SPD and Codependent Personality Disorder

I definitely don't have CoDPD, and from my perspective, I don't think there are many similarities:

CoDPD & SPD have obvious similarities:

-Absolute need for independence

No, I'd rather be able to depend on someone, but it's extraordinarily difficult to find trustworthy people.

-Feeling completely choked when in a situation where you depend on another person.

No, just pessimistic about the other person's ability to help.

-Aversion for being "cared of" or "cared about". Ie: you are ok with "caring about others", but you don't want others to "care about you".

On the contrary, I welcome care (in its legitimate form: practical or material help) from anyone and everyone. In fact I could use more of it.

-Extremely low emotional lability. (ie: emotions are extremely hard to trigger, but can stay active a long time. Especially long term frustration.)

No, when something bothers me I do something about it...which typically results in new frustrations.

-Tendency to keep everything to yourself. Especially things that would require help from other people.

Yes, this fits.

-Tendency to mental rumination when frustrated, without actually doing anything about it other than thinking.

I used to be this way, but now I'm more inclined to shrug my shoulders and move on to something else.

-Inability to express emotions, especially anger.

No, I can do the anger thing competently. Then again, I've had good teachers.

-Aversion for emotions, particularly the emotions of other people.

Yes, this fits.

-Attempts to live a life devoid of emotions, especially stress related ones; but often fails since codepending is a major source of stress since you cannot control the codepended.

No, I attempt to live a life of happiness. One way to get closer to happiness is by avoiding codependency.

-Tend to express emotions IF and ONLY IF the trigger is related to a friend, especially the codepended. Ie: you couldn't care less about people bad mouthing you, but you do care if somebody bad mouthes your friends or your codepended.

I have no codependents so I can't answer this.

-Broken or inexistant sense of self. (This is said to be the cause of codependence.)

I have a deranged sense of self when I'm among other people, because in such situations I become a method actor.

-General feeling of purposelessness, feeling that one's existence is meaningless (and therefore use codependence to find a meaning in life and have a sense of purpose).

Purposeless, yes. But not related to codependence.

-Feeling empty (Codependence would be a way to try to "fill the void", by giving one's life meaning.)

Some feeling of emptiness. I think my life would only have more meaning if there could be a revaluation of most values (to paraphrase Nietzsche), and this won't happen.

-Generalised apathy and lethargy about things happening to one self. Apathy and lethargy only breaks when things are happening to somebody else.

Yes, but the "somebody else" isn't a part of the equation.

-Extreme aversion for "drama" and instabilities in one's life, especially emotional instabilities. Will do everything to have a completely stable life without any stressors; flat, stressless, emotionless, and quite probably colorless too.

Yes, this fits.

I don't live for anyone, I only live for myself. When or if people complain to me, it is only because I'm quiet, so instead of interrupting I listen and people just like to complain in general anyway, so it wouldn't matter what kind of person I was, because they'd do it anyway. I do stay clear of drama, but I wouldn't make any less drama for someone else. If they were involved in drama or brought drama along with them then I'd cut them out of my life , getting rid of the drama along with it. I don't always like accepting things from people because then you might be expected to pay them back, but then I'm starting to get used to it anyway. I don't ask for help usually, but only because I like to do things myself and I just never liked asking for help. I probably don't like admitting when I'm wrong or that I don't know something. As for being helpful, I do some things if people needed something from a shelf or wanted me to do this or that, that was pretty simple then I would. If they are things I don't feel like I can do though, I wont do it even if they ask. I've never had a problem depending on people, because the only people I've needed to depend on were family, but if I did ever get into a situation that wasn't family and I had to depend on them, I wouldn't like it. I do try to live life without stress, I don't like being stressed out, I probably live a very flat boring life, but I don't feel empty, since I don't need anything to feel fulfilled.

Artificial Lifeform wrote:Having a quick look on the net I would say that there is no such thing as Co-dependent personality disorder: it's a co-dependent personality style (not a disorder).

Believe me, if you had my family, you'd know it can be a full blown disorder . Of course I don't know you or your past, but codependence can become very problematic if the other person decides to abuse it; especially if it is your mother, or somebody you cannot really escape from. The problem is that CoDPD sets a schema that you subcounsciously try to reproduce during your life; for example I tend to find sad people significantly more attractive than happy people, even though I know it should sound an alarm.

The more time passes the more I feel like I am relapsing into SPD though, but without the CoDPD side. I think I've learned that this feeling of emptiness is not something that you can stop, it's something you have to learn to cope with, and of course CoDPD is not the answer; and recent events just made me even more cynical than I was before.

Sabratha,
All negative emotions have fear as the underlying feature. If you never experience fear, then you never experience negative emotions. Is that true for you? I suspect that is true for many people. They don't experience negative emotions. Doing so as a child did nothing for them other than cause more pain, so they learned to not express negative emotions to the point that they don't have them. They can no longer get in touch with those feelings. As if those feelings were bred out of them, but I think those feelings were learned out of them at an early age. Expressing anger, or fear, or feeling stressed, or feeling sad, or feeling hurt, was either ignored, or chastised, so those feelings and expressions were abandoned early in development.

Janie wrote:Sabratha,
All negative emotions have fear as the underlying feature. If you never experience fear, then you never experience negative emotions. Is that true for you? I suspect that is true for many people. They don't experience negative emotions. Doing so as a child did nothing for them other than cause more pain, so they learned to not express negative emotions to the point that they don't have them. They can no longer get in touch with those feelings. As if those feelings were bred out of them, but I think those feelings were learned out of them at an early age. Expressing anger, or fear, or feeling stressed, or feeling sad, or feeling hurt, was either ignored, or chastised, so those feelings and expressions were abandoned early in development.

It would be untrue to say that I never expirience any negative motions. I expirience boredom, almost everytime when I'm forced to concentrate on a task that's goal is uninteresting for me.
I do expirience sadness, but not more often than once every 5 years or so and even then it doesn't last longer than for a few days. Pain is a physicall thing, mental pain is something I'm not sure I can even imagine properly. As for strong negative emotions like fear or depression or fury - no I do not expirience them.

As for early childhood I don't have many memories before the age of four, so I am forced to rely on the memories of other older people that knew me back then.
I was said to be a very calm and quiet girl. My parents could leave me alone in the babypen for some periods of time as I never really tried to do anything stupid and didn't cry (unlike my cousins who would cry when left alone).
My mother says that I've been a nice child, but not very obediant at times. She says that once she took me to the shop and since the line was very long (this was socialism so one could spend hours waiting in lines) I took advantage of the fact that she turned away for a second and I went back home by myself (I was forbidden to travel by myself when I was little). She says that I either obeyed some rules imideatly and never really listened to others even when pressured, threatened, spanked (I don't remember beeing spanked, but my mother said it happened a few times) or repeatedly scoled. My parents say that climbing high trees or climbing the gate (we had about 2.5 meter high gate in the house where I used to live back then) was one of the things that was forbidden to me but I kept ignoring this.

Overall I start remembering things from my childhood when I was 4 or so, but I already knew how to read back then so it was a bit different life than that I've had before.

Sabratha I cannot believe that you do not experience and have never experienced any degree of fear!

Fear of some sort and degree is what keeps us all alive and makes us lead the lives we all lead.

Then there are the more obvoious types of fear that we have been talking about. Would you really not be scared if you had to have a major operation without an anaesthetic? Or if you were caught by terrorists who were about to torture you to death slowly?

If you really experience no fear at all I reckon you would be dead by now.

Septimus wrote:Sabratha I cannot believe that you do not experience and have never experienced any degree of fear!

Fear of some sort and degree is what keeps us all alive and makes us lead the lives we all lead.

Depends, maybe you have a very wide definition of fear. For example I know what would happen if I jumped under a speeding train and I decide not to do this because I don't want to die.
So in a very broad sense my not wanting to die could be treated as fear of death. But at the same time my not wanting to eat spinach would have to be treated as fear of spinach, not wanting to listen to Britney Spears would have to be treated as fear ob Britney Spears and so on...
I think you know what I'm getting at. I've seen many people who were afraid of something and people that just didn't want to do something. Therefore I like to clearly distinguish between not wanting to do something and fearing something. Moreover I think I coulg give examples of people who wanted to do something but were afraid of it at the same time - people going skydiving, girls having their first intercourse, people running for president e.t.c.

Then there are the more obvoious types of fear that we have been talking about. Would you really not be scared if you had to have a major operation without an anaesthetic?

Funny you should mention that, I had a nasal septum operation as a kid. The operation was under anaesthetics, but taking out the sutures was another thing and the doctors admitted that the hospital doesn't have enough cash to anaesthetize thigs like that. So I and other patients had the stutures taken out without the anaesthetic. The men that went before me made a lot of screaming and my mother that was with me was really worried, but I can't say I was. When it was my turn it really hurt like hell. In the process i started to choke a bit and sprayed the nurse with the blood from my nose.
When my mother saw the nurse walking out covered in blood she almost fainted. I can't really describe the expirience as pleasurable as I'm not a masochist and don't like pain. But mentally speaking it was a very neutral, even boring expirience. I had to spend a lot of time trying to calm my mom who got all emotional about the issue and by turns was asking if I was allright and calling the doctors a band of butchers.

Or if you were caught by terrorists who were about to torture you to death slowly?

If I would be able to try to escape, I'd concentrate on that. If I were unable to escape I would die. Simple as that, I don't see any reason why I in particular would need to expirience fear then

I don't mean to drag this out but it has got my attention for the moment....

If you had no fear of the terrorists or what they were about to do to you, why you would you consider escaping?

If you were unable to escape, yes you would die - but eventually after they had plucked out your eyes and torn your arms and legs off etc. Surely you couldn't live through that and take it on the chin i.e. not be scared or concerned about it?

Talking about the nasal septum operation, I had one of those too some years ago (I don't know about yours but mine didn't achieve anything) and I remember them taking the sutures out. For me it was painful and I went into dizzy shock. I didn't have time to be scared about it though because I didn't know that they were going to do it.

I think a lot of that comes from what you define as an emotion.

Like I said I didn't "feel" anything at the death of my father, but I still was "sad" about his death, but maybe it was a kind of intellectual sad.

As for physical pain, I personally hate it quite intensely, which is a trait I share with probably about 99.99% of the population; and I'm very certain I'd freak out in the circumstances you listed, at least internally. Not sure I'd scream, but at least my digestion would be massively disturbed.

Septimus wrote:If you had no fear of the terrorists or what they were about to do to you, why you would you consider escaping?

Like I said in my previous post - I think there is a difference between not wanting to do something and fearing it.

Septimus wrote:If you were unable to escape, yes you would die - but eventually after they had plucked out your eyes and torn your arms and legs off etc. Surely you couldn't live through that and take it on the chin i.e. not be scared or concerned about it?

I don't love pain and its not a nice way to die, but since there would be no other choice than why bother?

Septimus wrote:Talking about the nasal septum operation, I had one of those too some years ago (I don't know about yours but mine didn't achieve anything)

Same here, no effect at all.