Understanding Schizoid: Breaking Stigmas and Changing Lives

0:00 Welcome to the Human Experience, a podcast about the stories we live out every day and the importance of championing the vulnerability and courage of the storyteller. I'm your host, Jennifer Peterkin, and it was through my own lived story of experiencing domestic violence that this podcast was created. By traveling the globe and interviewing each guest in person, I am convinced now more than ever that stories have the power to change the world. Thank you for being here. In a world full of noise, to listen with intention is an act of resistance. People that are shy about their stories probably wouldn't do very well on this show.

0:44 I would think so. I mean, sometimes people think they're being egotistical when they talk about themselves. But I really am talking about the issue, not the wonder of me. There's no wonder of me in this book. Well, I think too, it's a hard thing because we have to walk this line of not wanting to come off as egotistical. But our stories are always going to be the thing that capture our humanity, so they're always worth telling. Well, this particular condition, levels of homelessness. And my clinician had told me that when I was in treatment, and I've read it in Wikipedia, under schizoid personality disorder, 65% of a drop in center were schizoid. Wow. And I would venture to say they were only there because of the weather conditions. People who avoid contact would have to be desperate to go to a place like that. So it's underreported.

1:51 I believe that. And my purpose really is public service in doing this, which confounds the perception of schizoids. We're not supposed to care about other people. Interesting. Okay. This is a very new subject for me, so I'm very excited to learn from you about it. So, Blair, thank you for meeting with me in Lawrence, Massachusetts. So good to be here with you. And I'm very excited to hear about you and your story, your book that you published. When did this actually get published? Two years ago. Two years ago. Okay. A schizoid at Smith. I am. And I've, you know, read your blurbs and everything. I am so excited that you are willing to sit down and talk about this, that you want to educate and have people learn.

2:46 Like I just said, this is not a subject I'm super familiar with. So I'm very excited to hear from you and about your story. Well, thank you very much for having me. It's really a pleasure and an opportunity to educate or more importantly, make it a more approachable, understandable condition with the hope of preventing it, because this condition accounts for high levels of homelessness. 65% of a new York City drop in shelter were schizoid. And as I've said, they would likely have avoided that center if at all possible. So it must have been bitterly cold or raining torrentially or something. But the reality is that it can cause a disability. It did for me.

3:39 It did for a man I know in Westchester who is an MBA who's now living in a homeless shelter because he could not manage his parents home, his expenses. He never learned basic life skills, and he had too much anxiety about approaching people for help. If you're blocked from intimacy contact, it has serious ramifications. Anybody listening? What if you went through life never going to a doctor, a preventative screening, you never sought guidance in legal, financial, any key areas you would self sabotage and it could be fatal. So aside from that, parents can become benefactors. They may be spawning kids who never move out, who never date, marry, who can barely work. These are the kinds of things. And of course, for the afflicted, it's a harsh life.

4:40 It's not pleasant having people make snide remarks about your inability to listen as if it's intentional. But it could be other forms of harassment. You're always late, you don't think, you're weird, you don't fit in. These are observations about the symptomology of how people function with a phobia. If you're afraid of being among people and depending upon how anxious you are. I want to be careful in noting, however, that not every schizoid is impaired. They can function, they can concentrate among other people. But the kind of schizoid I am can't. And it became problematic to me first in school and of course in employment, because no employer is going to pay you to daydream. So what I'm trying to do is break the cycle. And my hope at least is that people will recognize the symptomology and seek intervention.

5:45 Because I really don't want people to have the kind of life I've had. Yeah, yeah, incredible. Thank you. And I think, you know, hopefully breaking stigma as well, which in 2025, it's. It's hard that there's still so much stigma and so much unknown around mental health, but specifically some of those bigger terms like schizoid that we really don't understand, the layperson doesn't understand. They don't understand it because schizoid is going to be muddled with schizophrenia, which it is not they share the same prefix, but also because the condition itself. A person who's avoiding contact and blocked from intimacy is not going to seek intervention unless his or her circumstances become dire.

6:35 And they could come because they're severely depressed or anxious or other. They would call it a comorbidity. So it's underreported. Clinicians will say they very seldom see this population. Wow. Yeah. So if I ask you, where does your story begin? Where would you start that. Well, my story began by the time I was five years old, when this was imprinted. And that's going back a long time. The observations and ostracism were there in childhood when I was often alone or was perceived by my kindergarten playmates, that I was different then.

7:23 I was so impaired that they would strike at thinking that I didn't think, that I had a brain that I didn't use, that I didn't fit in generally. I even remember having dance lessons as a tween and just dreading having somebody touch me or be that close to me or that's how blocked I was. So it had been with me for a very long time, as my parents would talk about autism when I was a kid. And this condition is often mistaken for autism. But we're going back a very long time when there wasn't as much transparency, when there was even more social stigma. And my parents, being veterans of the greatest Generation, were in denial about my having a problem. There were other issues, my mother's health. She was exposed to radiation in Hiroshima, so she was physically ill throughout my childhood.

8:27 She had cancer. So that displaced the attention of my family. But that notwithstanding, I don't think the focus, because of the generation and the times, what I'm happy about, it's little consequence to me, but that people are talking more about and that there isn't anything really wrong with having something. It had something that I learned as a defense in childhood, because what other defense does a kid have? If you're overwhelmed with criticism, disparagement, you'll stop listening. You'll tune out. You'll do what psychiatrists call disassociate, which is an escape into fantasy. But again, not every schizoid does that. But that's what I did. So it became very difficult for me to manage in school and then at work, and I was always in jeopardy.

9:25 It's painful to go into corporate America and be asked repeatedly, why can't you focus? Because, in fact, I didn't really know why I couldn't focus. I didn't know that I was living with a phobia until it was diagnosed. And when the clinician saw the symptomology right away when she heard about the jobs and the way I spoke and did the testing. Schizoids often have a very stilted speech pattern because more of their speech comes from what they're seeing in a movie or reading in a book than actual vernacular. You can understand. Emily Dickinson was thought to be schizoid. Franz Kafka. Okay. That can fly more in their era. But now if you have to be an independent woman managing in a place like New York, which I think was a disastrous decision for me, you can imagine the repercussions. There are going to be 200 people waiting for your job, even if it's a menial job. Yeah. Yeah.

10:29 When did you. So did you think that this was autism for most of your child, for your childhood and into your early adulthood, or did you not really put a name to what you were experiencing? I knew I had a lot of anxiety and depression. Of course it's depressing when you're chronically out of work. Sure. And when you're being, you know, ostracized and people strike at something they don't understand. Unfortunately, I knew I was different or I was always perceived that way. But like many people, we think that you'll find the right job, you'll find the right living situation, everything will fall into place.

11:11 We all have those fantasies for a life. If I could just achieve all the tasks I need to do, my life will be. If I could lose the weight I need, whatever it is. Sure. We delude ourselves to think that there isn't something having to do with us and over which we need to take responsibility. Yeah. Had my father, and he did try to goad me into therapy, I wouldn't have gone. But when I saw that, things just never seemed to cohere and I was in a lot of pain, I didn't know why I was in a lot of pain. Then I realized it was something beyond and that it wasn't going to magically improve.

11:57 Yeah. So just so that we have a. A full understanding or. Or as much of a full understanding as we can in the short time that we're together. What is the definition or what are the. What would have you diagnosed as schizoid? Schizoid sees themselves as loners, like loner's loner. They are socially indifferent. They prefer solitary activity. They might appear to be punch drunk because of the impairment and some of the symptomology that I'VE talked about, like the tardiness, which was chronic. Which of course, if I did try to make friends, became a problem. You know, you would be seen as unreliable, inconsiderate, self absorbed, little to no interest in sex or romance, vague about goals. I couldn't. I was able to get into Smith College. I could not form any kind of professional goal. I had difficulty making decisions, zero confidence, you know, even for me to write. If that book has won some, you know, semifinalist of this and that, it still doesn't, you know, resonate with me. I still have that residual self doubt.

13:31 So I would say that they probably have extreme feelings of inferiority being around other people, and that the expectation is that people will hurt you and are best to be avoided because they were abused as children. That's some of the symptomology. I'm sure we all know somebody in our neighborhood community who doesn't seem to have any friends, never dates, never talks about relatives, may have the most overgrown yard on the block. Yeah, that's the kind of person that it is, and that's why they're different. And a clinician would say man is meant to be social and that there is greater potential for happiness. And my clinician in particular would say, well, if I got accustomed to setting boundaries with people and giving back when they were assaultive, I would enjoy being around people more.

14:33 The way I learned to deal with people's rejection was to go into fantasy or to avoid going there, or to sit in the corner the whole time, just stationed near the buffet, as close as possible, getting totally bibulous. Shyness and social phobia aren't exactly the same thing. And she would say that shyness was a form of anger. But shy people will acclimate in time. A socially phobic person won't. Okay, so it's very interesting. I really didn't know anything about schizoid.

15:14 And I think that, again, it's one of those things where ignorance keeps us in feelings of fear and maybe dislike. But when you understand something, or at least part of something, or you're trying to understand something, it's easier to connect with somebody once you have that understanding, of course. So I do think it's important to have this conversation, and I think it's wonderful that you wrote your book about it. Thank you. So how did you actually get diagnosed then? Because you. It was later in life.

15:56 Yeah, I was in my early 30s and I went to William Allanson White for an outtake and I was bounced around and then I was Referred to a, this clinician who knew right away that I was schizoid. It's also called avoidant personality disorder. You know, the man that I described to you before the mba, I knew he was a Zoid as soon as I saw the, you know, MBA, 40, making 20, living at home, I couldn't make eye contact, severely anxious, no friends except me.

16:38 You know, I saw the whole picture. And he never sought intervention. I think he felt because he had the wherewithal to go on weekend trips and cruises that he was. And he had a secure federal job but that said he was not able to take care of himself and the blueprint was in place. That when his parents were gone his life went into shambles because he had nobody to direct him. A more normative or neurotypical person would have gone to a financial planner, would have put the house up for sale, would have said I don't really know how to manage this. Rather than kind of getting more and more admired and that's what can happen.

17:30 And you know, it's very sad, but I spoke to adult protective services because I was worried about him. He may have the same disorder, but I'd like to think I'm more functional than that. Yeah. They said that they were going to become their. It's he and his sister their guardian. That this was a very well known scenario in Westchester. A number of people had contacted them with concern for their survival. Forget thriving and living the high life just for them to be able to manage. They didn't think they could and they were going to become their guardian and put them in an adult shelter. You can see that all of this is really preventable.

18:12 If there are parents out there, if it repulses you thinking that you're going to be paying for your kids rent 50 years from now, listen up and take stock. If you are being overly critical and if they seem to be daydreaming, dreaming or more in fantasy than most other people. Yeah, because that's the road you're both traveling. It's going to become a synergistic thing. I probably would have become homeless if my father weren't a doctor because how could I manage that? I'd go to these places and they saw I could barely work and they liked me and they felt for me and they'd give me, you know, slack, cut slack. But they didn't understand why I couldn't work. And of course being a Smith College graduate and the moment I opened my trap they had high expectations of me, but I couldn't fulfill It. And through no fault of my own, it gave me a disability. And I fully believe this is preventable, because no baby is born with a defense.

19:22 And had I been in an environment which was more nurturing, where there were equal parts acceptance and rejection and love. If a kid never feels loved, it will taint absolutely everything, and they will be all the more susceptible to manipulators, scammers. You know, there are all sorts of repercussions to this, aside from not going to see a doctor, which, as you get older, is crucial. Yeah, yeah. So think hard and fast about your parenting. Take stock of how your child appears. If you feel incapable, seek outside intervention. The irony is that we lived, like, a mile away from McLean Hospital, where I could have gotten the very best psychiatric intervention. What happened instead was that I didn't want to do my homework, my father said, and so my mother started doing it, and that completely crippled me. Oh, when you were at Smith? When I was a child. When you were a child.

20:25 Gotcha. When I was at Smith, I had to start taking expository writing courses because I didn't know how to write. I mean, I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to organize my thoughts and present them in an expository way. I'm not saying I didn't have the innate ability. Sure. And I also had zero confidence. I would take courses that were below my, you know, below my skills. I would take jobs that were below. Because I so underestimated myself, even to the point before I went into therapy, I was temping in a design center, and the office manager asked me what happened to me, and she was very diplomatic and kind. She said, I think you kind of underestimate your abilities.

21:20 So that's how lingering this imprint can be. It can be lifelong because unless you feel impelled to do something about it, it's not gonna get better on its own. Yeah. I mean, we see more and more so much talk around mental health and trauma. The correlation between mental health and trauma. Yeah. So do you believe that that is really how schizoid comes about in a person? I have read that. That's a speculation that they traumatized as children. And one of the schizoids, I think it's Arthur Anders that I quote in the book, said they had a pretty shaky childhood, which I had. I was definitely traumatized by the time I went to therapy, because this kept happening to me over and over and over again. And there's only so much a person take.

22:19 I would be willing to wager that those homeless had the same kind of overload of dismissals and reject, and they just gave up. Yeah. It's one of those things, too, where I think we like to say, well, everybody has the same 24 hours in a day. But that's not true because we're all living different lives with different capabilities. And so if we're looking at somebody's life through our own lens and we're not able to see that other people approach things differently, their brains work differently, they have a different past than we do, and they're all looking at that through that lens, then we really do have a hard time understanding other people's situations. Yeah. And, you know, you always hear people say very snidely, that the homeless don't want to work or if they were, you know, showered, gave them professional clothing, that they'd be able to function.

23:21 We like to take a reductionist approach to everything. I mean, my father was in great denial about me. I asked him for help when I was in my 20s, and he was very dismissive that the whole thing was a lack of confidence. That is one of the symptoms. But it certainly wasn't just that, because having a child who's different or has some kind of neurodivergent is seen as failure. I think, particularly people of that generation who would look at any kind of mental condition as a character disorder, that everybody should be able to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. You can't really do that when you have none. It's like the guy in Westchester.

24:10 He didn't have any life skills. He would visit me and I would end up packing his suitcase for him, bringing him to South Station with the hand truck, doing all the kind of coddling that he was used to because his parents did everything. Parents should want their kids to individuate and have their own lives. So they were the enablers, too. Yeah. And that's why I'm saying that, you know, if you take a more balanced approach with more acceptance and rejection, and that doesn't mean that you can't be critical. But if you're overwhelmingly critical and it's suffocating, what's a kid going to do? I mean, I'm sure you've met people who were so disagreeable that you just stop listening to them. Right? Sure.

24:53 In certain social situations, you know that they're overwhelmingly negative. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. And you tune them out. Well, that's what happens. Problem is that it's gonna stick. It's. She said it was imprinted by five. Wow. And I just remember that we went for psychological testing, that I was disruptive in class, that there was one occasion when the teacher slapped me because I could not descend the staircase and queue, which was probably hyperactivity. You know, it's a dual, it's a double whammy having this for parents and their children.

25:35 I don't think the Westchester parents really envision that their kids would never leave home. And I think that they would be very. They're deceased, but they'd be very disturbed thinking about their kids circumstances. Now, you know, the very basic things are the most important things. Sure. I think it's also just such a reason that there needs to be clinical help for people as well. You know, as a parent, you can't fix everything. And so, you know, like you're talking about them being enablers and I think, you know, without judgment because I don't know them at all. But part of that has to be, well, you can't just take care of their every need knowing that there's going to be a time when you're not there anymore. Right. And they're going to have to figure it out. But now they're 40, 50 years into life and you're making them basically start over.

26:42 Well, you know, the clinician that I saw also saw this man and she had told me that they infantilized him and that if I got together with him because it would be exhausting. She said he was five or six emotionally and I should just think of it as being with a frightened child. So, you know, you see that as a 50 year old. Are people gonna understand at a party, at a bar, at a dating service or anything else that he's doing or is a woman who's a contemporary. You could have a very nurturing, doting type, but there are limits. Sure. People don't want to take care of other people. They expect them to take care of themselves.

27:30 And these people may not. Yeah, so. So what actually sought you or had you seek out treatment or the diagnosis in your 30s? Well, I was. I had an advertising copywriting book that I kept working on and working, but I never wanted to show to anybod. I had a domestic incident that spooked that I opened up to a neighbor and she went berserk and she was drunk and kept it building up the whole night. And it was very frightening to me. But it just seemed like everything I did, I was either stagnant or backfired that I was in kind of a quagmire.

28:13 And I had this book and There are people who are willing to help me. But they also said even the time it was taking me to produce a book, everything took me longer. Everything was harder. It was like operating in molasses. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, when I started this book, my writing coach, Harry Friedman, the author, said he thought I could do it in six months. And I thought, this man really doesn't know me. Let's just double that for starters. But I didn't understand. The thing is that if you write a book or if you have a portfolio, you're going to have to make social contact. And that's the underlying problem, is you can't live in a vacuum.

29:00 There's no remote place. And then of course, she'll have contact with wildlife, which could be fatal. But that was what was undermining me. And other people would kind of say that this fear of people that they detected in me, that I wasn't really conscious about how phobic I was, that a boss was boss left a note on my desk, see me. It absolutely struck terror in my heart. Yeah, yeah. And how difficult it is to operate with a phobia and how trapped I was and blocked. There was a man that I was seeing and he kind of also coaxed me to go, that he always felt that I was troubled and that he didn't want me to sell myself short, you know, that he recognized my intellectual gifts and a lot of people did. And I don't mean that immodestly, but they're useless if you're operating in a phobia, if you can never finish anything, if you never want to present it.

30:02 Most of Emily Dickinson, who is described as a schizoid, most of her work was published posthumously. Franz Kafka wanted his work burned, but his friend Max Brodt had the good judgment for us to save his work and publish it. But there is a kind of pattern there, you can see. Sure, sure. I just think it is pretty incredible, knowing having you describe this other man from Westchester and how debilitated he is or was, and the fact that you were able to seek out mental health care. Because I will say, even as like even in the lesser or the more well known mental health afflictions such as depression or anxiety, even the more accepted ones, because, you know, they're more mainstream. Exactly. Getting.

31:04 There are a lot of people that still don't want to go through getting help. There's still, you know, the stigma or the. Or they just can't get there, get to the actual doctor's office to get to help. So I do think that it's worth noting that you really did look for a way to help yourself live your life successfully. I did. But I also knew that I had such a dread of authority figures because of my parents. That in my mind, you know how we envision things. That the therapist would be wagging a fin at me and judging me and demeaning me. All this stuff that I carried over because of my family. Sure. Because of my parents.

31:53 But my life was insufferable and I was in a lot of pain. So. As they all are. It's unfortunate that some never take their pain to that vital first step. Yeah. You know, steel themselves and go. And even when I was in therapy, my clinician would tell me about going to an office. That it won't be so bad. The New York Office of Disability advised me about against going to offices with this. That I would be better off out and to get help with concentration. And they knew I could write. But writing freelance often became free.

32:34 It's not a livable wage. So again, you would probably become dependent on your family or social assistance to get by. So it's best to get to the root of this and get mastery. I understand most people won't become the CEO. And it doesn't matter to me if they marry or date so much as that they're able to manage financially and not end up the way he did in a homeless shelter or on the street or something. Cause they simply couldn't handle things. Was his sister diagnosed with anything as well? I've never met the sister. I would imagine she has issues.

33:26 But I only met him. And from the point at which he was admitted to a homeless shelter, that's when we kind of. He was very embarrassed, understandably, about his circumstances. Yeah. And you could look at it and say, well, he brought it on himself. But that's looking logically and rationally, not looking at the emotional. That he's too terrified of interacting with people to get the kind of intervention that would have prevented this from happening. Sure. You know, when we look at things only through a logical or rational lens, we remove humanity from that. And that's a huge part of how we interact with each other. And it needs to be.

34:08 It does. But, you know, we're looking at it the way we're looking at it empathetically. The neurotypical person would have said to me, well, put out your clothes at night. You know, set your alarm clock. All of these tidbits so that I could be at a job punctually. That's not going to work for somebody with a phobia. I could have given this guy all sorts of agency referrals and speak to this one. He wasn't going to do it. In fact, he would do most everything online to avoid direct contact. If somebody is seeing a nurse practitioner online, she's not going to necessarily feel a lump or a thickening or the kinds of things that you need to.

34:57 Why you need to go to a doctor and have a quote, unquote physical. That's why it's called that. Yeah. People as they get older who are zoids, have to realize that they're not going to be able to function autonomously as easily or if at all, because there are going to be health considerations and that's why it's called assisted living. Yeah. Do you think that people just don't believe that a phobia is like a real thing? Do you have people that are like. That can't be. It can't be as difficult as you're saying because you can't see it. And my experience is that when people can't visually see what you're struggling with, they struggle to understand it. I agree with that.

35:45 I couldn't agree with that more. I think people want to take a reductionist approach to most things. That's why I'm not really a big believer, say in the Landmark forum where you're going to get a quick fix over a weekend. Therapies work and it's a long term investment. But this had been with me for a long time and I was still relatively young. As with anything else, the earlier it's treated. That's why I think it's a heads up to parents that are if this is the kind of parenting or if they're seeing this kind of symptomology, this could be the outcome. It happened to me, it happened to this guy. And I'm sure there are others. I don't know them personally because of course they're not going to want to know me personally.

36:33 That's the nature of the disorder. But they could be really. They could be in for a lot of trauma and heartache. Yeah. Because it almost builds on itself in terms of trauma. Right. Like the initial incident was trauma. But then to be discounted or ignored or told that you're crazy or something like that is also traumatic. Yeah. If you're dealing with people who are insensitive or if you're not getting the right kind of insight and you see it as yet another rejection, that's what they see. They see other people are best avoided, that they're going to abuse, manipulate, demean, disparage, all that stuff.

37:22 Whereas neurotypical people going into a situation look at it as 50% acceptance, 50% percent rejection, and they will deflect that more. It's just as I said earlier, that the clinician said, well, you would enjoy being around people more if you stood your ground and rebuffed them, rather than just going into fantasy or avoiding the situation altogether. And going into an office doesn't mean you have to be close to them. But I have to tell you that this family thing, when a company was described as being like family, that set a chill up my spine. Oh, interesting. Okay. You know, any kind of classified that build the office environment that way. And then people would carry on about more normal people, about how much they liked being in office now that we had the pandemic and more remote work. But I always found the office, the backbiting and stuff like that, the same kind of negativity that I really didn't like being in an office. First of all, I couldn't function, but I couldn't concentrate.

38:35 You know, my days were numbered from day one. They would even interview. I can laugh about it now. They would interview people while I was on the job. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's how awful it was. That is awful. Yeah. I mean, listen, my position. I'm a huge fan of remote work, but for different reasons. But I do think that one of the things that Covid taught us was that we can afford to have people work in different ways, and it's not going to break down the whole company to have people in different environments. And so I do think that there is a huge case for what works best for you. Because some people love being in the office. Couldn't be me, but some people love it. I mean, I don't mind it when I'm around.

39:33 I'm in the office, but I'm traveling a lot, too, so I kind of get the best of both worlds. Well, I don't think being in an office is optimum for somebody who's chronically late. No. Who's in fantasy. Who has zero social skills. And social skills in offices outweigh job skills. Job skills can be taught, social skills can't. Yes. So for all of those reasons, I would say just as the woman at the disability office told me to stay out of it. I mean, you're dead meat. It's just a matter of time. Yeah. Truly. Before you are handed that proverbial pink slip. Yeah. It doesn't matter how well you can do the job. The next job will be on the stairs of a church, sleeping when you're not sleeping there at night.

40:24 Yeah, yeah. So how did you deal with getting the diagnosis? How did you feel after that? Well, it was kind of like having the lowdown on a terminal. It was something. Yeah. And I was relieved to know that it was something beyond just lack of confidence or finding myself. I kept hearing about from my father with, well, if it will help you, you're never going to find yourself with this. It was relief, but it was bittersweet because she had said it would take a long time to work through this. Yeah, it's a character. It's a lifelong. It's an adaptation you learn. If you're 33 and you learn this at 5, you do the math, you're going to have probably spend as many years undoing it.

41:13 Unless it's some of. It's just serendipity. If I happen to go into an environment. I did one time with a commercial brokerage where I was writing, and there was the boss and his assistant and I was very comfortable working there. But then the guy couldn't afford to pay me. And so, you know, there were other ramifications, but it would depend upon it. But I would say corporate America isn't really going to cut a lot of slack for somebody who can't work as effectively. Sure. You know, it's all about productivity. And if that's. You're undermined again, if you are freelancing with this, aside from payment, meeting deadlines, getting paid is going to be more challenging.

42:03 Anything that brings you into closer contact with other people is going to be daunting. Sure, sure. And it was pointed out to me that I was holding back in whatever I did for some reason. And I didn't really understand the reason was social. Yeah, yeah. And she would say, now there are going to be people there. I mean, it sounds like, ludicrous. She'd have to coach me to go to this or that situation because for me, it was probably the people look like the bar in Star Wars. Hey, you know what, though? It's all. Just because our brains function differently doesn't mean it's not a valid experience. And so I'm so glad that there are clinicians that are able to break that down and who are able to validate hopefully those experiences. Because I can only imagine growing up hearing that you were, you know, you were just like, not able to focus.

43:03 You were a daydreamer. You're a fantasizer and all of these things that carried a negative connotation, you know, I know not on this level, but I do know what it's like to be validated in therapy. To say like, yeah, this is real. What you're feeling, what you're experiencing. It's real. It's a real thing. Yeah, you're not messed up. Yeah. It's just. It's terrible luck, as she said. It's unfortunate, but there are far worse disorders. It's not psychosis. And this is a poor community. There are people who are so out of touch and whose circumstances are so harsh that you know it's serious because it could result in homelessness, lifelong dependency on parents. And because the parents imprinted this, I don't think they're going to be too receptive to doing that. Yeah. So it's like a catch 22. You're going to make yourself more dependent on people who abused you. Yeah.

44:14 Yeah. I mean, I started doing a lot of volunteering, which made me more comfortable about around people, but it also gave me a perspective that I wasn't terminally ill. I was able to manage an apartment. I had cats that I loved. I had a lot of interests. I mean, I'd volunteer, but I usually got there a few minutes late. I didn't really interact with the people too much, but I was there and I was productive. And the more I did it, the more comfortable I felt and met people who were nurturing. I was able to focus better. The symptomology subsided. So that I think was very helpful. It made more sense for me than just sort of moldering in an apartment. Yeah.

45:00 And from that I was able to write a column because I found so many opportunities in New York City. I did the dollar wise dilettant for seven years. So I unearthed there would be film and restaurant openings, soft openings, hair salons that offered free cuts and color product testing at Cosmere and Lancome. A lot of stuff that I found that I did. But also I would go through the Times, the home section, and be a volunteer for a decorator show house, which I loved, the Municipal Art Society. So I was active, like in my own way, but in a non corporate way.

45:43 Yeah, but you're very active. Yeah. Yeah. You found all corners of spaces to be involved. That's really cool. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And you know, I was able to use, although I didn't do a. Have an advertising career, I was able to use my copywriting training for that column because they were done as mini Copy blocks. Okay. And I'd find 25 leads a month in seven years. And there were. I did have a readership, so that was gratifying. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, it must be. Especially with, you know, everything that you had walked through up until that point. Yeah.

46:25 So were you born in New York City? I was born in Boston. Boston. And I grew up in Belmont, which is in the eastern part of the state. Okay. And I moved to New York for a publishing job. Oh, okay. So I was there for many years. And then, you know, I move back here, and it will be a decade next month to help somebody who's quite elderly and ended up in Lawrence because her son, actually her grandson, was a heroin addict, and he was in a motorcycle crash and died. So I came to help. His father was bipolar, to help manage the household, and I needed a place to live. And Lawrence is very easy to get around and, as I mentioned, extremely. Social service or. Yeah. How is that like, for you? Just, you know, in your opinion, to see a city or a town that is so focused on social services when it's something that you could have been leaning on so much more throughout your life, knowing what you had. You know.

47:38 I'm very happy that there is as much social service as there is in. It's unfortunate that I wasn't aligned with it in my own life. Earlier, I survived this. I was pretty traumatized when I went into treatment, but, you know, history doesn't have to repeat itself. And I felt that the trick in life was to take what had happened to me and break the cycle. Taylor de Chardin said that making something good out of something bad is what life is really about. And that if this were better understood, since it doesn't report clinically, it's rarer in women, and I could write, that would be the best use of my writing. And it's a paradox, because a schizoid isn't supposed to open up.

48:38 The book is thought to break the memoir form because I'm writing about being intimacy blocked in the most intimate, personal, literary genre. Yeah, it doesn't have a happy ending. It's recursive. It's nonlinear, actually. The form mirrors the thought processes, the fragmented thought processes of schizoid. So it's more like you can cohere a story, but it's not. You have to do a little bit of work to do that. Okay. Rock stars and the songs I love were my lifeline, and they appear throughout the book. That was your. Was that what you kind of escaped into?

49:30 Yes, they're emotional proxies because the songs, and some of the readers who are older, of course, grew up with this and they can hear the songs, but the songs replace the emotions I couldn't articulate. So they were my way of relating. The rock stars are presented with their vulnerabilities, like John Lennon's mediocre report cards. Jim Morrison's estrangement from his. His admiral father. Rock. I don't know if you know, but his father was Rear Admiral George Stephen Morrison, and he was responsible for getting us into the Vietnam War, the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

50:15 But he could not relate to Jim's life choices. He wanted a military career for him and he named him as Douglas McCarthy MacArthur Jim Douglas Morrison. So he didn't really get him either. But that's how they appear. They're not appearing as the lion eyes. They're appearing as more vulnerable and relatable. But the songs definitely speak the language I can't really speak. They relate for me. In other words. Yeah. Was that always the way that you kind of escaped or went into fantasy was music. The music? Well, I mean, I was lucky. Nobody likes to be ill, but we lived through a wonderful musical era when the musicians were really talented. That music still plays now, and they wrote and performed a lot of their own stuff. So anybody of that era who grew up in the 60s and 70s, we may have our political differences, but I think they would be very unified in saying how great the music was. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And was an enshrined error. Yeah.

51:40 I mean, I would agree with that. Not having grown up in the 60s or 70s, but knowing a lot of the music for sure. So it's. You know, they're dying off now, which is sad, but. But they made something that lives on. Which is what I hope to do with this book. Yeah. You know, it will. It will elevate the profile of SPD with the hope of preventing it or for the afflicted to get better treatment. But again, it's not just about spd. It's about any difference. And to understand that people who are perceived. It's different or in pain and to be more patient or understanding. They don't choose to be that way any more than the homeless who are sleeping outdoors. They don't want that lifestyle. Sure.

52:29 Truly. I mean, when we actually sit down to think about it, nobody wants to be in that situation. Something happened or many things happened to get them there. You know, you do wonder what goes on. It's just the way that office manager asked me what happened to me, what goes on in somebody's life that they end up. And it happens, unfortunately, more often that we. It's like that horrific Debrina Kawam murder in the subway in New York last December. She was from Toms river, and if you read the Times pieces, her classmate, it said that she was a girl who they felt would have everything.

53:13 So they wanted to know what was she doing the subway on just sleeping on December 22nd. This kind of stuff happens, unfortunately, more often. Having the emotional state is more important than having the iq, the looks, anything else. Yeah. Having a belief in oneself and ability to focus on is the fundamentally most important thing or attribute one could have. Jim Morrison had everything but the emotional state. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think it's a great perspective for us to think about. Because if we've never struggled with mental health, being outside of the quote unquote norm in our mental capacity, we can very much take for granted what that means for us and the privileges we already carry just by operating within the cultural normandy.

54:23 But I think it's important to remember, I love what you said, that people that are different or that are behaving differently than you are in pain. Because I think once again, nobody wants to be on the outside. Nobody wants to be so. Othered. Yeah. Marginalized, vilified, made to feel like there's some kind of intentionality for their defense. There isn't. Have their good intentions backfire, not be able to work, not be able to self support.

55:05 These are all things that are very difficult to deal with. And of course, in the kind of background that I had from eastern part of the state. When I was in high school, many of the students had parents who taught at Harvard and mit, you know, Smith College. If I were to go back there, would not understand why I was collecting disability. You know, it had nothing to do with the education I got there. I didn't have the emotional state and that undermined me repeatedly. It would be any. As long as I had this disorder, it didn't matter what profession or task I chose. Yeah.

55:50 So I was trapped. And if people see this as courageous, I don't think that I did any. I think it was something that should be addressed, if not just for the parents, but as society. Because they're going to be paying the toll for people who are homeless from this. Yeah. You know, I do think, though, that anybody that is willing to be vulnerable with their story and tell it to other people, I do think it's an act of courage because there are so many of us that there are so many people that don't want to tell their story, and that's okay.

56:34 But we all benefit from each other when we choose to share our life experiences and our triumphs and our failures. So I very much see it as an act of courage to be able to talk about your life. Thank you. Yeah. You know, for years people had said, you write a book. And I thought, what do I have to write? You know, it had been one failure after another. You know, I was embarrassed. My friends had careers and families and all the privileges of their Ivy League education. And here I was, living this really marginal. And then I thought about it and I realized that was the story to tell, how this happens, to break open and to stop the cycle to the maximum extent. Yeah. Because it's just gonna keep self perpetuating. Absolutely. And I think too, I've never spoken to somebody that has been diagnosed schizoid or who has ever talked about schizoid. So I do think you're in a very important role just because there aren't people talking about it. And like you mentioned earlier, there's probably not a lot of people that are diagnosed as schizoid that would want to. No. Because they're conditioned to avoiding other people and internalizing.

58:02 But. And I may just be very atypical of them, this is a problematic. It's a bad hand. It's a bad hand for the afflicted, for their families, for their teachers, for anybody who interacts with them, is kept waiting, asks them to do something, and it gets done haphazardly, not volitionally, but because they can't focus, who will end up supporting It's, to me, the right thing to do with the wrong hand. Yeah. And I don't consider it noble, but I do consider it a big societal. Aside from a personal problem.

58:48 It is a pain to live with this and have to look for things all the time and double check. And I would have liked to have had some of the mainstream. I would have liked to have been able to travel. I would have liked to have been able to attend certain events that I couldn't. You know, it gave me. I was a notch above homeless. Yeah. There has been a very tappy kind of twist to this whole story, though, because the book is so musically oriented. A man from the music industry read it and wanted to meet me. So we are going to meet. So we have a kind of quasi romance that's amazing at this point. And I.

59:35 Who would have thunk it? Right. I Love it. And I feel like that's just more encouragement to keep moving forward and to keep telling your story because the right people are going to hear it. Well, I think when I do this, I try to present myself as being a dignified person who isn't a threat to other people. It's more of a hassle and a pain for me than I really am for anybody else. I've become better about being punctual because I'm less afraid. And so the symptoms are going to subside. But I would say in general it's more, they're harmless. This is just a big headache for them and you know, and it's going to be lifelong unless they ought to and they may not have enough self. Awareness and our societies aren't built for people to function within them successfully with afflictions like this. Well, any job, even menial, you have to be able to focus.

1:00:41 Sure. I just mean on a larger scale in terms of like what people understand about us and how we move through the world as well. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with you. A clinician had said to me, didn't know either the condition had said those people are borderline insane. And I guess depending upon how much time they spend in fantasy, you could go over the deep end. It's like the guy that I told you in Westchester his situation was salvageable. Had he been willing to open up to people and seek help. People would get exasperated with me at times because they cared for me, but they felt I didn't take care of myself. So I've noticed since I've become more neurotypical that I'm doing, you know, going to the doctors and this, that and the other thing.

1:01:35 But you can really easily imagine if you had a child who went through life, you would be always worried about the child not taking care of you. You'd end up caring, they'd end up living at home because you knew they wouldn't be able to take care of themselves. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that once again, it's hard when, you know, it's great that you live in an area now that is so socially minded, but many of our areas, especially rural areas, are not made for that necessarily outside of the, again, cultural norms of what we perceive as, as normal.

1:02:23 Do you think that if people were more readily diagnosed, not necessarily seeking the therapies to get as far as you have, but even just diagnosed, that it would be better? Well, you know, there's the risk that they could be misdiagnosed and diagnoses are helpful but sometimes, well, I have anxiety or depression. It can become a defense. Sure. Yeah. Or a crutch in situations. As if I could have adopted. Well, you know, I have spd, so how could I possibly write a tell all memoir? But I did because I looked at the greater purpose of it. Yeah. So they can become constrictive. It depends upon how the diagnosis is interpreted by the afflicted and how defensive they are about their condition. I am very analytical by nature and I'm very motivated. So when I was in treatment, I also went to Cornell Weill I was at Columbia Presbyterian. I was continually seeking more help with whatever it was that I was under because I didn't want to live with it. Sure. It's a great perspective, really. I mean, there's two sides to every coin.

1:03:51 Right. So there's pros and cons to everything. And while a more ready diagnosis may mean more exposure to something, it could also become a defense, as you said. Yeah. It depends upon how it. It's interpreted by the individual. And the individual. It's like anything else, weight loss or whatever, you know, your adherence is what's going to your willingness, your motivation to change. You know, it wasn't all terrible during the AIDS epidemic. I didn't have to worry about it. I'm good having that. You know, the Eleanor Rigby in me was well protected sexually. So there you go. I was able to read a lot and the reading filtered into my writing.

1:04:44 So I don't want to. That was all doom and gloom. I'm always good at recycling. I was able to use my copywriting and that Delaware still attente. So it's always best if, whenever possible, you can take anything bad and turn it into something good. Yeah, I agree. And you like being here in Lawrence now? I do. I've been here for a decade. The buses run free. There are a lot of amenities. People tend to look out for one another. There's enough to do. There are a couple of art centers. There's El Taire, the bookstore Cafe on Essex street, which is kind of a funky place. That's where this book actually was born. Because I was with my childhood friends who appear in the book, and they kept asking me, when are you going to write a book? And I began to talk about this and they didn't know that I had been diagnosed. And Eliot or Elvin in the book was so moved, he called Smith College about this. And then the pandemic gave me the window of opportunity. Of course, social distancing came naturally. And being sequestered didn't struggle.

1:05:58 And I wrote a chapter a month and everything was shuttered, including this library. So I relied on my wits in Wikipedia and the rest, as they say, is history. I'm just really hoping it does the trick and helps people. And if you read the dsm, I'm not supposed to care about it. So we can't always stereotype by disorders either. I lived with it. It impacted on me in ways I wish it had. And then again, as I said before, there were some positive. Sure, sure. Yeah. I think that's an extremely balanced take or view to have of your life, which is always a great place to stand and very self aware. But yeah, I think that it's a gifting that kind of allowed.

1:06:56 But you know, your. Your whole trajectory kind of set you up to write this book in a lot of ways. Between the copywriting and the COVID situation and the being able to kind of embrace that and run with it, I think is great. A lot of us did not as many productive things during the pandemic. So yeah, I mean, you know, as I said, I was always motivated and that that confounds what the perception of zoids tend to be as unmotivated. But the underlying for being unmotivated is that being motivated for what and that's going to put you in closer relation to people just as having more of an ability to make decisions or goals will do the same. So they strike at what is a superficial. Anything that's going to put you sure closer is going to be daunting. That makes sense. But I also had. I had a strong social service.

1:08:01 Spirit and I felt that this was really troubling and should be prevented. So I was a strong believer in what the mission of what I was doing was. Yeah, of course I enjoyed having the music I loved, but I really was more important about elevating the profile of this so it doesn't keep slipping through the cracks. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. So what's next for you? Do you have anything on your plans? I've been writing lyrics. I wrote some lyrics and I've been writing a lot about SPD and I'd love to write another oddball book.

1:08:52 Nice. I'm really hoping that it gets adapted. That would be after that Hollywood Digest. That would be. And then I would take a whack at that. Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna write a sequel to this because actually I think the. I don't have any additional insights unless people have particular questions for me and I'm always happy to field them. But I think there's something down the road for me. Oh, I imagine I can't see this being it for you for sure after how far hard you've fought to get here. Because you have. I mean it is. You've worked against the current in a lot of ways to get where you to arrive where you have. And were my clinicians still alive, elderly when I began to see her, she would have advised me against saying anything about any of this.

1:09:45 So I mean, why? Well, because of the stigma. Even talking about there are schizoids who post on Quora and Reddit and they say they never talk about it, they don't want to live with the stigma. But also I think the underlying for them is they're not socially minded. Yeah, sure. You know they don't. That is the stereotype of a schizoid is that they don't care. So if I'm an unconventional schizoid, so be it. There's enough in that book that suggests that there is a Zoid way of writing and looking at the world. So you know.

1:10:26 Well, like you said before, it's a spectrum. Right. And not everybody has. It is a spectrum. I would not have ended up in a homeless shelter. So that's the way. Although that individual had a federal job for years, so he was able to sustain himself in a job situation and I couldn't. So things do impact on people differently. The main thing is that people are in pain, whether it's this, that or the other thing. They don't choose to live with any of this stuff. Yeah, yep, that makes sense. And to help them, not enable them, but do help them be patient and realize and don't strike at it. Yeah, Just goad them to do the next best thing for themselves and for yourself. Sure.

1:11:14 In society. The next best thing. Absolutely. It's all we can do. So I have a question that I ask everybody at the end of each episode, which is through the lens of your experience. What does compassion mean to you? Compassion to me is mostly about stepping outside oneself. And one of the things that was always reported to me was that I always thought of the other person first. I was very self absorbed as a schizoid, but I still had that altruistic. So to me it's.

1:11:56 It means actually with pain. Literally or I feel your pain. I'm asking people to realize that Zoids are in pain, but so are other people of neurodivergent and help them and you can emerge a better person. It's a mutual dynamic. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you for your insight and your candor. I do really appreciate it. And we'll have links to your book and any website or anything like that in the show notes so people know where to find you. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Jennifer.

1:12:40 Thank you for listening to the human experience. Everyone has a story and I'd love to hear hear yours. So be sure to check out the show notes for more information about how to stay in touch. Do good and love well.