead, which means the specialists still distinguish the two. I think if someone is just introverted to an extreme, unhealthy extent they would probably be classed as schizoid but not as autistic unless they had other evidence of neurological difference. What puzzles me about me though is that I am very socially inactive (schizoid trait), spending most of my time on one narrow interest of a repetitive nature (autistic trait) and have classic LFA autism stims (autistic trait). So I seem to be a real hybrid. Maybe there is a form of AS which manifests mainly as schizoid withdrawal. I think you're probably right that in the past some of the people who are nowadays diagnosed as AS would have been diagnosed as schizoid.

I wouldn't read too much into that, really. I bet it depends on the specialist and their personal views, which seem to play a huge role in these things. It would be interesting to see if some favour certain diagnoses.

Of course I could be wrong.

On paper, the criteria for schizoid personality disorder can also describe how a socially aloof autistic child appears to others.

I have classic autism, and I don't have schizoid personality, but when I was little, I appeared to fit the criteria for schizoid personality disorder in adolescents and adults. Just ignore the one about sex.

I did not appear to show interest in people (and indeed I was not interested), and I always did solitary activities, and I showed few emotions eggsept for anger during meltdowns, and I appeared to be indifferent to praise and criticism because I had no idear what those were and how those affected me in any way. In my case, all these "schizoid" traits were ackshuly autistic traits that I was born with, because their causes lay in lack of communication/socialization instincts and lack of communication/socialization development. I was at my most schizoid aka autistic in childhood, and I appeared less and less and less schizoid as I learned moar and moar and moar communication/socialization skills. A big shift happened when I was eight, and I learned to speak. I changed from schizoid aka autistic child who showed no interest in people and did not communicate to odd child who was passive and socially oblivious but did communicate with others. As an adult, I still don't care about socialization, and I am still not interested in having a regular social circle or attending social functions or wanting to fit in anywhere or having moar than a few relationships with people. The thing with "I want to socialize and fit in but I don't know how and can't do it" doesn't apply to me.

If you were always schizoid from your earliest days, then I would say that you were a schizoid aka autistic child, and you probably have autism, not schizoid personality. Combine lack of social instinct/interest with your RRBs, and you get an autistic child, then adult, IMO.

Keep in mind that the sex thing is carefully stated - they are not interested in having sex with another person. Those last three words are important. Originally they thought SPDs were not interested in sex at all, because that's what they tended to claim in a clinical setting. But I guess they caught some of them masturbating or something. My guess is, these people were anxious answering questions about it, and when asked why they weren't engaging in sexual activity, or why so infrequently even when a partner was available, they said they weren't interested rather than saying they had difficulty and found it awkward. Less embarrassing questions if you just say not interested.

I notice also from the DSM symptom list quoted above that they have changed "takes pleasure in few if any activities" to "takes pleasure in few if any activities WITH OTHER PEOPLE" (my capitals) which is something totally different. The first one makes it sound as though schizoids are really depressed (?) and apathetic and disinterested in everything, the second just that they prefer doing things alone, so they could be really mega-interested in something and enthusiastic about it, which a lot of aspies are. Someone (very NT) once said to me that sex was her favourite activity and I remember thinking that that was a bit sad because I was sure I got a lot more out of reading texts in Russian than she got out of sex because you could read Russian for 10 hours at a stretch and get really high whereas even really good sex wasn't as good as that. However, the wikipedia article on schizoid personality says that that personality is marked by apathy, so apathy seems to be an important factor. The article also talks about mistrust, which I can't identify with either because I don't mistrust people, I just find interacting with them exhausting and am drawn away from them anyway to be in either (a) a hyperfocussed state by myself in privacy or (b) a kind of dreamy being in my own world kind of state when I'm out in public.

Last edited by Halligeninseln on 09 May 2012, 5:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Yeah I guess it could be something different. But just add mistrust to an aspie, so that he is evasive with answers, and put him in a clinical/diagnostic environment and I could see exactly this.

To me sometimes it seems different, sometimes similar, depending on how I read the criteria and what kind of thing I associate with them. Just about the only informative thing I've come across on YouTube about schizoid personality disorder is: Dr Rhoda Hahn Schizoid Personality Disorder, where a psychiatrist explains what it is. The way she explains it it seems to me to have a completely different "feel" to it to ASD behaviours, even if superficially some of the behaviours may be identical from the outside. Speaking personally I can't really identify with the feel of it, as she describes it, in the way I can intuitively relate to autistic behaviours as something familiar.

Edit: Today I was on an aspie forum in my country and saw that someone who I have seen posting on the schizoid forum for ages has now been diagnosed as AS and has turned up on the AS forum. So it seems to happen in both directions, that people think they have AS and are schizoid or people think they are schizoid and have AS. Or maybe they are really just somewhere in the middle.