I can relate to your post here and also one I noticed in the schizoid PD subforum. I. Was diagnosed a while back with PDNOS and my late husband was likely schizoid. I do believe he loved me but I was the one who reached out to him first.

I am experiencing some improvement, maybe, having worked very hard and found a meetup of people who are more like me than most. Yes I have problems because of the way I grew up and shut down parts of myself but I definitely needed an an environment where people could relate to my basic temperament and who I could also feel drawn to and therefore want to come out of my shell, at a basic emotion level and not just intellectual. That was shut down or frozen and no way on my own, or with any therapist I ever saw, that I could change that. Although it was definitely more "alive" when I was with my late husband.

Personality develops in an environment and it seems logical to me that it needs a healthy, accepting, understanding environment in which to "re-develop". But that seems not to be a common view in the mental health community so, for right now, it seems to me that we're on our own to try to find it! But, what are the alternatives?