INDECISION AS A CONTROL MECHANISM IN SCHIZOID PERSONALITY DISORDER 

Until you make a decision about a subject, you retain control over all possible options, but once you make a decision, you give up your control over all other possible options at that moment and afterward. Making a decision is giving up your control over other options.

DR. Meral AYDIN

Decision-making is a faculty unique to beings with volition. As a being with volition, a person’s decision phases, primarily guided by internal processes and brain mechanisms, involve evaluating information about the elements to be decided both through internal knowledge and reality and (mostly) through external information and reality. In a small number of MRI studies today, at rest or in response to external stimuli, activity in Salience Network networks (re-evaluation of external stimuli through reference points) acts to activate either the Default Mode Network (active when the person is not engaged with external stimuli) or the Central Executive Network (which processes responses requiring cognitive processing and interaction with external stimuli and reality). After this short introduction, I want to first discuss the structure of Schizoid Personality Disorder, because in this article I will try to explain the indecisive processes that operate like a huge, infinite black hole in the inner world of individuals with Schizoid Personality Disorder or Schizoid Personality Organization, trapping them in their inner world and mind, and how indecision in these structures is actually used as a control mechanism.

As defined in DSM-5, individuals with Schizoid Personality Disorder “do not desire close relationships or only establish closeness with first-degree relatives.” The Masterson Approach examines this from a different perspective and defines it as: “A schizoid individual is existentially in search of an object (another person), but is caught between the desire to establish a fully close and safe relationship with the outer world and the people in it, and the dilemma of being deprived of the experience of forming a relationship without being used or harmed.” A schizoid individual desires and fantasizes about possible closeness outside in their inner world; however, they are occupied with seeking, in their mind, ways to create the most ideal situation in which they can be accepted without harm and express themselves without causing harm or misunderstanding. In other words, schizoid individuals are more likely to live in their inner world (mostly Default Mode Network), experiencing the outer world and inner world like two parallel universes simultaneously, because they fear being active and spontaneous in response to external stimuli and interactions, and therefore fear being visible. Even when they interact in the outer world, the Default Mode Network areas are intensely active, often without their own awareness. I would describe this situation more like a multi-core processor: it is not possible for schizoid individuals to completely immerse themselves in the outer world, because the “other” inside their minds is continuously active. Therefore, they can neither be completely inside nor completely outside; they experience the dimensions of being in-between.

For the Schizoid individual, every decision they make is a field where they open themselves to the outside world and become visible. To express your opinion on any matter, to state your preference or desire, to express your wish and feeling now means leaving yourself at the mercy of the outside world and the reactions and responses that may come from there. For the Schizoid individual who has no hope of receiving a positive feedback from the outside world, this now means losing control and being weak: accepting that whatever it is, the thing they avoid the most is appearing weak. The feeling of loss control creates anxiety about appearing weak and coming under the control of others. Because for the Schizoid individual, relationality has only two dimensions: being the one who controls or being the one who is controlled.

For the Schizoid individual, feedback that could actually be positive is receiving the response they prefer most among the scenarios they have created in their mind. Therefore, even for a single situation that occurs in the outside world, they evaluate all possible scenarios in their mind and try to find an absolute way to get the response they expect. Failing to receive the expected response can drop them into a discussion field they are unprepared for and cannot control. For Schizoid individuals, discussion is something to be avoided because they cannot foresee a compromise possibility.

For the Schizoid individual, in the mind, the effort is to anticipate and eliminate, in advance, with vigilance, the worst possible outcomes. That is, making any decision about the outside world means falling into a vast field where thousands of negative facts or interaction matrices are calculated. Against the possibility of feeling bad as a result of any decision they make, they try to bring all possible bad scenarios that could occur in their inner world to life, processually or relationally, and take them under their control. Therefore, for the Schizoid individual, indecision allows the process of evaluating the worst and the best possible outcomes to be extended as much as possible. In other words; until a decision is made on a matter, you keep your control power over all possible options, but once a decision is made, at that moment, you relinquish control over all possible and even later potentially occurring other options. Making a decision means giving up your right to control over other options.

Why do Schizoid individuals continuously deepen this blind labyrinth inward and gradually make it impossible to go outside? For the Schizoid individual, the thing to be avoided the most is the possibility of feeling bad outside their control. Schizoid individuals have not grown up in environments where they were emotionally sufficient in developmental processes, where their existence was seen and heard, where curiosity about and expression of emotions and individual existence was allowed, where emotions were introduced to them, and where their families’ emotional capacities and social skills were shared as a life experience.

They are deprived of the adult world that would guide them in life, which could provide security, often having experienced physical and emotional neglect, various developmental traumas, neglect, and even abuse. They have had to survive by experiencing both their inner world and feelings and the outside world and experiences there alone, with fear and anxiety. For this reason, they often feel lost and even have difficulty finding direction in real life. They are prone to rapid panic and dissociation (fragmentation); many try to suppress their anxiety constantly by moving or talking, leading to hyperactivity . Therefore, they mostly express themselves as being inside a cloud or behind a veil of fog. They are extremely sensitive to external feedback.

Indecision also puts Schizoid individuals into a heavy procrastination loop. Making a decision requires initiative, requires clearly putting oneself forward. However, they continue to analyze even the decisions they have made and implemented. The heaviest punishment for the Schizoid individual is the judgments within themselves. Because even if they have made the best decision, like all other decisions, this decision continues to be analyzed, and the person imposes endless penalties on themselves. Thinking so analytically makes many Schizoid individuals quite capable and functional in life, and many can become writers, scientists, artists, psychotherapists with these qualities. However, despite this, they cannot escape the analysis-judgment loop. Therefore, they postpone everything as much as possible. Yet, at the point where they are forced, they carry it out as a duty. In the context of duty and obligation, through the actions they perform, they can be quite functional and responsible on one hand, while on the other hand, they hide their individual stance and existence. If you assign a task to these people (assuming it is not a low-level regressive Schizoid), know that it will be performed properly, and even beyond expectation, in the best way possible.

Schizoid individuals are indecisive or swing to the extreme of suddenly falling into close and intimate relationships. Schizoid individuals, with their colorful fantasy worlds, are in search of the other to whom they will surrender with intense longing and hunger for love and closeness. In the slightest place they feel close, they create a binding attachment and a course for the experienced close interactions that always progresses in an increasingly close and irreversible direction without any argument or distancing. They swing between the two extremes of infinite need for security and feeling insecurity at any moment. For Schizoid individuals, trust is as fragile as the first mistake that could create a feeling of distrust. After this, a distancing and indecision process begins in which everything is analyzed in detail and negative possibilities are pursued (ultimately, separation). Because of all these mechanisms, since they cannot make a decision to separate, they wait for the other person in the relationship to leave, and in this process, they must accept all negative outcomes.

While writing this, I am also thinking that the heaviest price Schizoid individuals pay around indecision is related to processes of not being able to accept life. Most Schizoid individuals are indecisive about involving themselves, their feelings, and their vitality in life. In life, they cannot own themselves, the world they are in, the people around them, or the bonds in relationships, and they mostly feel rootless and disconnected. Accepting life and oneself as a living being within life means, ultimately, accepting death—the inevitable end of every living being. Instead of accepting the reality of death beyond their control, they fall like undecided snowflakes over life, melt, and dissolve into nothingness in other forms. Many Schizoid clients state that when they die, they do not want their names to remain in this world, they do not want their graves to be known or visited, and they even want their ashes to be scattered in nature to disappear.

Schizoid individuals exist in an existential confusion over indecision, constantly maintaining a field of observation and analysis.

This article was published in Psikeart Journal, Issue 92, a special issue dedicated to the theme of Indecision.