The word loner is often incorrectly used.
Schizoid Personality Disorder (pure loners): or Schizoid Personality Disordered people are those who simply have no use for other humans at all and prefer to be alone and away from people. Many are older and say that they simply do not get along well or mingle well with other people. These are the only people who are properly called loners. All other people called loners are being incorrectly characterized.
Schizoids are often puzzled at why anyone would want to be around people in the first place. They have no use for humans at all and get around perfectly without any human contact at all. They can move all around the country or even to foreign countries with ease and it doesn’t bother them one bit, whereas a lot of normals are out of sorts all alone in a new land.
Emotions are stunted and they tend to experience anhedonia. They don’t react much to praise or criticism. Some can have very deep and loving relationships with an animal such as a dog. There are cases of SPD’s going into deep depressions and attempting suicide after the death of a pet dog. Some of these people are remarkably healthy, and the SPD diagnosis is probably incorrect.
Avoidant Personality Disorder: This type is properly called a loner, however things are complicated because deep down inside, the APD person longs to be with others. The condition is much worse than shyness and is quite pathological. Their philosophy could best be summed up as “People are mean.” They feel that they try to make friends with people and people make fun of them or reject them.
They take rejection very hard and often they will walk right out of your life when they feel you are rejecting them. I had a therapist once who had had 7-8 APD clients. He told me I was not APD because he had criticized me and I had not freaked out. He said with every single APD client he had had, as soon as he criticized them, they got a hurt look on their face and got up and walked out of the room, never to return.
The predominant affect is anxiety. When they are around others, they worry that others don’t like them or are making fun of them or putting them down, hence interpersonal relations involve a lot of anxiety and are quite painful. Consequently, they start avoiding unpleasant situations.
Avoidant character traits are quite common in non-APD people. A common trait is people who shove others away from them. APD people shove others away from them all the time. It’s “I’ll reject you before you reject me.” I have known people who kept trying to shove me away from them. We would have a fight and they would say, “Well obviously you hate me and I don’t blame you because I’m a scum. It was nice knowing you and see you later.” I had friends who tried to do this with me ~10 times over a year or two friendship. I had to keep coming back to them telling them that I didn’t hate them at all and telling them that if and when I rejected them, they would definitely hear it loud and clear.
Social Phobia: Social phobia is a disorder that is deeply tied in with APD. However, it is different as Social Phobia is a discreet illness that one can “catch” like a common cold whereas APD is more of a deep character trait that is akin to a genetic defect. I compared mental and physical illnesses above only as an explanatory measure and not to cast aspersions on any mental disorder.
Social phobics want to be around people a lot more than APD’s do and are much more normal and together. Anxiety is a prominent mood. Many are very nice, whereas APD’s can even seem “mean” when they shove people away from them even though the dominant emotion here is anxiety and not aggression. Anxiety, especially physical symptoms, are much more prominent among Social Phobics and Social Phobics usually have less self-hatred and push people away a lot less.
Social Phobics tend to stay in painful social situations and suffer the anxiety rather than run away. The Social Phobic simply worries that he will become anxious in social situations and this worry tends to set off the fear i itself because it you worry you will act in a certain way you will have a tendency to act in the way you worry about. Social Phobia may be seen as an extreme form or normal human shyness.
As an example, a perfectly normal and extroverted man develops Social Phobia at age 18. He becomes very anxious around people and starts doing a lot of avoidance and staying inside a lot of the time. He longs for his former extroverted ways. Because he was normal and extroverted before this disorder “hit him” at age 18, it’s Social Phobia and not APD.
Another man has been deeply avoidant and pathologically shy all of his life as part of a lifelong character problem. He thinks people are basically mean, cruel, and rejecting and his self-esteem is very low. He tends to avoid people altogether due to fear of rejection and shoves people away a lot.
Shyness: Shy people are often called loners, however except in the case of Avoidant Personality Disorder types who are very hard to characterize, the word is incorrectly used. Shy people often long to be with other people but are too inhibited to do so. Consequently they experience a lot of psychic pain.
Frustrated extroverts (bitter loners): Some of these people were very extroverted earlier in life but feel that they had too many bad experiences with people and now they don’t want to deal with them too much. Or else they are former extroverts who have somehow developed a sort of social phobia somehow psychically.
Because they were formerly extroverted, they often long for their salad days as an extrovert. Though they are alone a lot, when they are alone, they often fantasize that they are with others. No true loner ever does this. Fantasy is wish fulfillment. If you fantasize that you are around people all the time, this is what you wish for. You can’t possibly be a true loner.
Nevertheless, the frustrated extrovert is often incorrectly called a loner because he is not understood psychically.
When shoved into a social situation, sometimes they can do pretty well. Their former status as an extrovert never left them and is now a part of their psyche that will never go away. Hence they can call up the former extroverted self and its skills when they need to and do a pretty good job of getting into the old personality.
They are capable of friendships, dating, and even long-term loving or sexual relationships because they are still extroverts deep down inside and they have no real issues being around other humans. If someone of the opposite sex loves them, accepts them as a decent, worthy and normal person, they can end up being around this person all the time to the point where they are almost never alone. This is because the new lover is not triggering any of the emotions, specifically rejection, that have caused the withdrawal into the bitter loner.
I have come across my share of people who match the bitter loner stereotype. The twisted irony is that they often have a negative attitude about people because they’ve been misunderstood and rejected too often in their lives.
These people are probably avoiding others due to fear or rejection and a desire to avoid such. They don’t react in nearly as extreme manner to rejection as the APD’s do since they are much healthier inside and they’ve often been rejected many times in life. It’s more like “here we go again.” Many have gotten very used to being rejected even though they don’t like it. It’s quite common for them to date, though they often do not date a lot.
Of all of these types, the bitter loner has the best prognosis therapeutically, as they can easily be pulled out of their isolation by a kind, loving, caring, and especially accepting person.
Social Phobia also has a good prognosis if you can somehow cure it.
Normal shyness is hard to fix as this seems to be a deep-seated character trait among these people, and they often don’t want to change much anyway.
Avoidant Personality Disorder is almost impossible to fix, as it is very hard to even get them into therapy, and they tend to leave therapy at the first sign of what they see as rejection.
Schizoid Personality Disorder is almost impossible to fix, as most don’t even want to get better anyway. It is quite rare for them to show up for therapy at all, and when they do, they often make little progress before dropping out.
