The schizoid position is a tactical retreat. Being around negativity, neglect, and trauma is very pernicious for the self-efficacy of any human being, let alone a child in their formative years.

In engulfment being made by proximate people in the family system is a symptom of larger whole. A whole layered to lean on one another until it radiates all the way to the schizoid.

But that immense pressure also builds a character capable of recognize their situation, and building and acquiring strategies to overcome their state; and change it.

All our lives we live as if our lives are stories: like a sequence of lifestages and programs we must conclude in a timely and sequential manner. But what if the body can't hold it anymore? What if mental and physical health destroy the individual, thus making him unrecognizable?

Society collapses on the individual. That's what happens.

But the 'schizoid' is a statement of individual sovereignty.

-- We've have arived at such lunacy that even mental health fields dismiss people's symptoms as if they were just labels on a sheet of paper.

Everybody is out for themselves taking themselves as the center of their decision making; and this is itself a symptom of a society that is fighting for itself.

Without collective awareness the individual is forced to focus on itself. In many ways we could say that the masses have been in a schizoid position their whole lives fighting for their own turf and livelihood. And it's the schizoid that has been hanging on for dear life trying to hold all the strings together so his social milleau doesn't break into disarray and anomie.

All the strings with each node wanting to disperse, swirl, and eat one another, the schizoid is pulling them all with a tight fist. Why? Because the schizoid was raised to be an emptiness.

Schizoids were raised to be everyone else's food source in an autophagic society.

The schizoid represents the ultimate rot that society can't integrate because it's too dark, it's too overwhelming, and no one wants to touch it. The schizoid is therefor scapegoated as a sacrificial rite (from the word 'sacred') for everyone's benefit.

People hang on the power of words too much and hide and the mere spelling of some words.

I'm not suggesting schizoids are better than other people; I'm suggesting that being a schizoid is nothing to be ashamed of - it's an honor.

From times immemorial, there was always a caste of individuals that had to endure and expiate all the negativity and pain so not to spread it around. The indians have the Dalits, the japanese have the Burakumin, and then there are schizoids.

Schizoids are some of the sweetest creatures God has ever invented. All sweetness, in order to survive, it can also be poisonous. Individuals like schizoids have bigger extremes - they are capable of great acts of kindness, as well as great acts of aggression.

It's exactly the kindness that leads the schizoid to contain his own aggression.

The schizoid is not without aggression. It's one of the most psychologically tough individuals there are. And in its sweetness that it wants to dwelve in - that is punished by the world - the schizoid is forced to self-containment and to create a shell between himself and the world. A shell that thickens with brutality against the gift of kindness; and the schizoid further and further splits himself off from the world.

The 'schism' widens appart. And the individual falls further and further into dissociation.

--

It's about time to adress the collection of symptoms that can be displayed in the schizoid individual.

Since the individual is organized formatively - from an early stage - it develops false preconceptions about oneself's relative position in the social fabric. Instead of being self-organized, the schizoid builds a cosmovision around himself and searches to cater to it. Because the schizoid is raised as 'persona non grata'. And he is forced to turn aggression inwards.

So the 'first' symptom is depression - which is self-turned anger.

All the pressure around the schizoid, and all the negative experiences, lead to a build up of stress that becomes translated as 'anxiety', 'general anxiety', or in extremis 'panic attacks'. Anxiety is one of the precursors of a severely tense body. But given the early 'schism' that has been going on in the schizoid due to early life dissociation inducing stress the schizoid has lost track of his body and is therefor immersed in tension, the social narratives and expectations, and calibrating other people's emotions.

This is also a common theme in narcissism and codependency; borderlines seek external sources of emotional regulation, unlike schizoids that are self-contained.

The dissociative state is one that has many different expressions, including memory gaps (writting and not experiencing vanishing words); difficulty recalling events, wording things out; difficulty in concentration due to easily losing presence and dissociating into fantasy, catastrophizing or creating mental scenarios; derealizing, which is essentially an extreme form of body tension leading the person to have an immersive subjective experience of reality; and depersonalizing, consisting of losing touch with one's identity a sense of self (low self-worth, identity diffusion, difficulty having a stable personality frame, etc).

Together with all these there are several symptoms that are exclusive to schizoid individuals, as well as some that come and go commorbidly. Some of these are a lack/flat [of] affect, which is both a strategic defense against emotional manipulation, and a consequence of physical exhaustion; engulfment anxiety, which is due to heightened eroticism because of stress, and because of lack of circumstantial, psychological, or emotional bandwidth, to receive a person into one's life; an addition symptom that drives most of the schizoid pitfalls is due to poor interoception, which may be constitutional, due to poor life habits, and due to extreme or continuous stress; trauma - PTSD/CPTSD - is also one of the main drives behind the intensification and even etiology of schizoid behaviors; and one that I think is the most important to reduce symptomatology is 'armouring'.

I'd like to talk about 'armouring' with more protagonism because it is the most extreme and fundamental driver of schizoid lethargy, anhedonia, depression, anxiety, engulfment anxiety, and the many dissociative A portion of schizoids report having had no trauma, but from what I gather there is a great likelihood that they can't even recognize some of what they've been through as trauma or at least neglectful. 'Pamparing' and 'infantilizing' can be just as damaging to the process of individuation as 'trashing' or 'adultifying'.