Are Schizoids Lazy?

[@RolandoRatas]

You make a valid point, me as an almost pure schizoid just tends to zone out instead of getting on with things. I think fundamentally I think to myself 'Why bother doing this as after completion there will be nothing to look forward to anyway.'. Still in life I've managed to get to high places in the past but people started to notice this 'inertia' and complained about it - at which point I just moved onto the next thing, job etc and left the complainers behind. But it just doesn't extend to jobs, it also extends to people; I just cannot be bothered to visit and see people even or go into town to shop around; I don't even fancy going out to 'quaint country villages for a long walk'; my life seems a little f*cked up at the moment to be honest and for the foreseeable future; I have no friends network and almost no family network either. If I don't do 'something fast' I am doomed - that is maybe the only motivating factor.

[@SchizoidVision]

This resonates: If I don't do 'something fast' I am doomed - that is maybe the only motivating factor. Much of my motivation comes from averting negative consequences.

[@don-eb3fj]

​@@SchizoidVisionYes, this is a major issue for me as well, as I get older and the losses and insults accumulate I find "disaster mitigation" becomes a more prominent driver while positive reward becomes less effective- even the tolerance for certain negative effects of inaction increases as perceived value of the "lost" benefits decreases, until only the most "clear and present" threats consume all libidinal capacity. I know that my psychology is not "purely " schizoid and is also composed of "avoidant" and "depressive" traits and likely ASD/Asperger's (though I find it to be a very blurry line between them) ; executive functioning issues like loss of skills and ability to focus seem to play a role in the equation as do self-esteem deficits and rejection sensitivity alongside the schizoid safety sensitivity, reward system dysfunction, "ideosyncratic" thinking, dissociation, derealization, etc. My antilibidinal drive combines these elements into a potent cocktail that adds fuel to its consuming fire which increasingly burns and blackens even the few once-valued, rewarding, and motivating elements, leaving little to use as psychological energy or a weapon to fight the fire. I still retain a core intellectual curiosity to understand how it all works and a remnant of a desire to help others , and occassionally a glimmer of hope for a better future taunts me from a distance- those are all I have to provide even the will to escape impending disaster, and to drive me to find the origin and supply of the antilibidinal energy and shut it down. My own efforts and research findings point to deeply buried grief in the distant past, in my own early childhood experiences and in repeating generational patterns and cyclical historical trauma. It appears to me that the only way to get to the source is to learn how to feel again - why couldn't it be something easier, more accessible and believable, like Divine intervention?

[@donegalcatlover]

It was quite freeing and I felt validated when I found out that I am not lazy, it stems from what you said but also just not having an interest in certain things or people. For example, why do I live like a slob? Because I'm not interested in cleaning 24/7 and living in a show house!!

[@SchizoidVision]

Sometimes our mentality can synchronize with the least amount of effort principle.

[@who2449]

My way of giving myself artificial motivation to get some unpleasant tasks done is to dare myself to do them. Something along the lines of "Are you _scared_ of calling customer service for help? No? Prove it".

[@SchizoidVision]

I like this one :)

[@talkingpsychology]

It's alway's great to hear you use Fairbairn's endopsychic structure to make sense of the schizoid experience. Also I would love hear your take on Guntrip's 'regressed ego' state. Thanks again for your content.

[@SchizoidVision]

Yes, I think that Fairbairn contributed a lot to the understanding of the schizoid inner being. I aim to cover a lot more of ego related issues in future, including ego weaknesses and the regressed ego, to more fully build the picture with time... as really, ego issues are the crux of schizoid dynamics. Harry Guntrip's work is very illuminating in this topic area.

[@talkingpsychology]

@@SchizoidVision I couldn't agree more and I am glad to hear that more videos on Ego states are coming!

[@realbrickwalls]

"When the going gets tough, the schizoid gets going" - a script I tend to live by. The exception is the 'survival protocols' of the false self/central ego, which will go to extreme lengths to secure independence in the here and now, but no more than that. In doing so, it will invariably operate in the master-slave attachment unit.

[@SchizoidVision]

This is a great statement: "When the going gets tough, the schizoid gets going." Survival needs are indeed a significant motivator for us.

[@don-eb3fj]

I resemble these remarks - actually that all maps quite accurately as a general description of the workings of my own anhedonic inner reality. Of course the anti-libidinal "protector" is much more active and complex than could be explained in a short video, perhaps even through decades of psychotherapy, and in my case seems to be even moreso due to its monopolization of and prohibition of access to memory through internal dissociation. The very limited ability to recall (pleasant) emotional components of past experiences and often entire periods of events precludes anticipation of reward from most activities. Even when participating in activities that provide momentary pleasure or satisfaction, it seems that by-and-large new associations of reward are not formed or the threshold is not reached to overcome the suppressive effects of the almighty anti-libidinal tyrant, internalized as a representation of the dangers of interacting with people in the physical world. If viewed alongside a proclivity for abstract thought and an uncompromising adherence to an analytical perspective in the absence of hedonic reward or distraction, it should be easier to comprehend why it is so nearly impossible for schizoids to "suspend disbelief" toward common social narratives and pursuits aligned with them, and why lethargy and inertia can become so ingrained as an element of our personality as an artifact of the dynamics of the anti-libidinal component of our defenses. In a sense, the "normal" concerns of the world cease to matter; even the internal interests we entertain can eventually lose their power to motivate and become seen as irrelevant due to the limitations to manifesting them in the real world- this is a direct path to existential depression and an exponential multiplier of all the factors that contribute to schizoid "laziness". That churning nothingness is ever present, within and without, forcing a walk along a razor's edge, never more than one small misstep away from consuming everything; it sucks- vitality, interest, motivation, belief, hope....

[@SchizoidVision]

So true, that is difficult to convey the complexity of the anti-libidinal ego in one short video. The challenge is in simplifying it enough to make digestible points about how it impacts functioning, without over-diluting the concept. This resonates a lot: The very limited ability to recall (pleasant) emotional components of past experiences and often entire periods of events precludes anticipation of reward from most activities. Being schizoid, I think that we don't encode sensory experiences in the same way as neurotypical people do. For me, it often feels like I don't have a real past, or I haven't been through real experiences, although I know in actuality that I have. It's like the sensory memory of experiences vaporizes after the experience is passed through. Kinda like the 'This message will self-destruct' concept. The way that we are wired in regards to pleasure and reward recognition, is certainly a game changer, compared to how normal people function. Thanks for your feedback.

[@don-eb3fj]

@@SchizoidVision You're doing a great job breaking it down into bite-sized pieces and retaining the integrity of the internal experience- one course, one forkful at a time, but it's so well-prepared that it's hard to contain enthusiasm for the next. If only the rest of life were so rewarding. Your analogy of "this message will self-destruct..." is very apt, though quite often my emotional messages are scrambled, cryptic, and indecipherable to begin with, and I'm frequently left with the inescapable impression that I just didn't get the memo. As someone whose self-discovery journey started with the realization that I couldn't recall the most innocuous and (what should have been) pleasant sensory and emotional components of memories, this is a major component that is seldom or never discussed, so I'm grateful to hear a similar perspective (while also sorry it isn't just me). Another related aspect is the spectral "emotional flashbacks" that sometimes spontaneously erupt without any context of time or place, past or present, sort of the inverse of the absence of emotional flavor, spice without substance. Our neural wiring does seem to be very different than the mass-production models, but sometimes I really wish I had some of those "standard options" that I didn't get.

[@SchizoidVision]

I hear you. I spent so many years, trying 'harder' in a bid to operate normally, not understanding that I was wired differently from childhood adaptations. Hearing your comments gives me a perspective on our inner dynamics in different words. So much complexity, I think we need an instruction manual :)

[@don-eb3fj]

@@SchizoidVision I concur with the infeasibility and frustration of "...trying to operate 'normally'..." and the pressing need for a comprehensive and understandable "instruction manual" not only for we "differently wired" individuals but for humanity in toto. One of the greatest failings I find within academia and particularly psychology is an indifference toward the vast clinical research provided by the early pioneers like Freud, Jung, Klein, etc. that have been gathering dust in gloomy stacks for a century without a concerted effort to craft a complete picture from those findings and make it ubiquitously accessible. The oversight doesn't seem to be one of impossibility or irrelevance , as we have many examples of the use of the material for less than altruistic ends beginning with Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernaisse using his uncle's theories as the basis for mass marketing and the rapid rise of consumerism, "dark" projects under various "patriotic" banners, the promotion (and deification) of the "Me" generation's entitlement mentality and the proliferation of motherless and fatherless children and cereal box ideologies...it's an expansive and expanding list that proves the validity of the compiled knowledge through consistent misapplication. Of course "modern" psychology isn't the lone example of these failings, as we have seen a similar pattern in the "proto-psychology" of religion and mythology throughout recorded history. The relative stability and cohesiveness of cultures held together by common narratives continues to be trampled under the bootheels and loafers of marching invaders and buried under dense new constructions of insatiable greed and ideologies of violence assembled from erratically combined scraps looted from prior eras; Libraries are sacked and burned, their contents destroyed or seized by vandals and deposited in crypts under shrines made "Holy" by the sacrifice of millions of innocents, the pages of the human story kept from the eyes of their rightful heirs by scholars who brutally rip out unfavorable chapters, take artistic license with translations and interpretations in blood red ink, then copyright and high-pressure market the massacred products as original works. When will we ever learn? How can we when our societies' values are decided by an arms race fueled by the desperate need of the most prominent among us to hoard and weaponize knowledge? I am not an academic by a far cry, but my intellectual interest leads me to examine the relics of our common past stories in an attempt to understand who we really are and how we can return to our proper relationship with each other and our environment. I am not joined by a majority who share those ideas, but I have found others who seem to approach the same message from a variety of perspectives that I find compelling and valuable. Psychology, as the heir apparent to the chroniclers of our human story, is perhaps our best hope of understanding ourselves as individuals and the human condition as a whole. I am grateful for the influence you have provided to prompt me in my own studies, as well as for the opportunity to have some small influence in your own work of sorting through the dusty scraps overlooked by the Privateers and assembling your contributing chapters to the "instruction manual" we all wish we and our ancestors had. 🙂

[@SchizoidVision]

@@don-eb3fj Thank you!!! I share this sentiment. I thought if I don't blow the dust off the books, and at least leave some remnant of our existence, in the public arena. The psychology world will metaphorically leave us locked up like 'Flowers In The Attic' to be forgotten forever. Even though many of us do not seek personal recognition. There should at least be a door left open for us, from the psychological field, to make it accessible for us understand to some degree 'Why we are so.' You have such a great way of articulating things that I don't always have the words for, and adding more on top. I really appreciate your comments . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[@riverd537]

My partner had to call British Airways to get my $1000 back after they cancelled my flight...i so didnt want to talk on the phone i was willing to lose $1000.00...

[@SchizoidVision]

This is very relatable. I think schizoids are good at 'letting things go.' But, sometimes... a little too good at it ;)