I sometimes wonder if something is wrong with me. More importantly, how far off the mark I am. I feel fine. I'm not depressed or psychotic. Yet, at the same time, something seems wrong on a peripheral level, because my current personality stands in stark contrast to how I was during the vast majority of my years on this planet. I realized that something might be wrong with me when I got attacked and narrowly avoided a potentially life-threatening debacle with street thugs when I was attacked on a bicycle ride through a blighted part of the city I live in. Upon reflection, I noticed that I had not felt any fear at all, even though I was about to get beaten and mugged (which has happened to me at times in the past). When I arrived at my destination and somebody saw what happened to me, she decided to give me a hug. I accepted the hug, but as usual, I realized that in actuality I was completely indifferent to the hug and other sympathetic attention that I received. I played through the motions in my outward receptivity of the attention that I garnered; but inside felt absolutely nothing inside. I was stoic about the whole thing without even realizing it until I spend some time in introspection I'm a loner. I hardly ever interact with people. I have no close friends or people that I share thoughts or inner feelings with. Yet, I don't experience loneliness. In fact, I haven't experienced loneliness in years. I'm not shy around people, but I'm also almost entirely uninterested in people beyond a couple of acquaintances I hang out with once in a great while. It's perplexing to me, because it stands in stark contrast to how I grew up. When I was a child, I was an highly emotional and hypersensitive child. I was easily hurt and I threw tantrums a lot. I was also a social reject and frequently bullied. I developed severe social anxiety as a result and I never socialized much while growing up. From my teenage years through my early twenties, I was plagued by intense girl-shyness. I was horribly depressed. But then, something happened. One day, I suddenly stopped crying. and the "calm" has more or less remained ever since. Furthermore, I found that I suddenly was comfortable around people, although simultaneously uninterested... and hence I still remain a loner. I don't know if I've "matured" or if, in actuality, I'm severely damaged. It's hard to tell when you don't experience strong feelings or emotion. When people are angry at me, I'm unreactive. When people are happy with me, I'm still unreactive... although I sometimes put on a facade of reactivity in order to not draw more attention to myself. I used to want a girlfriend, especially as I was an emotionally needy person. Yet, I am almost asexual and now find myself indifferent to sex emotional involvement with a romantic partner. But maybe it's not wrong at all. My "condition" has allowed me lots of functional benefits. I get a subtle pleasure out of being unable to have my feelings hurt, even in the face of loud verbal and physical threats. I can't remember the last time I experienced much fear or anxiety, which has aided me a lot in terms of maintaining a job and supporting myself. Yet, at the same time, I wonder if this functional flatness has come at the price of rendering me no longer capable of genuine relationships with other human beings. I don't experience the urge to bond, to empathize, or to relate. It's as though I have become the cold, shallow shell that I loathed so much when I was younger and more emotionally passionate and driven. And yet, I feel fine, albeit unusual. Thoughts?
i have experience what you described exactly. i know i have depersonalization/derealization disorder and for the rest of my symptoms i have narrowed it down to schitzotypal or schizoid personality disorder. like you i also feel no true loss from the change and find myself more functional than most people because of my lack of need for others. another thing i have noticed, and indeed what drove me to study what my symptoms were, is that i no longer miss anyone. no friends or family. i rarely see any of my family and yet i feel no remorse and no need to contact them. and its not that they aren't cool people its just i dont miss them. i find it advantagous for self-mental exploration. i recently left a girl i love and who loves me because of this and still i feel extremely little sadness about it. i would enjoy speeking in greater depth about this being as you are the first person i have come across with the same feelings as me and it would be enlightening to be able to talk to someone who understands how i feel. -Jak
I don't think you're damaged I think you just leveled off. It happens to a lot of people who were hyper emotional earlier in life. They grow up with heightened emotions then level off in their early 20s. I did the same thing about a decade ago, I have a buddy who's 23 and is going through the same thing right now. I have OCD, by buddy was diagnosed as bi-polar (the first bi-polar guy I've ever met actually, all the others I've come across were girls). We were both hyper emotional growing up then leveled in our early 20s. Feelings of emotional numbness or feeling like your soul is dead because of the lack of emotion seems to be typical when that happens. I was clinically depressed for several years, the OCD went into remission last year and I flipped out (being born with OCD I had never known any thought patterns other than those that were of an obsessive-compulsive nature and it was like I had to re-learn how to think. It's kind of like a person who was born blind suddenly being able to see, you don't know what to do) Then after all that I went back to emotional numbness. What the next chapter will be is anybody's guess. I think the numbness is something like a self defense mechanism. You get to a point where the hyper emotional state becomes self destructive and your mind does a 180 degree turn to try to balance things out. That's just my opinion but my gut feeling tells me that's what goes on. Anyway I don't think you're damaged, you're just going through some psycological changes.
