Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
From Overparenting To Underachieving: A Memoir Of Schizoid Personality And Survival with Blair Sorrel
What if a childhood built on criticism and distance teaches your nervous system to disappear? We sit with author and advocate Blair Sorell to uncover how schizoid personality disorder can form as a learned defense—and how clarity, therapy, and the right environment can turn fog into focus. Blair opens up about growing up between a terminally ill mother and an absent father, the slow drift from daydreaming to dysfunction, and the way school and work punish traits that once kept a child safe. Her story shows why labels can liberate when they finally explain the pain.
We dive into the hidden costs of misreading SPD: missed promotions, HR write-ups, social dread, and in the worst cases, homelessness when family scaffolding falls away. Blair shares practical, compassionate strategies—remote-friendly roles, life-skills scaffolding, and stepwise social exposure—that give room to recover without forcing anyone into a mold. She also draws a bright line between schizoid personality and schizophrenia, removing stigma by restoring nuance. The goal isn’t to make every introvert outgoing; it’s to make every person safe, housed, and healthy.
Threaded through it all is classic rock as an emotional lifeline. The Doors, Hendrix, and Lennon became proxies for feelings Blair couldn’t voice, proof that art can carry what speech can’t. That soundtrack helped her write a memoir during the pandemic, one chapter at a time, transforming isolation into momentum and memory into meaning. If you’ve ever been called lazy when you were really overwhelmed, or if you’re parenting a child who’s starting to pull away, this conversation offers language, tools, and hope.
If this resonates, follow and share the show, leave a review so others can find it, and tell us: what song says what you can’t say yet?
Intro for podcast
information about subscriptions
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Well, hello, and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today we've got a very special guest. Her name is Blair Sorell, and she's an author, an innovator, and an animal lover. And she was free times dollar-wise dilettante com columnist. And uh together, dating services matchmaker, and New York Blood Services, Aphoresis Recruiter. She founded Street Zaps to protect dogs and people from stray voltage, and was the first community representative invited by Conn Edison to their annual Jody S. Lane Stray Voltage Detection, Mitigation and Prevention National Conference. She's got a memoir that we're going to get into called A Schizoid at Smith: How Overparenting Leads to Underachieving. And Blair, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Fine, thank you for having me. This is um kind of neat because I've got more of a background since we already had sort of a conversation before, and um really interested in learning more about your book. And I have a copy of your book. I've read through a decent amount of it. I haven't finished it, but I get a lot of books to read, so I I do the best I can. But it's your book is very interesting. So for anybody who uh decides to get this, um, it'll it'll call you in and keep you there. Um I I really want to kind of jump into usually I I I'll ask a guest, you know, what brought you to this, but your book really kind of tells that story. And you know, why don't you explain a little bit just about the premise of the book? Um, and I think that will really tell the story about you know you and how how you're how you made it here to this conversation.
SPEAKER_01:Um, my life was at crossroads for a long time. Uh, because of my schizoid condition, I was unable to form goals, make decisions, and so I had a quote unquote aimless, uh, non-trajectory. And I was living in New York City, which is very careerist and commercial, conservative. I really felt out of sync, but out of sync wherever I was, because the problem wasn't with New York so much as with me being anywhere and not being able to focus, relate or relate well to other people, um, being in a chronic kind of fog that undermined my ability to function, be it in a job or in living circumstances, sustaining friendships, and of course, romantically. I had a character disorder without realizing it. And I suspect most schizoids don't know what they're dealing with, except that they're in a lot of pain and they don't have any insight as to why. Um, my circumstances downspiraled so much that I eventually sought therapeutic intervention, but of course, not for being schizoid. I was depressed and anxious, which I had been long term, and then I just had to get a handle on things. And of course, my father was very relieved because you know he had hoped, but you can't force anyone to do anything, especially when it's so vital and overdue.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you're your the title of your book tells a lot, and it, you know, it talks about how overparenting leads to underachieving. Um, you write about you know the challenges of living with a mother who you know withheld affection and a father who was hardly there. Uh, why don't you share a little bit about that experience and and how that had such an impact on you, both with this uh you know, schizoid personality disorder and just your your adult life in general?
SPEAKER_01:Well, if you don't feel loved as a child, it will taint absolutely everything. And my parents, there was a lot of strife between them. Um, my mother had emotional and she was also terminally ill throughout my childhood. I think my father absented a lot of the time because of her, because he was avoiding uh the interaction, her demands, but also because um he didn't really know how to deal with her. I believe both of them were in situations they didn't want to be in. My mother was careerist and my father wanted companionship, but not the trappings of a family. The truth of the matter is that we really didn't know him. And um, as her illness and cancer worsened, we found ourselves as children ultimately with a guardian we didn't really know. So um, very often with schizoid, the parents are neglectful or abusive, and my parents were both. They're not malicious, they were not malicious people. None of this was done to undermine, they were poor parents. But the net result was that I couldn't focus because I had been so demeaned and uh the uh when a child is met with overwhelming criticism, the only defense he or she would have is not to listen. So they tuned out, and that became a defense, a coping mechanism from about the time I was five on. It became problematic in school, and then with employers, they're not going to pay you to daydream. I want to be careful to note, however, that not every schizoid is impaired, but I was very impaired. And the more people around, the greater the impairment. It gave me a dread of authority figures, be they teachers or bosses, terrible self-esteem, no confidence, uh inability to, as I said before, form any kind of goal or make any kind of decision. And um that would be less salient in school or college, but of course, if somebody's paying you, the demands are greater. So I I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00:I said I I suspect that these symptoms or you know just your experience of struggling came out pretty early on in school. When when did you when did you realize that you were having a hard time of things?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I was always aware that I was different and I was bullied and ostracized because people, and particularly children, strike at something they don't understand.
SPEAKER_00:Kids are brutal.
SPEAKER_01:They're they're um you know, and they would make callous dismissive remarks that I had a brain but didn't use it because I was impaired. They didn't have a problem focusing, and they didn't understand that that lack of focus was a defense I learned, that I would go into fantasy. That's what a clinician would call withdrawal, as the only way I could survive the overload of negativity. Um, I remember going for psychological testing. I know that I had interactions with teachers and it would come back to me through my mother, that I had behavioral, that I was disruptive in class, that I wasn't all there. So throughout my life, you know, I was in my own world.
SPEAKER_00:So what age did this begin? Like were you in, you know, first grade or third grade or you know?
SPEAKER_01:Well, my clinician said that this was probably imprinted in me by the time I was five. Quote, mother had gone to work on me.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Now, what we have to consider is that if a parent goes to work in a child, some years later the child may not be able to work.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And that's why it's important to discuss this because SPD, schizoid personality disorder, accounts for very high levels of homelessness. My clinician told me that nearly 40 years ago, and it is borne out if you look at Wikipedia. 65% of a New York City drop-in center were zoids. Uh, I suspect those schizoid only showed up out of terrible weather conditions because they're patterned to keep their distance. And that kind of pattern on their part is why they seldom present clinically. Somebody who's blocked from intimacy is very unlikely to seek help. But that help may save their lives or at least stabilize their life, help them manage. And that's my concern, and that's why I wrote this. To break the cycle and at the very least to go earlier intervention, because I don't want people to have the kind of marginal, harsh life I had.
SPEAKER_00:So before you get into high school, you know, you're you go through that really, I mean, it's a difficult time of any child is going through uh, you know, puberty, going through, you know, the growth of social um experiences and also, you know, the pressure of more and more work that you need to focus for as you get into junior high and then ultimately into high school. How did how did you deal with that? I mean, did you realize that you know it was just getting worse and worse or harder to cope with, or were you finding ways to to manage it a little bit?
SPEAKER_01:Uh, I would say it was worse and worse because although I had a conflicted relationship with my mother, I was aware that she was, you know, in her final stages, and that impacted severely. My father certainly didn't present nurture or support. Um, so and I the teachers, some of them confronted me like what was wrong. They knew that, you know, I was slipping. And of course, I was in a community. Belmont High School is in proximity to Harvard and MIT. A lot of academicians' children were my classmates. So they were very goal-oriented, very academic and achievement-minded. You know, our valedictorian had five eight hundreds on his uh SATs. You know, they were brilliant uh progeny.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and you know, so that made me feel increasingly, I felt bad about myself to begin with. You know, you feel like you're operating in the inferior mode. And in my mind, I equated academic achievement with intelligence.
SPEAKER_00:Got it.
SPEAKER_01:In the book, I talk about John Lennon's report cards, which were mediocre because he was also very distracted. Right. No one would question his intelligence.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Albert Einstein did terrible in school, but you know, one of the most brilliant minds there ever was. Right.
SPEAKER_01:But I think a child is impressionable, and look, and I looked at it more conventionally. There are people who reject that, you know, there is school homeschooling, but for the most part, grades and academic and um social participation in clubs and athletics, it that weighs heavily. And it also weighs heavily in the employment world. Social skills outweigh job skills because the latter can be taught. Social skills really can't.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So you can talk about practice, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So you consider an individual like me who can't be anywhere on time, who can't focus, um, who's not up the back slapping, convivial schmoozer.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, you're dead meat if you go into a corporation.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, so they would give me a number of chances. They didn't understand it. I had an exit interview with Jim Horton, who was the publisher of Working Woman, and he told me that my colleagues noted that I was either very sharp or I was in a fog. Wow. You know, I don't mean that immodestly, but that's where it left me. They had high expectations, and I was not able to sustain it. I couldn't work, and these companies simply didn't understand why I couldn't work. And it's really not their mission to figure that out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, they're a company. They're just trying to operate and bring the right people in and do their job. Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. Wow. So at one point you got diagnosed. Yes. They were, you know, they recognized a problem, but at one point they put their finger on the problem, gave it a name. What happened there? Like, how did you feel when you like said, oh, okay, now now I at least I know what this thing is that I'm dealing with?
SPEAKER_01:Well, in a way I felt credentialed. I was never gonna be a J D, an MD, an MPA, but now I was an SPD. So I felt like I had some sort of cache.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I was schizoid. Emily Dickinson was thought to be schizoid, uh-huh. You know, so I was in good company, so to speak. Um, it was a bummer because she told me that it would take years to get through this, and I couldn't stand living with it.
SPEAKER_00:You know, if it took years, I didn't want to be around to get that. On that note, though, I know like like I was a year ago diagnosed with cancer, and they basically told me that this is really aggressive, and you're either gonna go through this horrifying protocol or you're not gonna make it. And you know, I was faced with a decision that said, well, screw you, or I'll do what you say. And I chose screw you, I'm gonna find my way through this. And today I'm in remission and I didn't have to go through their things because I I pushed through and found my answers. Uh how did you react? Like, you know, it sounds like you've got a little bit of a rebellious spirit to you. So, you know, not not everybody just rolls over and says, okay, whatever you say.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I my clinician goaded me to keep going into companies.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, the New York State Department of Disability, the staffer, was very clear in stating that I was better off out of a company and to get help with concentration. And for anybody who's struggling with this, that the remote work is a far better option. I mean, I don't want to see people go into companies and be dismissed in a day, a week, a year, whatever it is, or to be pulled into human resources. It's painful. Um I don't want people to be harassed. Why you're always late, you can't focus, you don't think, you don't listen, you're weird, and that's the kind of stuff. So if you fast forward for somebody who's living with the symptomology, the parents could easily find themselves supporting their kid down the line. The kid may now be a senior citizen, and I know firsthand, of a schizoid MBA who's now in a homeless shelter because he was living in his parents' home, which he could not afford, and was so adverse to intimacy that he wouldn't seek any kind of help or professional guidance, financial planning? How is it possible for somebody who was in a he was in a federal job, which was below his capabilities? He was a data entry analyzer, but he held it for many years. So to his credit. So he saved money. Did he save money? Did he what happened to his pension? What happened to his social security, his inheritance? How is it possible to blow through those amounts of money? You know, there was easy problem solution in that he and his sister and their two cats could have moved into an apartment, which was more within their means. And because he was in an MBA program, their financial planners are people who could have helped him. I would have helped him. He would not open up to anybody about this predicament, and his situation went from bad to worse. He had no life skills. My father was paying my rent, my rent-stabilized apartment in New York City because I couldn't work from his social security, so I could go out and volunteer. I don't know what happened with the homeless people. I probably saw them sleeping on the steps of Blessed Sacrament as I went home at night. But these are scenarios. These are people who fall through the cracks because they were never diagnosed, they were never treated. So this is underreported. But if this MBA and the Smith graduate can't function, I'm trying to give you an idea. Now there are yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, how's anybody that that doesn't? I mean, this guy obviously had a lot of raw resources that most people don't have. And if he ends up down in that hole, what what's the likelihood of most other people?
SPEAKER_01:Right, right. Now there are schizoids who have more insight and will take isolated work as lab technicians, janitors, cleaning ladies, truck drivers, whatever it is that gives them very peripheral. And they may function a lot better in those. They're underemployed, but they're employed and they're like this man, able to sustain themselves in that, and that's fine. A clinician, however, would say there's more potential for happiness and that man is made to be social. My concern, aside from managing financially, is you can you were diagnosed with cancer. What if you never went to a primary or saw an oncologist?
SPEAKER_00:I'd probably be dead by now.
SPEAKER_01:So you can see that if somebody who's blocked, totally blocked, never seeks guidance, intervention, has severe intimacy problems, yeah, never what's the scenario? It's going to be premature mortality.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. These things don't get better on their own, generally.
SPEAKER_01:You know, as they, you know, it's fine. No man is an island.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:You know, you get older, and that's why it's called assisted living.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:That's my concern about that. I don't, you know, that most people are underemployed, underachieved. I'm not even concerned that they don't date or marry, but I am concerned that they can manage.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And and that's why this when this becomes serious and potentially deadly.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I I want to get to the book a little bit because it's it's a it's a very riveting book, and and the way that you've approached it um involves a lot of references to music and artists and songs. And um you you you write about the the comfort and solace that you got from listening to popular music. And um, I had the the the I guess the the advantage of already having a conversation with you a little bit about this. Um and it's really a huge part of your story is music and the songs and the lyrics and the musicians and the the the depth of all of that and how it it touched you and and you connected to it. Why don't you uh tell us a little bit about that whole experience and about you know maybe a few songs that really affected you?
SPEAKER_01:I was very blessed to live during the era of classic rock. And I would have to say that in my opinion, and maybe many of my generation, the music hasn't been as good. The artists then were really talented and they blazed trails. Their music is still heard on campuses, which should give you an indication of how enduring it is. In the book, um, the songs and the are emotional proxies because they communicate or what I can't communicate emotionally. So they address whatever I was really feeling or wish to express what would have been unintelligible or ineffable for me to do so. The icons, just as I mentioned Lenin before, uh Jim Morrison's estrangement from his family was relatable. Uh they are presented in a way that's approachable, they're not glamorized. Uh, they're people that I admired, and of course, I admired their lifestyle, it was quite different from mine. You know, a shy, retiring, reclusive is not the swagger that one thinks of as a rock star. Um it's the music that I really loved and which was it's cliche, but soothe the savage beast. And I think that music is that for people. It could be their own, it may not be classic rock for everybody, but where I could find myself and you know, find my own melody and harmony within those songs and feel felt more understood. The messages that they were communicating and the way that they interacted with me emotionally allowed me to interact emotionally without interacting with people, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, completely. I I agree with you, especially with the genre um and the age. I'm I'm a little younger than you, but I I I lived in that same musical era. I wasn't able to see a lot of these guys live for that reason, but um, because a lot of them died young. But um, at the end of the day, like some of these musicians and songs, when you hear them, and you know, not only does the music take you away into another place, you know, the doors music would just transfer you off to another place. You didn't have to do any drugs, you could just listen to the music or Iron Butterfly or Led Zeppelin and or The Who, or you know, so many of these are, you know, obviously John Lennon, the Beatles. It goes on and on and on. And and and there's elements of some of these iconic songs that just like literally you can just like let go and just like whew, go off into this magical place. But not only that, though the the lyrics, so many times, like you'll listen to a song and you'll go, Wow, that's exactly what I was feeling or thinking. And somehow they they said it in a way that I never could think to say. Did you have that kind of experience? And if so, what were some of the songs that you connected with that way?
SPEAKER_01:I would say I connected a lot with uh Jamaris and the Doors because he writes from the position of being a lonely, alienated person. Uh in the first album, he wrote that his family was dead. That was not the case.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Um, his father said that he had no talent and should have no connection with the band. He wrote this in a letter to him. And from that point on, Morrison severed ties with his family. They did attempt to see him in concert and he rebuffed them.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:That was that hurtful to him. So there was a lot of identification with him. And as I mentioned, uh, the mediocre Lenin report cards that he wasn't into the school curriculum and what they were um what he should be studying, that he was more attuned to his music. Um there were just ways that I felt that they were humanized for me. And that really came about because I was in a head shop and I bought a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt and a Jim Morrison placard from his New Haven arrest. And the proprietor, who was a contemporary, remarked, that's another one I'd like to bring back to life. So I thought in writing this, wouldn't it be fun? And how many people wouldn't want Hendricks, Lennon, Morrison still around and performing and available? That's a collective fantasy. I mean, I had my own, you know, I was in my own world, but that world is a world that I'm sure most boomers or any classic rock lovers would want to inhabit, even momentarily.
SPEAKER_00:You know, absolutely, 100%. Um, you know, uh, you have two things going on. You have the the condition of schizoid personality disorder, and you have your journey of of overcoming and uh normalizing your life, finding ways to cope. Um, and then you know what what where did you go from that to I'm gonna write a book?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, sometimes the worst thing turns out to be the best thing. We I was talking to my friends who appear in the book, Jared and Elvin, and they had been prevailing on me to write a book for years, and then the pandemic struck. And I thought this is the opportunity because let's face it, social distancing came naturally to me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and hunkering.
SPEAKER_01:I didn't need any training in hunkering in. And I was a bit daunted because I'd never written that much. So I hired a writing coach, the author Harry Friedman, and I would write a chapter a month. Everything was shuttered, so most of my research was done online. And uh I was apprehensive, I still didn't have a lot of confidence. But by the third month of writing, he wrote to me, the book's looking really good. I hope you're enjoying writing it.
SPEAKER_00:Nice.
SPEAKER_01:So, you know, it just fell into place, and I was happy with it. It didn't, it seemed like to it wrote itself in some ways. And of course, it was fun for me to uh time travel and watch old movies and songs. I think everybody enjoys it. The people, not necessarily boomers, it can be younger people. A lot of people, it's an enshrined error and they enjoy reading the social history, particularly since it's skewed to classic rock. It's shown that's pretty much the vantage for it. Um, like Morrison's Indecency battle, uh Altamont, you know, what happened in that in 1969, which was uh there, of course, other more uh emblematic, like The Moonwalk, right? Is in there, the candidate, the Boston Strangler.
SPEAKER_00:It's actually a lot of social history, and I don't know if that's very typical of memoirs, so it's it's a great way to weave uh excitement uh into your personal experience, and I think it it it added uh an amazing layer of depth to the story, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:So uh you have a position that uh schizoid personality disorder is preventable. What what what brings you to that thought?
SPEAKER_01:Well, no child is born with a defense. There's no reason a child would anticipate rejection or tune out another human being. That's a learned response. So uh had I been in a circumstances that were more favorable or more normative, where there were equal amounts of acceptance and rejection, where there was love, caring, patience, and tolerance. I would have been a different person. And I have noticed when I've gone into situations where they were surrogate mothers or very warm, doting families that, you know, invited me the orphan for the holidays. And I was really made to feel welcome and treasured, that the symptoms subsided, that I was more focused, I was more punctual, I was more confident. This is an adaptation, a maladaptation. And Park Deets had said this about Robert Bowers. I don't know if you recall in 2018, the Tree of Life Shooter in Pittsburgh. At first, the reportage claimed that he was schizophrenic, and Dr. Deets said no, he was schizoid, that he had a maladaptation. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:And I don't think most people even realize there's a difference between schizoid and schizophrenic. I didn't initially. I didn't, you know, you hear somebody say schizoid, and to me, my mind was like, oh, they're schizophrenic, they're they're having hallucinations or whatever that, you know, the the experience of that might be. So this is enlightening to realize that they're two totally different things.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they are. They just share a prefix as to schizo effective, and those are much more serious disorders. Of course, schizophrenia is a psychosis. Right. Um, schizoid can know the difference between reality and fantasy. We just may daydream more than the average person has a learned disorder.
SPEAKER_00:Turn the mind a little bit, but you know where they are.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So what advice would you have to somebody who suspects they might be living with schizoid personality disorder?
SPEAKER_01:I'd say go see a clinician. That's the best possible thing you can do. And do not assume that the clinician is going to demean you, fold, spindle, or mutilate you. They're on your side. Now, they may tell you certain things you don't want to hear, but ultimately it's better for your welfare to navigate whatever those issues are or have those discussions. It won't be hurtful. It's just in the way that my clinician would tell me to go to this or that, that it won't be so bad. She literally had to coach me to go to there are going to be people there and to go to social gatherings. That's how phobic I was. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let's um get to your book a little bit. How how how do we find your book?
SPEAKER_01:My book is online, it's on Amazon. You can order from Atmosphere Press, Thrift Books, a number of links where it's available. It's even in other languages. I give you the reader the possibility of petting your own soundtrack of your life. There's a template that lets you put your song and the flashback as a gift with purchase, the playlist. My site is rocking tributes. If you'd like to write to me, if you suspect you have SPD or know somebody who does or whatever, I the whole point of this is to help people and prevent it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's fantastic. And Blair, do you have like a parting thought for our listeners that, you know, if you could consolidate all of this information into, you know, just one thing to leave leave the audience with, what would that be?
SPEAKER_01:To weigh your words a little more carefully, parents, because they can cause lifelong damage. And remember, a child isn't an adult. We can't impose perfectionistic standards on children. They're allowed to grapple, make mistakes, do let them do their own homework, which is by the way, something my mother did when I wasn't doing my homework. Uh, if you can't handle a child, seek intervention. Um, know your limitations and the limitations of your kid as a child. And remember, you may end up supporting a child lifelong if that child develops this defense. It becomes a character disorder and a disability. I'm sure parents don't want that. Yeah, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, no, no. I I took a pause as as you were finishing your thought.
SPEAKER_01:No, no.
SPEAKER_00:It's a very powerful message. Well, Blair, it's been an absolute pleasure to walk with the walk through this with you. And I want to thank you sincerely for uh being a guest on the show. And uh, you know, I would always welcome you to come back as as you're developing and and have more messaging um to share with the listeners.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much. I look forward to that, and I wish you all happy holidays and loving ones as families.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful. Well, this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and I want to thank all of our listeners for making the show possible. And we will see you next time.
