A schizoid personality

Dexter is a TV series shown on the SHOWTIME cable network (the CBS broadcast is edited, flee it). Reason I brought that here is that I did not know that series until very recently, my DBA Extraordinaire pointed me to it, and I must admit, it relates very well to SPD on some levels. Do keep in mind:

                1/ It’s a show, not reality.

                2/ Yes the main character is schizoid, but he is also a serial killer… Something statistically not prone to happen often since, let’s face it… there is no logic in it! (and yet in the storyline there is some logical reasons for him to be one, exquisitely fitting indeed.)

So don’t go mixing things, we are already saw as freaks more than our share… Back on subject:

You want to get to know a bit more what is inside the head of a schizoid? Well put aside the fact that Dexter idiosyncratic activity is killing, and enjoy the narrative tone of the series that is perfect to hear his thoughts. The series is an adaptation of the book “Darkly Dreaming Dexter” by Jeff LINDSAY. In the book the personage is a bit more sordid, a bit less on the SPD side, but the screen writer James MANOS Jr. definitively added schizoid twists to the main character. Here are my favorite picks from the first two episodes of Season 1:

Dexter presenting himself: “I feel like I have a hollow place inside. People fake a lot of human interaction, but I feel like I fake them all, I do it very well too… And that is my curse I guess…”

Dexter’s boss has a crunch on him and has she winks at him, Dexter thinks ” I’d really like her to stop doing that, it’s one of those mating rituals which I really don’t understand…”

Looking at an empty box of donuts: “Just like me, empty inside”

Speaking of his foster sister: “She is really a sensible person, that’s why she is hiding behind a shell: So that people won’t see how sensible she is. Me, it’s quite the opposite, I use a shell so that people won’t see how sensible I am not…”

Still about his sister: “I don’t have feelings about anything, but if I could have feelings at all, I’d have them for her”.

Speaking of his “girlfriend”: “She was rapped repeatedly and banged around by a crack addict hubby. Since then she has no interest in sex at all… that works for meq …”

I haven’t get any further yet, but it is in the world of fiction, the closest thing I had seen to portraying schizoid traits (and again, please, put aside the serial killer thing).

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Here we are at that crossroad again… I have picked-up witting, and noticeably those past two weeks I have put a few urban poetic texts together (mostly in french, sorry).

 In one of them called “double nationality” I express my trouble coping with the changes to come, like “double nationality, feels for me like being a stranger in two countries“. Or ” Why can’t we have to hearts, one for your home town, and one for the magical city that welcomed you in your exile“…

My wife read it and even if the text by itself does not speak about family or me wanting or not to go back to France (it’s really just about how I feel I got no roots anymore, which is actually not even a bad feeling for me, ironically enough).

Then her reaction was: “It’s over! Since you seem more at ease writing the depth of your thoughts instead of speaking of it with the one that shared 14 years with you… I can’t take it anymore… Stay in you “magical city” alone I will go back with our daughter, you don’t need us as we are evidently a weight for you every single day…”

What can I say? She nailed it: YES it IS easier for me to WRITE my feelings down rather than TALK about them. And YES I don’t NEED anyone… When she’s right, she’s right…

And what did I do? I wrote another poem called “15 years”. How many women out there can say they are truly a muse for their husband like mine is? Too bad I can’t tell her…

And my thoughts as I write those lines are exactly: “what a bad timing, I have no more house end of June, the car is sold, and I have announced my departure at work, I wish she would have established that a little earlier while I had still something to keep me in my “magical city”, so next on my list: being a writer or leave for Sydney or for New-York… I guess I could write in both… Though I feel like writing in French, so maybe I’ll go back to Paris after all…”

Welcome in the thoughts of a schizoid…

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I’d like to simply share a theory that is both a scientific process and a leap of faith:

If God [a] is omnipresent (he can be in any and different places at the same time).

And if God [a] is omnipotent / Omniscient (he can do everything and anything conceivable or not by humankind).

Then obviously if you follow a rigorous scientific process, then it is logical to conclude that [a] can create a universe anywhere it pleases where it itself will not exist…

And if you have faith, well you have to believe that God can create a universe where he does not exist, after all he works in mysterious ways, and it could be an ultimate “test to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul” - Deuteronomy 13:1-3

Jeez, I finally filled the gap between atheists and theists: We can now all agree that somewhere, God does not exist… See? That wasn’t so hard now was it?

Some ref: http://scriptures.lds.org/bd/g/43

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 I have been asked if schizoids were conscience they were hurting people, not just buy not giving enough attention, but more especially while leaving their close ones…I can’t answer for them, but I can tell you this about me: Yes I am conscious I “hurt” people’s feelings (I would not hurt a fly), and that I will hurt my wife and daughter if leaving them.

As going as far as to living your family, well, I believe once gone, it is hard to come back. See most people will get tired of the loneliness; figure what they are missing after a few days away (and after having partied all their soul. Basically they get it out of their system then realize they just can’t live alone). But not me… The sad truth is the longer apart, the longer alone, and the best can I appreciate being distant from my family.

Being alone is extremely liberating, and when it happens, I forget my family almost instantly… I enter my bubble, I am all alone with my schedule and activities, most of the time I don’t hear the phone anymore and easily enter into a timeless state where a day can go by without me noticing it: that’s how deep I can introvert and be in my thoughts with no one around.

But conscience there is, yes. When comes the time to go back to the real world (eating, shopping, etc…) It’s like waves of conscience, coming and going. Personally, I can even feel guilt (like putting 4000 miles between me and my mom who lives alone), but I quickly rationalize it, dismiss it, put it under wrap until the next wave…

Of course at some culminant points, the adding of it all could make some waves pretty hurtful. Then extreme melancholy (which I cannot express, even if all alone by myself), sadness, guilt… it all turns into an hurtful ball in my chest, then comes the emptiness, and at that point the line is very very thin and slippery to fall into clinical depression…

So the choice is dealing with conscience of hurting people or dealing with feelings to not hurt pepople, and I am way more equipped to deal with conscience issues than with feelings and proximity. I can dissect my conscience, play with it, turn it around, understand it, and justify it, so that with enough work it will not wake any dormant feelings on the next wave… So yes, there is clear conscience on my part, and I do understand that I “hurt” others in the process of being distant, or worst; leaving. Yet I cannot care much (understanding and caring are two different things) because I know the others don’t have any conscience of what I go thru…

That is my plague: I know I am “the villain” (by common standards), but I cannot change it (by my standards), cannot explain it especially to those I hurt (because they of course are emotional about it, and I just can’t go there), and very few people can understand it… (It will be like an atheist trying to convince a theist to lose faith or a theist trying to convince an atheist to have faith… pointless…)

I have been alone (usually 1 or 2 weeks while my wife and daughter go on vacations earlier than me), and I have felt the urge to stay that way, terribly!

But I am pretty balanced, and it’s like a switch I flip: “Alone/Family”. So when the time is up, I flip the switch, get in the plane and join my family (I usually need the trip to readjust properly).

It’s the “getting the switch to work” part that is tricky, and I understand perfectly why it will not work for others. There is a degree of knowing oneself implied, and I think I was lucky, from my education, to be able to look at and criticized myself constructively at a young age. Aside from that, probably only therapy could bring that degree of understanding and control…

I do walk a very fine line while putting myself into the position of being alone, or more exactly I put my family on a very fine line, every time there is a chance the switch won’t flip back… Yet, I truly believe I need those moments too, it’s part of my neutral self and perpetual paradoxical personality: I need to flirt with it, just enough to know I am right not to fall completely…

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 Communication between two people goes:

• What he/she thinks
• What he/she wants to say
• What he/she believes he/she says
• What he/she actually says
• What you want to hear
• What you believe you hear
• What you actually hear
• What you want to understand
• What you think you understand
• What you actually understand

That’s a lot of reasons for miscommunication…

Two schizoids communicating will be more like:

• What the schizoid says is exactly what he thinks
• What he/she wants to say
• What he/she believes he/she says
• What he/she actually says
• What you want to hear
• What you believe you hear
• What you actually hear
• What you want to understand
• What you think you understand
• What the schizoid understands is exactly what he hears

Too bad schizoids don’t communicate so much, we will be awesomely good at it

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If you have read the article about the causes of SPD, you might remember I promised to dig a little more in details about my case. If you did not read it, I suggest you do it now: http://schizoid-personality.110mb.com/inner-thoughts/we-know-the-effects-but-what-are-the-causes/

On the genetics front:

My dad was definitively an introvert. I clearly remember him enjoying working in is wood shop, all alone (he re-made both apartments we lived in, integrating furniture, closets, putting separations and such). When he was not in his shop, he was reading, and after the death of his parents, he was in their home (40km outside the city) all week-ends, gardening and doing handy work by himself.
I remember him murmuring to himself, stopping when he sensed another presence in the same room. He also had some body language (eyebrow rising, slight shrouding…) completely off topic with what was happening around him (especially around the dinner table), and I know now those were responses to his own train of thoughts since I happen to do the same from time to time

So introvert he was, for sure, but I miss more details to be able to know if he was “just” introvert or had fully developed a “disorder”. For example, he had always some socialisation with his coworkers (though usually to have some drinks after work). I’ve never seen him trying to dodge a family reunion (like I always do…) in fact we were at my grandparents once a week, rotating between paternal and maternal side for a long time. He was at ease with big reunions like weddings, birthdays, etc… Chatting and joking.

On my mom side I cannot see anything genetically tied to introversion or such. (and it seems I dodged the respiratory issues).

So yes if genetics are a defining factor (still not proven yet), then I have some assets in there.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Je suis comme un électron et tu es mon noyau, mon centre.

Sans toi j’errerais sans but comme un bateau sans son ancre.

Il est certes peu d’endroits où je me sente bien,

mais l’un de ces havres est au creux de tes seins.

Et si je suis froid, souvent distant,

j’ai aussi mes pulsions par moment;

Dans la cuisine au détour d’un comptoir,

ou au sommet des escaliers, comme un promontoire,

c’est une main dans le cou

ou un simple bisou

qui révèle en cet instant

ce que je ressens vraiment.

Alors à ceux qui te demandes si ton mari t’aime,

dis leurs qu’il t’aime plus que tous ces maris bohêmes.

Dis leur qu’il ne boit pas pour t’oublier

et que jamais il ne t’a ni ne pourrait te tromper.

Et s’ils te demandent s’il est tendre est attentionné

dis leur que non, mais qu’il a le mérite de le savoir et d’essayer.

Dis leur que ça le ronge, dis leur qu’il a mal

et que même s’il pleure à l’écrit, rien n’y fait à l’oral.

Et puis non tiens, ne leur dis rien, il s’en fout

tout ce qu’il veut c’est t’avoir au creux de son cou.

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