Perhaps this illustrious board could give advice and opinions concerning my mental health. I’ve decided that my mindset clashes too harshly with any other lifestyle than a hermit’s. I come to you for guidance on what might be going on and what to do about it.
Could I have social anxiety and schizoid personality disorder at the same time? Degrees of both, perhaps? I’m consistently a loner in every way, yet entirely content to live alone inside my own head. I’m also capable of incredible anxiety in social situations. I don’t need human contact to be happy, but when life forces me to have contact with somebody, the anxiety is intense. Like when the professor says we’ll be doing group work, I start to feel sick. Other times, it might be the end of the day when I realize ‘huh, I haven’t spoken once today.’
So, what to do? Ideally, I could find some happy medium between my personality and my lifestyle. The two are just clashing so horribly. I love all the parts of my personality that don’t include terror of human contact. What kind of treatment would allow me to be as selective as possible in changing personality traits?
You’re asking anonymous strangers on the internet to diagnose your mental health issues based on three short paragraphs and prescribe a course of corrective action? That’s not going to work. Go see a qualified professional.
Being terrified of social contact isn’t a problem unless it interferes with your life - if you’re perfectly content to never talk to another human being, it isn’t a problem. If you do want to join the rest of the world, though, you’ll probably have to work on your social anxiety. As Smeghead says, a good place to start with with a qualified professional. If you see your doctor, however, don’t let him write you a prescription for Paxil and some tranquilizers and call that good enough - anxiety disorders respond extremely well to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Just medication isn’t the whole story for anxiety treatment - you should look into a therapist who specializes in CBT and/or an anxiety support group.
But you see, one of the qualifiers for schizoid personality disorder is that they feel they don’t need to join in with the rest of the world. I don’t want to. I feel it’s an integral and valuable part of my life, but to what extent am I exemplifying my personality and to what extent am I exemplifying my disease? Should I be concerned with modifying my personality or environment?
I really don’t want to discuss to much of the philosophy of psychology. I’m more interested in directions to go. As I said, I really don’t want to overhaul my personality and I’d hope it’s not necessary (I like living inside my own head). There’s just this tiny aspect of my life that is causing huge worry. Seems to me that medications and therapists would augment the whole personality. Maybe I’m just stuck with the picture of Freud grilling a patient about his mother when he’s trying to quit smoking. Maybe my views of psychology are way off base.