(I'm guessing "no" but a lot of recognized conditions have huge variance in individuals, so having a recognized personality disorder also isn't a guarantee that there will be others with a similar mindset...)

More importantly, I wish you peace and happiness. It's a difficult hand to be dealt...

> I try to live a quiet secluded life.

Sometimes when I read resignations like this, I think "who hurt this person, what did they do to feel so shut out?" Then I wonder random possibilities like if the hurt stemmed from a series of escalating misunderstandings or dramas.

One side of my in-law's family works like an extended soap opera. Multi-generational siblings forming cliques where one clique won't talk with/hate-with-a-passion the others for up to a decade then suddenly the ice thaws and they are all raucous friends again and then whole new cliques form over some drama. One family member takes this idiocy especially hard and has now self-excluded from the entire family, we will probably never hear from them again. I liked that guy, sad to see him go!

Made me a damn good coder, though.

No one ever told me I was "different." They just kept ghosting me, and shunning me, all my life.

If I had known then, what I know now, I wouldn't have taken it so personally, and wouldn't have spent thousands of dollars, trying to fix something that can't be fixed.

Thoughts in your own head can erode very deep grooves in your mind that only direct more thoughts in the same direction. Letting someone look in and simply point out those tracks is theraputic on it's own even if it's easy to dismiss talk therapy as simply just talking.

Reality is just whatever your brain synthesizes from your senses, and that means you're never perceiving any sort of objective reality. We often think we know where those grooves are so we can avoid them, despite the fact that we're standing in deepest part of the proverbial canyon and simply pointing at scratches on the rockbed. We're predisposed to think in grooves we often think in, and our perception of reality resets to reflect that pattern.

A good therapist won't challenge "I am utterly alone in the world", because that's one of those scratches you already know "feels like a sad thought" when you think it. You have a lot of proof that it's true, but I'd bet you still recognize it as something hurtful to think about. Instead, they'd want to figure out what the last scratch was that deepened the floor of the canyon. Some thought/belief that you knew was hurtful and then was proven to be reality to you. Anyone can do that with you (friend, family), but a therapist requires no emotional reciprocation because you're paying them. It's worth it.

I wish you well and hope you find your Tan Elbrun.

Remember that having children, getting married, living a fulfilling life is just the status quo and not the path your life has take. Be or do whatever makes you happy as long as you're not harming others.

Might be a bit late, but it's all about the ride and leaving something behind for others to enjoy is a nice extra.

visit new york city's lower east side

everyone here is different :)

I would not want to give any advice to anyone about their own personal lives, but surely the story you show here must be incomplete. Unless your daughter never spoke to you to begin with.

Even for people without any disorder, communication is not always trivial - some find it easy, others find it hard. For me it is hugely difficult to do small-talk and fake-talk. My brain does not work like that. Whereas if something is interesting, I can talk and listen easily.