New member here

Hi,

I just happened on the Wikipedia article on Schizoid Personality Disorder today, and I felt a real shock of recognition at many of the descriptions. I am outwardly a very stable, employed, married middle aged man, admired for my stoicism and even keel generally. Hah. Inwardly, I am usually writhing with discomfort when I am around other people. But I would not say that I am overall extremely unhappy, perhaps mildly depressed at all times. I still get great enjoyment at simply observing the outside world, enjoying food and drink, or appreciating music, art, and literature. Anyway, I guess I am about to go on a little journey of self-discovery, although I think many on this forum will think to themselves, at this, what is there to discover, and what do you think you will do about it anyway? And I agree with that.

But right now I want to ask about memory issues. I have a bit of a technical job, which has always come very easy to me, but I have noticed that I am forgetting work conversations, or decisions I have made, or even things I have written lately (last several years perhaps). Just this afternoon I wrote a long technical article for our company wiki, and when I went to publish it, I did a search to figure out where it should live, and I found an earlier article I wrote about the same topic! I had completely forgotten it! In fact I still don't remember writing it. And I only wrote it six weeks ago. This is honestly somewhat troubling. My first instinct as far as an explanation is that I find my work so tedious that I am kind of shielding my deeper self from it, so I put it off for as long as I can, and then I forget about it immediately after. I would like to add that the people I work with seem to think I do a fantastic job haha, and am insightful and caring, and all that. hahah.

Thoughts please? I'm a little weirded out right now.

Hi and welcome,

in case you really have a SPD there might be more to discover than you may think of: how was your relation to your parents when you were a child? especially to your mother (presumably your primary caregiver)? what happened in your family when you were 1½ to 3 years old? mother back to work? depression of mother? been in the hospital (alone)? moving?

Given your mediocre mid-term memory: has it always been this way? or did this increase over the years? how about short-term and long-term memory? SPD and memory is much about the brain and how it works. I have two possible explanations for your memory loss:
a) your hippocampus (memory relay in the brain) may be already severely damaged, due to too much (subconscious) stress. (and lack of stress avoidance and lack of ability to autoregulate negative emotions due to early-childhood trauma)
b) instead of avoidance of stress triggers (which would be more typical for SPD), your brain learned how to suppress negative thoughts. Well, it's a bit difficult to ask for things you don't remember, but maybe some ugly things have happened to you - as a child.
Neither nor would be good news for you.