I think I might have a personality disorder - help!

[templemaiden]

I have always been a bit odd, although I think I have got better in recent years.

I have never liked people - especially people I don;t know. I don't have thaty knack of walking into a room full of strangers and striking up a conversation with someone.

I have been taking my dd to playgroup for over a year now and I still am the one who sits in a corner by myself while every else chats away merrily.

I find most people boring and stupid and have no interest in the minutiae of their lives, and find it difficult to belive that anyone would be interested in my life. I would rather talk to their 3 year olds than them!!

However . . .

I do have a few close friends who I can talk forever to, I have a very good relationship with a man who is actually very like me in many ways - our arguments are interesting as we both employ the same methods of winding each other up!! He is better in social situations than I am though.

I have been reading the NPD thread with interest and actually find that I do some of the things that the husbands on there are being accused of doing - I do do the silence thing during arguments - I completely switch off and ignore what is going on around me. But I do love my partner and my children deeply - I am not empty or a putrid onion with layers of normality over a rotten core.

I did a brief online diagnosis (yes I know they are not accurate) but I was freaked at how many questions I was forced to answer yes to, although if you had asked me a few years ago, there would have been more. I had "high" results on Paranoid, Schizoid, Histrionic, Narcissistic and Obsessive-Compulsive so now I'm completely freaked.

So, can anything actually be done? I don't want to be weird

Thanks everyone for your help - I have always tested as an INTJ every single time I have done that test.

Mr Darcy also is an INTJ and he found it difficult to do small talk too - lol!!

I wish I could be better with people. I can fake it when it's important, such as job interviews etc, but I'll sit in my daughter's play group and all the oither mothers are nattering away and I really can't be bothered.

I do have low self-esteem also - but ironically I also think I'm always right about everything.

This is going to sound incredibly boastful but I am also highly intelligent (IQ officially tested at 160) so find it hard to relate to 'normal' people. When I do talk about stuff I rattle on at such an extent and my mind flashes from conclusion to conclusion and I usually have to stop and back up a bit for people to follow my drift. And then I have to dumb down my thoughts and feelings and use simpler words and it gets very frustrating. It becomes easier not to bother.

When I met my fiancé he also is very intelligent and it was such a relief to be able to be me and not a dumbed down version of me. From our first date we just clicked so much - we talked solidly for three hours and we have never stopped talking since!!

Maybe I'm just on the "slightly weird" side of normal!

I'm not surprised you occasionally feel socially excluded, with an IQ of 160 you are highly unlikely to meet someone else with an IQ that comes close. If I remember rightly IQs of 160 and above are considered indicative of a genius! I was assessed to be academically gifted at senior school, although I've never had my IQ scored, I doubt it's a patch on yours. I often felt a bit excluded because of it but I think that's because I was shoved into a class with older children and went to university a few years younger than most. My feelings about that have resonated throughout my adulthood.
It's great that you have such a fulfilling relationship with your fiance. Does the playgroup issue really bother you? I mean this in a constructive way, it does sound like you have written off the other mothers at the group and perhaps they have picked up on that?

Mine's supposed to be around 140+

I'm not sure though, never had a formal test apart from at school.

Maybe there is something in it.

Have you considered you might have AS?

intj here

Oh well...

Several friends and I did some of those personality tests from the internet. We were ALL diagnosed with personality disorders! I am apparently bipolar, schizoid...lol.

We all have different personalities, characters and interests. What is promoted as the 'ideal' personality is not normal for most people yet anybody who does not fit into that narrow criteria is determined to be in need of medical treatment. (Even shyness is now defined as a mental disorder! A quality some of us find very attractive in people.)

There is nothing wrong (or remotely unusual) with being a bit uncomfortable being alone in a room full of strangers and you can't like everybody.

It is boring to talk to people if you do not share common interests.

I find myself falling into a coma when people start inflicting all the tedious details of their lives on me, I just don't care to listen, especially if I don't know them.

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with you. We can't get along with or be interested in everybody.

Ah well, I guess I just have to accept me as me and try to control my more antisocial tendencies.

I'm not Aspergers as I none of the indicators apply to me.

I did take an autistic spectrum quotient test and I am above average. The control group results were 16 out of 50 and a score of 32 out of 50 implies a possible autistic diagnosis.

I got 28.

The key word is 'spectrum' isn't it....we are all on some spectrum or other.

i'm a chronic depressive with a lot of long term problems and definitely on the spectrum for borderline personality disorder (my mother was diagnosed with this). however, i do not self-harm and have no addictions so do not 'qualify' for the full diagnosis!

I think I have inherited problems from my mother's bizarre childrearing and resultant emotional difficulties, etc.

there is a tendency now to over-diagnose. We can't be a bit weird or eccentric anymore, we have to be ASD or NPD or somesuch. The 'boxes' are useful sometimes and always interesting, and they promise resolution and results. But ultimately no one quite fits into them.

i think for bpd you have to have 7 out of 9 indicators for a diagnosis and whilst i do agree we can over diagnose things getting a pd diagnosis is very hard and takes a long time and hardest of all requires the pd person to cooperate to some degree - i have been married to a bpd and it was and still is hellish for me and my children - he ticks 8 out of 9 criteria.......

i also had a relationship with someon years ago with a very hugh iq - he found relationships and especially small talk incredibly difficult and cold seem very disconnected from things emotionally at times - not a nutter at all, nice man just on his own axis really

i think I got 6 indicators tarty...borderline bpd!

not to blow my own trumpet but I have a very high IQ too but am extrovert and very socially skilled or so I'm told. i do have a classic 'mad academic' type personality though (doorbell goes and i answer the phone, etc :D)

tragically the bpd ex husband is not so clever - just a fucking mad bloke

allegrageller - lol I KWYM. I have bene known to take my car remote out and point it at the front door before now, expecting it to open!!

been (wishes for an edit facility on here!)

lol templemaiden! Are you in London? we should have a madwoman meetup.

Today i found a coffee mug on the passenger seat of my car. I had left it there last week having walked off to work with coffee in hand?! Dur....

neallybeig, I was going to say OP just sounds introverted (in the MBTI definition)to me.

Nowt wrong with that. Or being ENFJ either, tarty

And, temple I was going to ask if you had a high IQ. All the INTJ and INTP people I know (lots of them in the City btw..) tend to be pretty smart from an IQ point of view.

I'm INTP!

I am ENFP. don't think any particular type is more mad than any other. though I think we ENFPs are pretty flakey in general. Too interested in big issues of injustice et al.

I love INTJs and INTPs, get on with them v well although I do find they tend to have very small circles of friends. you know when you talk to them that they are really giving you their attention and that they've thought about whatever you've told them.

loads of INTJs in IT strangely enough....

When I first found out about personality types, and read the description of a 'typical' INTJ I thought "That explains SUCH a lot!!"

Unfortunately I'm in Lancashire, not London, allegrageller.

I do know that I have OCD tendencies though - I have to have the mugs in my cupboard in the right order, and with all the handles facing the same way. And there are lots of other similar things - I could go on forever.

So is my OH but in different ways - I freak him out by deliberately putting the volumne control in his car on an odd number - he hates odd numbers! I am so cruel!!