Q about therapy

PS. I don't believe therapy works either. At least not the kind where you have to relive everything. I only ever talked to a psychiatrist during hospital stays I saw the same guy a few times and he was very helpful - but all he did was sit and listen to me rabbiting on until the session was over. The one thing he did that was amazingly helpful was to reassure me that I was not crazy and that I could learn to live with this. It was never going away, take control of it or it will take control of you. I began to read everything I could get my hands on in order to understand it better. Then I began to relax, accept it, and go with the flow.

That's very schizoid of you prot, bursting out in anger like that.

what makes you think you need to be treated?
i always thorght that things like therapy or social skills classes or somthing like that cannot change who you are at the very core of your personality so you will always be schizoid.

mayby thats a slighlty bleak way of looking at things but you are who you are

prot, not everyone sees the world they way you do and one type of therapy will work for every schizoid. I'm more interested in why the person wants to change so badly.

That said, it's a bit like trying to change sexuality. You're born schizoid--it's not caused--so beneath it all that's what you are. You can certainly learn to act more social but it'll probably be unlikely you'll ever look forward to social interaction and suddenly form emotional connections.

It would probably be easier and less stressful to learn to live in the world the way you are and learn to work with that.

Drugs don't work on schizoids unless they're also depressed or anxious. I take seroquel for anxiety when I need it, but if you have no other symptoms then drugs are no use. There are no drugs that make you have emotional connections to others.

If drugs do solve your problems then you aren't schizoid because schizoid is a personality type, not a true disorder in the sense that it's not a chemical imbalance.

i had CBT several years ago, mainly for my self destructive streak but also for my lack of connection with my family.

i had major issues at school (i was at boarding school) and got sent to all manner of counsellors, therapists, CBTs, whatever. they were all hopeless and i had a very bad opinion of their trade.

but i started the CBT after a couple of other things happened, a lot later, and it did help, at least a bit.

i wound up in a psych unit (well, several, but one in particular) and after i left i was out of this guy's remit so he put me to his colleague and i still see her now.

to be honest she wasn't much help back then, but now she is. i've always been treated for bipolar disorder and have never told the docs how i feel underneath, how the normal me is so detached and slightly odd. nor about any of my obsessive compulsive behaviour. i've always thought that they weren't there for that.

she is my current psychotherapist and she's brilliant. she realises that my lack of attachment is totally ingrained and is just a part of me, and she doesn't really seek to change it, just to find ways of dealing with situations where it might be compromised, and also to deal with my OCD issues. but the main thing she's done is make me realise WHY these things are the way they are.

it was suggested to me in my teens that my lack of attachment as a small baby could've been contributory in my lack of attachment throughout life, but i always dismissed that idea as #######4, really. i think that was because the people i saw back then were so ... well, wrong for me. they were either hippy dippy wasters or really vigorous and made out i was always wrong.

this woman is one of the few people in my life who i feel i can trust, and talk to, which is pretty impressive in itself. i feel she helps because she can try to work out why i feel certain ways. it is psychoanalysis in its most basic form, but for me it's hugely helpful because i've always thought i was a total freak and now i can get to grips with myself and just accept things as they are.

dogtanian wrote:this woman is one of the few people in my life who i feel i can trust, and talk to, which is pretty impressive in itself. i feel she helps because she can try to work out why i feel certain ways. it is psychoanalysis in its most basic form, but for me it's hugely helpful because i've always thought i was a total freak and now i can get to grips with myself and just accept things as they are.

I think this is the key point too. I went to a psychiatrist that insisted in making me sociable, not in the sense that I needed more tools to advance in life, which I certainly needed, but that in the end I should love being a social mammal like everyone else. It's like telling a guy without legs to swim. At most, he will get wet and he will move somewhere, but he will be frustrated and he will never want to do it again.

It's part of the "be who you want to be" bullcrap. You can change minor things of your personality and function in real life to a certain extent, but you can't change your framework without collapsing. It's ingrained in your brain. I think I said it somewhere, but it destroys your mental stability. You lose yourself and you are neither the troubled self you were nor the person you are supposed to be. Well, at least we have the accepting ourselves thing figured out, which is the most important one.

i think my T realises that most of my behaviours won't change now. i'm 30 for god's sake. she has said that some things DO need to change: but on the things in question i'd agree. this is stuff like the fact that if i see a fly in a room where there's food i won't be able to eat all day, that is kinda unhelpful and does need to be addressed, but she's accepted that much of my "disordered" personality is just part of me and although she can help me find ways to make it a bit more amenable to daily life, she doesn't intend to alter it to the extent that my personality is different.

It comes down to having a purpose you care about. In your case would be not starving with the fly around, I guess. Making a sentimental relationship work involved learning to mimic social cues and emotional responses I didn't had. I don't think I would have tolerated my recent stage of education if it wasn't for those. I can honestly say I tried to change as hard as I could for years and the core remained intact, but there's at least a fraction of social competence we can reach, even if we'd like to be shut out from all that.

But do any of you worry so much about the job they are going to end up doing? I know I won't be able to stay in a workplace where I have to deal with constant streams of people, but none of the career choices I have access to permit that (and one would have thought programmers were loners...). Adding that knowledge to the general meaninglessness of life we are so conscious of, it's nearly impossible to study regularly for me. Am I the only one here?

Joel Overbeck wrote:It comes down to having a purpose you care about.

i don't think i agree with that. from my point of view, i'd say it comes down to whether things actively interfere with the way you'd ideally live.

detaching from people and being alone, for me, doesn't interfere (although it does with other people's expectations but that's ok), whereas the OCD type problems do interfere, very regularly. they stop me eating, they result in my hands being really dry from too much washing, that kind of thing, and aside from practical issues, they make me have anxiety attacks which i'd rather not have.

I stopped worrying about being "cured" and decided that who I am is ok and if others are bothered by it, I'm not responsible of their reaction to who I am so long as I don't bother them. Worked wonders.

Tried therapy, did very little
Tried the whole group talk thing ... that was awful
Tried meds, from ADs to APs, made me sick and gave me seizures

That's when I decided to stop trying to cure something which in the end, might not need to be.