10,004 words, 53 minutes read time.
The Abandonment Depression
Adapted from ‘The Search for the Real Self’ by James F. Masterson
If we have come from a narcissistic family, understanding the concept of the ‘abandonment depression’ is fundamental.
The abandonment depression is at the heart of the driving forces behind many of our behaviours and understanding what it is can help to make sense of behaviours that can seem to be irrational in ourselves or others.
The term ‘abandonment depression’ comes from James F. Masterson, M.D., a prominent American psychiatrist who helped to bring the study, understanding and treatment of personality disorders, especially narcissistic and borderline, into the mainstream. He wrote a number of books on the subject and one of these was the ‘The Search for the Real Self,’ which was written for the layman.
Most of what is written below comes from ‘The Search for the Real Self,’ I have simplified the language and concepts as the information is so valuable but can be hard to understand in places.
This article will cover:
- our ‘real’ and ‘false’ selves and how these are influenced by the abandonment depression
- how different personality types experience the abandonment depression in different ways and have different motivating drivers in achieving goals and avoiding fears
- the 3 types of narcissistic personality disorder (grandiose, covert or closet and malignant), borderline personality disorder and schizoid personality disorder – these are different versions of personality adaptations, i.e., coping mechanisms, which are rooted in the childhood rejection of our real selves and are common in people who have had a narcissistic parent.
- what healthy childhood development looks like
- the role of fantasy in our defences
- examples of how the false or adapted self feels
- the emotions which make up the abandonment depression – depression, guilt, emptiness, helplessness, panic and rage
The Real and the False Self - Definitions
The real self can be defined as:
“A sense of self that is based on one's true inner feelings, preferences, reactions, and capacities. It emerges over time through contact with the environment that allows for its expression. It includes a sense of the ways in which one is unique, and also the ways in which one is the same or differs from others. It is based on reality, and therefore it is relatively resilient and stable, although it evolves in response to experiences.”
The false self can be defined as a set of defensive behaviours which protect us from pain and fear. It is a set of automatic responses to triggers, either in the outside world or inside our own minds and thought processes. It tries to defend us from engulfment and abandonment and it keeps us functioning.
In personal relationships, the false self promises to defend against the intimacy that could lead to engulfment or the pains of abandonment by substituting fantasy relationships with unavailable partners for real relationships.
In terms of employment, the false self assures the person that he can avoid the conflicts and anxiety that would come from honest self-assertion with authority figures, peers and from competition and discipline, by not working at a level which is up to his full capacity or abilities. Allowing the false self to control one’s life results in severe lack of self-esteem.
Being dominated by a false self means settling for a rigid manner of dealing with problems and challenges. Why would one prefer self-destructive behaviour that is not able to accommodate or adjust to a variety of roles? Why would someone prefer to be dominated and sabotaged by a false self when this means they can never realise the goals and dreams that would make their life truly worthwhile?
Although most people have occasional doubts about their self-worth and wonder if they’re making the most of their lives, they’re not dominated by a false self. In healthy people, a real self emerges that can realistically assess these moments of questioning and self-doubt and can cope with difficulties and disappointments without resorting to self-destructive behaviour to avoid feeling depressed or worthless.
The purpose of the false self is not adaptive but defensive, it protects against painful feelings, and it achieves this goal at the cost of living in and mastering reality.
The real self can be viewed as mostly conscious, it identifies our unique individual wishes and expresses them, it allows us to recognise within ourselves a special someone who persists through space and time (different from the feeling of a disjointed sense of self, or a looking back and feeling – that was another person doing those things and it wasn’t me) and who endures as a unique entity regardless of shifts and changes in life and themselves.
We are a kaleidoscope of self-images, like pieces of coloured glass forming and re-forming shapes, patterns, designs and always changing even though the pieces stay the same. The real self allows us to take the steps to carve out our individual place in the world by finding the appropriate job, lifestyle or partner and this maintains our self-esteem.
Examples of How the False (Adapted) Self Feels
“I have to force myself to function every day to go to work, I feel dead but have to keep going, it's a daily temptation not to slit my wrists or jump out of windows or in front of speeding cars. Nothing has seemed real for the last 18 years.”
“I didn't care, I felt helpless and alone, nobody loved me so I would just sit in bed all day and lose myself in fantasies.”
“I'm not doing what I want because my ideas of what I want are filtered through the perception of what others want, how I think, how I work, how I dress. I'm good at perceiving what pleases other people, and I give them what they want, but I think I pay a terrible price for it, I'm a chameleon. I adapt to suit the environment to please others rather than myself, all my life I felt trapped - suffocating inside my skin, yearning to be free.”
“I'm usually pretty confident about myself. I feel in charge of my life, my work, myself, but I have to be the best, like with tennis. I know it's not just that I enjoy the game, I enjoy the praise for winning a match more than the actual winning. I need people to admire me and say I'm really good at something - the best.”
“I'm not worthy of anything because I don't have a real self. I am a vampire living off other people, so needy, I know I delude myself, afraid of looking inside to find my real self. If I let my real self out, I’ll be alone without anyone to fall back on….. I'm fake, if I let my real self come out, I’ll be all alone and I can't handle that.”
Fantasies as Coping Strategies
Healthy fantasies are spontaneous and flexible and are essential prerequisites for creativity, which are necessary for us to be able to create the lives we want.
For the wounded, fantasies can be pathological – they serve no other purpose than to engulf the person into daydreaming in a fantasy world to escape from the feelings of depression and panic. People can also retreat into a fantasy world to avoid feelings of low self-esteem, but this avoidant behaviour reinforces the feelings of worthlessness.
I Don’t Know Who I Am
Many children of narcissists feel they don’t know themselves and don’t know what they want to do with their lives, this means they may remain in jobs far below their level of skill and talent and as they drift through life, not taking the steps to discover employment that would stimulate their interests and skills and make them feel good about themselves. They also believe their problems lie somewhere ‘out there,’ beyond their reach and rooted in external circumstances. The solutions also seem to lie outside of themselves, like finding the right partner or looking better physically, we can have beliefs like, “I’ll be happy when…… I put on more weight, I lose weight, I am older, I have plastic surgery, I am richer, I am rescued from my life by someone,” etc.
We can be stuck in procrastinating and trapped in an unhappy life. This can be because of inner conflicts between aspects of ourselves with different agendas, some from the real self and some from the false/adapted self. We may rationalise this in many ways; “I haven’t found what I want to do with my life yet, I’m not ready yet, I need to learn more, I’m too young, I’m too old,” etc.
Workaholism and Being Busy
Many people are terrified of freedom and feel uncomfortable without having someone or some routine controlling them, the lack of these can be anxiety inducing. As a coping mechanism, they will build their lives around being busy and being a workaholic, they can be addicted to not feeling and they get restless and panicky when having nothing to do. They schedule tasks and chores. Some people can’t stand to be alone or to do nothing, and this is evidence of someone living a life dominated by a false self. They feel like they are a phoney or an imposter and their lives are not directed by their real selves. On a deeper level, which is often too deep to be perceived or admitted, they can feel like hypocrite or a robot who is programmed by a false self to sabotage any satisfaction that could be derived from loving or working.
Loving and working are the ways in which we express ourselves and they give meaning to our lives, but not if one’s primary goal is to avoid feeling bad and all energy must be channelled towards that goal. Personal meaning must be created and the process of creating it requires testing and experimentation, which a false self will not do, as it is a defence against experimenting.
Healthy Childhood Development
To understand what the abandonment depression is we need to first understand what happens during the process of childhood development:
- At four weeks old, a baby develops a special response for mother and father
- At seven weeks old, a baby can organise visual observations, they still feel fused with the mother – there is not yet a sense of ‘me’ and ‘not me’
- At two or three months of age, a baby discovers that they have boundaries from others, and they develop the concepts of inside and outside of themselves. The baby is aware that some needs are satisfied by the mother alone and she brings pleasurable feelings and relieves unpleasurable ones. The child becomes aware that the mother is indispensable for their sense of well-being. She is the master organiser of their life. During the second and third months of life, the baby will look more directly into their mother’s face and focus more closely on her eyes
- In the fourth and fifth month, the baby expresses their special bond with their mother by a specific smile that leaps to their face only for her. A baby’s sense of “I” starts to become different from “mother” and the “world,” and a sense of self begins to emerge that is distinct from the world around them
- By twelve to eighteen months, a baby can recognise their image in the mirror and can point to it and say their name
- From the seventh or eighth month until the child is 18 months old, the real self is activated by forays into the world and then coming back to their mother as their home base
A child needs emotional supplies for the emerging self and will keep returning to mother to receive them in the form of her acknowledgement and support. A child’s need for reassurance that they are not completely on their own increases as the child balances their growing independence with assurance that their mother shares their life and struggles and she supports their efforts to develop as a separate autonomous person in their own right. Eventually, the child stands at an important crossroads in the development of their real self – they are ambivalent about their need for their mother as they fear their new self will be engulfed and disappear if they are sucked into her orbit. The father plays a pivotal role in the development of their child but to the child it feels there has always been a separateness and the father feels distinct.
As the child separates psychologically from their mother, they hold separately in their minds the good images from the bad images of both themselves and their mother. This splitting results in ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mother images and ‘good’ and ‘bad’ images of themselves. When a child feels good – warm, comfortable and safe, their good self-image arises, if a child feels bad – hungry, tired or frightened, their bad self-image arises. In a child who is nurtured in a healthy way, contrasting images and concepts can be held in mind at the same time and this is one of the first tasks of the real self – it fuses and holds those images together at around age three. The real self also fuses together the good and bad images of the mother and she is perceived as a whole, constant individual. The real self is stabilised inside the mind at age three or four and development continues over the years. This is life in nuanced grey – rather than black and white and a world of contrasts that is life for a child who was not nurtured in a healthy way. The child then learns to have more impulse control, have ego boundaries, better perception of reality and to tolerate frustration.
When individual has a healthy real self, they develop the following capacities:
- the capacity to experience a wide range of feelings deeply with liveliness, joy, vigour, excitement and spontaneity
- the capacity to expect appropriate entitlements
- the capacity for self-activation and assertion- the ability to identify their own unique individuality in their wishes, dreams and goals and be assertive in expressing them autonomously
- acknowledgment of self-esteem
- the ability to soothe painful feelings and to not wallow in misery
- the ability to make and stick to commitments
- to be creative and find solutions for life’s problems
- to be intimate with others fully and honestly in a close relationship with minimal anxiety about abandonment or engulfment
- the ability to be alone without feeling abandoned
- a feeling of continuity of self. Whether in a good mood or in a bad one and in accepting failure or living with success, a person with a real self has an inner core that remains the same even as they grow and develop.
The real self does not insulate us from the negative feelings and frustrations that are part of human life, it does not cocoon or isolate us from the world’s sufferings. The real self has the capacity to function successfully in the real world.
The Fear of Abandonment
In order to establish a coherent sense of self, in the first three years of life, a child must learn that they are not a fused symbiotic unit with their mother. In the development of individuals dominated by the false self, these patterns of self-expression and maternal support did not take place. Why? Three factors account for the failure of some children to separate and express themselves in ways that will develop and strengthen the real self: nature, nurture, and fate.
How do children who have survived their childhood without a clinical breakdown struggle to function in adolescence?
The key to a child being able to thrive is the mother’s ability to perceive and to support the child’s emerging self for, without that support, they experience her as withdrawing and disapproving of their efforts. The mother may respond inadequately for a variety of reasons, she might be psychologically disturbed, she may have a personality disorder, be in addiction, have her own unprocessed trauma or she may be unable to respond sufficiently because she herself has suffered a loss and is depressed, or she is physically ill or actually absent. Her unavailability produces the climate in which the child’s real self will not be able to emerge. Some mothers fear separation and attempt to prevent it at all costs by discouraging their child’s moves towards individuation by withdrawing their support. These mothers cannot accept their children as they actually are, they may perceive the child as a perpetual infant or worse, an object, to be used as a defence against her own feelings of depression over separation. The child in turn, learns to disregard and even fear parts of themselves that they realised threatened their mother and the child suppresses those feelings and wishes in order to continue receiving approval from their mother. Both the child and mother cling to each other, and if the mother’s clinging was too intense, the child became afraid of being taken over or engulfed and defended against this by distancing themselves emotionally from her and others, and importantly, because the child feared abandonment, giving up on further individuation.
The Fear of Intimacy
Intimate relationships call for self-expression and self-revelation and for a person with an impaired real self this is frightening. Being able to fully know and be ourselves is necessary for a close relationship, as is the ability to hold in mind that we still love a person even when we are angry with them and to be able to see the whole of them – the good and bad, rather than relating to them as ‘parts’ and being triggered into seeing them as one or the other.
People need to have the capacity to be alone and feel genuine concern for, rather than a neediness for others, have the capacity to tolerate anxiety and depression, and be able to commit to another person without the fear of engulfment or abandonment. A person also needs to be able to mourn the loss of a loved one in such a way as to free oneself emotionally for a new relationship.
It is common for people who have had a narcissistic parent to develop patterns of coping known as personality disorders (or preferably, personality adaptations). These tend to be narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and schizoid personality disorder and each type of pathology has its own distorted version of loving and giving:
In a nutshell:
A borderline person defines love as a relationship with a partner approval who will offer and support for regressive behaviour, usually in the form of taking responsibility for the borderline.
A narcissistic person defines love as the ability of someone else to admire and adore them, and to provide perfect mirroring.
The schizoid person finds love in an internal, autistic fantasy.
Psychopaths seek partners who respond to their manipulations and provide them with gratification.
There are all kinds of illusions that make it appear that intimacy is working for a couple, even when, on closer inspection, what we find is not a healthy interchange between two real selves expressing and reinforcing their capacities but a pathologic contract between two false selves which, although it may seem to survive for the moment, inevitably falls apart. An example of this is a couple who always fight and people wonder why they stay together. They stay together because they fight and it works for them. A classic example is the case of two borderline personalities who project the withdrawing disapproving parental image onto each other so that they do not have to feel and be aware of the associated depression. As long as they’re angry at their partners, they do not have to feel depressed and this way of coping feels preferable. It is a way of managing the need to be close and the need to have distance for fear of engulfment.
James Masterson states that when one of his patients announced they had found a new partner and the relationship was comfortable and easy going, he would strongly suspect that the new partner was inappropriate for that patient and was providing a kind of defence against the patient’s painful feelings. On the other hand, if a patient related that the new relationship was fun and exciting, but also caused a lot of anxiety, he knew the new partner was more appropriate and better for the patient in the long run because they were challenging the patient’s old defences and stimulating the patient to relate in terms of their real self. Anxiety is present because borderline and narcissistic personalities cannot relate on a realistic level without giving up the defences of the false self, which in turn makes them feel exposed and vulnerable to the anxiety and depression that they’re struggling hardest to avoid.
In the case of the borderline, relationships dominated by the need to defend against the fear of the abandonment depression will be unreliable, vulnerable to frustrations, and heavily dependent on the mood or feeling of the moment. There may be no continuity in the way the borderline views his partner. It shifts from moment to moment and is either totally good or totally bad. Every borderline has fears of engulfment and abandonment, if the developmental arrest in childhood happened before the ego boundaries were secure, fears of engulfment predominate, if it was later and after the child had established a sense of themselves – even though this may be fragile, fears of abandonment will predominate. Borderlines may use the principal defence mechanisms of clinging and distancing, either exclusively or alternately at different times. In many borderline relationships, an individual prefers a partner who is only partially accessible, such as one who lives a considerable distance away, is only available on weekends, works a lot or is married. Knowing the relationship has no future makes it uniquely attractive because both partners know that they are freed from having to relate to each other on a realistic level and therefore they are freed from the separation anxiety that activating their real selves would entail. They are then left with freedom to indulge in romantic feelings and fantasies about the other person. As relationships move beyond fantasy towards reality, a fear of engulfment can lead to depression, the causes of which get projected onto the partner and the relationship is ended.
A borderline is looking to others to heal the wounds inside of them. For a borderline, relationships with others can feel like a powerful parent and a helpless regressed child.
A schizoid personality feels as though they have to be totally obedient as a price for relatedness, they feel like they need to be a compliant, victimised, manipulated slave or object and the other person can feel like their master. Dominance and submission are the major themes, and the individual may feel related to the other but at the price of feeling like a prisoner, always deceiving, hiding, and fearful of entrapment. The overriding anxiety centres around being controlled and, ultimately, engulfed with a total loss of self-identity. These feelings are largely defended against and only appear when the schizoid person takes up the challenge of a real relationship in the external world. Other people are seen as dangerous, devaluing and depriving and therefore the schizoid person can become largely self-contained, self-sufficient, and self-protective to ward off the danger of attack, criticism, ridicule and abuse. A schizoid can feel isolated, marooned and abandoned and they have a dilemma in that being close to others precipitates fears of entrapment and enslavement and being too far from others triggers feelings of alienation and exile. To defend against this, they frequently substitute fantasised or imagined relations for real relationships. For example, they may imagine a relationship that reads like a romance novel, they may imagine a romance with an unattainable figure or they may have a relationship where there is a role reversal which makes the relationship feel non-threatening.
Narcissism and intimacy problems are synonymous. The narcissist is unable to relate to other people except in terms of their own inflated self-image and their unrealistic projections of themselves onto others. Every relationship involving a narcissistic personality requires adulation and perfect responsiveness from the partner. When these requirements are lacking, the narcissist resorts to rage which is always externalised and projected onto the other person. The next step is to then devalue their partner since they’re not living up to the narcissist’s wishes. The narcissist’s overblown sense of entitlement makes it almost impossible for them to see what they are doing in these situations, and they cannot imagine that their own projections onto their partner are causing them such severe dissatisfaction in the relationship. They feel entitled to narcissistic supply and are triggered into an automatic response of rage and devaluation of others when they do not get them. The more reinforcement that life provides the narcissist in terms of success, money, power, or prestige, the more the narcissistic personality feels entitled to a partner who will provide the same.
A common partnership is a narcissistic husband with a clinging borderline wife who idealises him and uses his sense of superiority to shore up her own inadequate self. She is usually very compliant, subservient, and eager to give him what he wants, but she always fails to meet his standards, and he turns on her and reinforces her negative feelings about herself.
Descriptions of the Abandonment Depression
“I've been frightened into thinking that growing up is wrong. I think I'm destined to die because I'm growing up. I feel dirty and disgusting when I think about becoming a woman. I'm an empty shell that should be filled with grown up attitudes, but I can't put any in without breaking it breaking who I am.”
“I feel like I'm dying, powerless and sinking under 5000 lbs of self-hate. I feel like a rotten tree with total despair inside. Hopeless, drained, no strength, I can't do anything. I'm badly wounded and hurt as though I'm being squashed, and there's no way out. My own emptiness frightens me. If hemlock were sitting here I'd drink it.”
“When I sit there trying to work, I feel hurt, crushed and I want to give up. I never feel any support or connection with anyone. I'm completely lost, helpless, unable to cope with reality, I feel adrift, alone. I have no sense of worth or meaning, the feeling of being deserted kills me and I can't work. Trying to work is tempting fate, risky, treacherous. I can almost hear voices telling me it's wrong to be myself. I have to block them out, or I think I'm dying. So, I give up. I feel completely abandoned and I want to yell, ‘Help me out, where is everybody?’ But the voices yell back, ‘He's crazy.’”
What is the Abandonment Depression?
What is the abandonment depression and how can it drive people into states of such unbearable loneliness, helplessness and depression, that they aren’t able to recognise themselves as valuable human beings? How can intelligent and well-meaning men and women decide that avoiding the abandonment depression at all costs is more important than leading a balanced, rewarding and creative life?
Abandonment depression is an umbrella term which covers depression, panic, rage, guilt, helplessness (hopelessness) and emptiness (void). The intensity and immediacy of these six feelings can become unbearable in people with a severely impaired sense of self. To these people, the real self is under constant attack and a siege mentality clouds their ability to perceive themselves and the world in realistic terms, the world and other people become the enemy. Relationships are stifling, engulfing or always on the verge of breakup, leaving the self hurt and abandoned.
Helplessness (Hopelessness) and Emptiness (Void)
There is a panicky state of helplessness, of being out of control and a need to feel protected and safe again. The false self unfailingly comes to the rescue but the payment for feeling safe is the failure of the real self to develop autonomy. The experience of the abandonment depression is far more serious and devastating than the forms of depression that come and go in the course of our daily lives. In the throes of the abandonment depression, a person will feel that part of his very self is lost or cut off from the supplies necessary to sustain life. At the darkest level of this depression, a person can despair of ever recovering their true self and thoughts of suicide are not uncommon. Many people feel like their lives have no meaning, they feel numb, they feel like life is boring or it just feels like a long list of chores.
Helplessness springs from a person’s inability to activate his impaired real self to deal with these painful feelings. Helplessness as part of the abandonment depression is abiding and total. It persists like a gloomy backdrop to life, casting a pall over most activities and life situations.
Many people have a feeling of emptiness or hollowness in their chests. It can feel like a numb or a painful void – a black hole. They may not be aware of it a lot of the time unless they think about it.
Depression and Rage
Depression and rage ride in tandem as depression intensifies and comes to the surface of awareness as does anger. Many people cannot pinpoint the reasons why they’re angry, the target of their rage is projected on outside sources, and they feel angry at life or the world in general. The anger is long lasting, building up from painful childhood experiences that may not be easily recalled because they are too solidly defended against. The more depressed a person becomes the angrier they get and eventually the real seeds of the anger are uncovered, which are incidents in the first years of life when the real self was trying to emerge and failed to do so, and then homicidal fantasies may be entertained. The false self has a highly skilled defensive radar whose purpose is to avoid feelings of rejection, although, achieving this means we sacrifice our need for intimacy.
Panic
Rage and fear lead to panic as part of the abandonment depression. Panic and fear operate on a more insidious level, arising not from legitimate and present dangers, but from an abiding and unconscious fear. The false self plays its deceptive role, seemingly protecting us, but doing so in a way that is programmed to keep us fearful of being abandoned, losing support, not being able to cope on our own and not being able to be alone. Panic feeds on the fear that we cannot express our anger over abandonment; either we express our anger and risk losing the love of others or we deny the anger in order to remain in the helpless state of dependency and hold onto others. As the panic grows, it can feel like facing death or actually being killed. Often this anxiety will be channelled into psychosomatic disorders such as asthma and peptic ulcers.
Fear plays an important role in the lives of people dominated by a false self. Like victims haunted and stalked by the Mafia, people clearly understand the score: if you comply you will receive rewards, if you do not comply you are killed. The false self has blocked any expression of these feelings for so long that whenever they do manage to surface, even in the slightest way, the resulting panic can be paralysing and terrifying.
Guilt
The guilt aspect of the abandonment depression is the guilt that was internalised in early childhood because of the disapproval expressed by the mother for their child’s self-actualisation or individuation. Even in adulthood, a strong reprimanding voice can be triggered when we have thoughts and wishes we know would have elicited disapproval in the past. In people who have a strong sense of their real selves, it is possible to dismiss the disapproving voice, but for people with an impaired real self, the guilt produced by this warning can be as paralysing as it was when they were five years old. They feel guilty about that part of themselves that wants to individuate. Not being able to face up to the internalised guilt trip, these individuals will suppress making any moves in the forbidden direction and resort to the old familiar clinging behaviours that they remember made them feel safe and good years ago. Clinging behaviour may be directed towards the actual mother or to another person who represents security and approval. Clinging feels like the only reliable strategy to avoid feeling guilty. Many people assume the passive helpless role in relationships, looking for someone to take care of them, rather than someone who will love and respect them as an equal. The false self will keep a person playing the good little girl or boy, feeling that they still need to be told what to do and need a wiser, firmer hand to help them do it. In the workplace, the false self can prevent us from assuming more responsibility, applying for promotions, making decisions or standing up for what we think is right, even though others around us might disagree. Many people dominated by a false self stay in unrewarding jobs that neither utilise their talents or skills, nor pay what those skills could command in a different employment situation.
Hours are spent acting out in order to avoid the abandonment depression and people learn to engage in a long string of pathological activities that function like a kind of armour to protect against the emptiness, helplessness and depression that would otherwise consume them and their entire day is given to it. Some people’s false self will actually lure them into drugs, alcohol or abusive behaviours. Others sink into passivity or dead-end activities, such as excessive daydreaming, mindless shopping, overeating or other similar coping mechanism. Some individuals will cling to people, familiar places or objects such as furniture, clothing, art, or daily schedules and routines that do little for them in reality as the primary purpose is to avoid the fear associated with independence and self-expression.
Personality Disorders as an Outcome of Having Narcissistic Parent
Borderline, Narcissist and Schizoid Personality Disorders
It is common to develop traits from certain personality disorders (or adaptations) when coming from a narcissistic family. Each individual will be affected in a different way according to;
their inherent character – nature
their upbringing – nurture
‘fate’ or ‘luck’ – events in life which affect our personal outcomes
It is possible to have a mixture of traits i.e., borderline personality disorder with narcissistic traits. This is easier to understand if we think in terms of the different ‘parts’ of us which have different survival strategies; Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn or Submit and Attach (Cry for Help).
In a nutshell:
A person with Borderline PD has strong attach parts that long for love and closeness.
A person with Narcissistic PD has stronger fight parts as they are triggered into rages and silent treatments and devaluing others.
A person with Schizoid PD is triggered into fawning and submissive defences and feel that their options are to do what others want or be rejected. Be a slave or be alone.
Borderline Traits
When a child experiences the abandonment depression during the first three years of life, the real self shuts down to avoid further aggravating the feelings of abandonment. This shutdown arrests psychological development and produces degrees of impairment in the capacities of the real self. Unable to tolerate feeling the abandonment depression, the child engages in a number of measures to protect themselves from feeling depressed at the cost of growth and adaptation. Certain functions of the ego like reality perception, impulse control, frustration tolerance and stable ego boundaries can only develop through successful separation and Individuation. A child who cannot separate from their mother will not internalise these functions and will need to continue to rely upon the mother or someone else for an understanding of how the world works. The child continues to rely heavily upon the primitive defence mechanisms of denial and clinging, avoidance and distancing, projection and acting out. Although physically separate, the child does not feel that way and develops a fantasy that by clinging he can act out his wish for reunion with the mother, or rather, for unconditional love and acceptance. Denial and clinging become reflexive responses which become the primary means of dealing with separation stresses in adulthood, especially those involving intimacy and separation.
To avoid triggering the abandonment depression, a child learns to avoid opportunities to express themselves, or assert their wishes, or activate what is most unique in their personality, because those things can threaten their emotional equilibrium by triggering feelings of abandonment. Those early interpersonal interactions in which they experienced the devastating effects of their mother’s unavailability became internalised and acted as a mould for their personality structure. The child learns that for him, life is more tolerable when he holds himself back and avoids situations that would stimulate his own growth through self-activation and self-expression, and this seems a small price to pay in order to feel safe. In relationships, the person will either cling or stay aloof and emotionally uninvolved out of fear of being hurt or rejected, they will feel that many of life’s challenges have to be avoided and either hold onto others possessively or keep them at a distance so they can feel secure. This is because there is an ingrained body memory of being rewarded for avoiding life’s challenges and relationships with other people and keeping true feelings hidden. Typically, an individual who is hyper sensitive to rejection will avoid facing up to and dealing with the abandonment depression by playing out the painful parental relationship with another person cast as the parent. In this way the pain is externalised and dealt with as if it’s an external problem in the present and an illusion is created that the pain is being managed in the here and now. Acting out does not always require a partner however, the term is also applied to behaviour, usually self-destructive, that one engages in as a defence against the abandonment depression. Alcohol, drugs, excessive work habits, and other addictive activities can serve as a distraction from depression.
Clinging behaviour is based on a fantasy. This fantasy is projected onto the external world and it helps people to feel good. Even as adults, people with a deflated false self (which feels weak and insecure and is false because it’s based on a fantasy), will feel as they did when children: bad, guilty, ugly, helpless, inadequate and empty for never asserting themselves; and they only feel good and actually loved when they are passive, compliant, and submissive to the person to whom they cling for emotional supplies. Their emotional lives are then characterised by chronic anger, frustration and feelings of being thwarted. To the deflated false self, the proof of being loved is essential for feeling good. Fantasies of unconditional love are projected onto the environment and acted out, behaviour becomes inappropriate and is so ingrained in a person’s psyche that they can’t discover the appropriate behaviour necessary to be able to fulfil their needs. Many people have strong rescue fantasies of rescuing others and/or of themselves being rescued.
The abandonment depression is first experienced at an age where the young child cannot reflect on it or articulate what is happening and they feel they teeter on the verge of annihilation. If the vital support of the mother is lost or withheld, the abandonment dynamic is always precipitated by an event such as separation or loss, or a situation requiring self-assertion and autonomy, which ruptures the line of defence which is erected to prevent the depression. This leaves the person vulnerable to the full onslaught of the abandonment depression.
Narcissistic Traits
While a borderline has a deflated false self, the narcissist has an inflated false self. On the surface, a narcissist may exude an aura of success in career and relationships, they may seem to be people who have everything; talent, wealth beauty, health and power with a strong sense of knowing what they want and how to get it. In fact, the narcissist’s personality is based on a defensive false self that he must keep inflated, like a balloon, in order not to feel the underlying rage and depression associated with an inadequate, fragmented sense of self. If the balloon springs a leak, he can feel as miserable and insecure as someone with a deflated false self. A borderline’s false self is preoccupied with fear of and vulnerability to the abandonment depression and the narcissist’s false self is characterised by an imperviousness to depression and it can seem that depression is not a part of his life, as long as the false self is adequately inflated it has the ballast to keep him floating high, oblivious to frustration and depression. The illusion of the defensive self becomes apparent in three areas; the content of the defensive self, its motivation, and the massive denial of reality it requires. The defensive self is characterised by self importance, grandiosity and omnipotence. While most people value the admiration of others that admiration is not their primary goal. The activities a narcissist does fuels their need for perfection and uniqueness and this provides supplies which feed their grandiose perception of themselves. It is a defensive false self because it is based on a grandiose fantasy rather than on reality, and its purpose is not to cope or adapt to reality, but to reinforce grandiosity in order to not feel depressed. Typically, the narcissist is a restless person as there is pressure to keep reinforcing his sense of grandeur. It is not uncommon for him to be a workaholic at a job he does well and having nothing to do is threatening. Beneath the grandiose false self is an impaired real self whose development has been arrested.
Narcissistic supplies come from mirroring – as the narcissist looks to others in their environment and at their own clothes, the car, the home and the office to reflect their exaggerated sense of importance and perfection. They must surround themselves with the right people who will appreciate and advertise their best qualities like the wealth, power and beauty in themselves. Those who are part of their lives, like family, friends and colleagues, must also be perfect and this feeds into his grandiose image of himself. The narcissist claims perfection rather than seeking it, the narcissist is perfect and doesn’t have to work or struggle to be so. If they do not receive enough supplies or mirroring and the environment is inadequate, the grandiose self is frustrated and the anger and depression that underlie will emerge. The successful narcissist will develop a lifestyle that will resonate to his grandiose projections of himself and fuel his narcissistic needs. It is a system of reinforcement and life can seem good. As long as nothing punctures the balloon, they will not be aware of any serious personality problems and may think they have it all. Underneath this pursuit of mirroring and narcissistic feedback lies a massive denial of reality, this is different from the borderline’s inability to deal with reality but shares a similar self-destructive habit that prevents the real self from emerging. Whereas the borderline denies his real wishes and goals in order to avoid the self-activation that triggers the abandonment depression, the narcissist denies weakness in himself and the reality of the depression altogether. They cannot allow themselves to be deflated by feelings of depression and their utter conviction that they are special and omnipotent blinds them to any evidence that contradicts this perception of themselves. For example, if a narcissist’s wife leaves him, he does not get depressed, he gets angry, if he got depressed, he would be admitting to weakness. Anger on the other hand means he has been wronged, and this can be viewed as a strength, although if a severe enough crisis occurs a narcissist can end up in therapy. Other people exist in the narcissist’s life to gratify them, to be used and exploited and to mirror the narcissist’s image of themselves as being unique, special and important back to them. As a narcissist understands their own narcissistic needs so well, they are also extremely sensitive to the narcissistic needs of others, and they will manipulate them by gratifying them and then in turn being gratified.
The reason the narcissist finds it impossible to commit themselves emotionally and sincerely to another human being is that to do so would activate the underlying emptiness, rage and depression of their impaired real self. There is little in them that is not self-absorbed and self-centred. People with an inflated false self can appear warm and interested, but only when they are talking about themselves or their own interests, they do not ask others about their interests except in an obviously formal way because of social norms, or in order to manipulate people into becoming a source of narcissistic supplies. A further indication of their true motivation is that if we stop asking them about themselves the relationship quickly disintegrates, and they find ways to avoid us. When the narcissist shows his true hand in these situations, it reveals a real lack of empathy for others. A narcissist has absolutely no interest in others for themselves, they do not realise or accept the fact that the world contains other human beings who have legitimate needs and interests which are just as important as the narcissists, but it is only through other people he can obtain gratification and maintain his inflated grandiose self. The narcissist is in a precarious position as he needs others to supply his narcissistic needs, he must cultivate his relationships carefully so that they don’t require too much emotional involvement or commitment. At work, a narcissist expects praise from supervisors as well as colleagues and coworkers, they may not always be pleased with the work of others and since they can do no wrong any difficulties they have must be someone else’s fault.
The causes of narcissistic personality disorder are unclear but in some cases their mothers are emotionally cold and exploitative narcissistic personalities themselves. They ignore their children’s separation and individuation needs in order to mould them into fitting their own perfectionistic standards and serving their own emotional needs. The perfectionistic mother needs a perfect child to act as a mirror for her own perfectionistic self-image. The emotionally cold mother needs a child able to function as perfectly as possible on their own to minimise the amount of time and emotion that she needs to invest in them. The child’s real need to separate and establish their own individuality suffers as they resonate with their mothers’ idealising projections. Repeated and continual identification with the mother’s idealised image of the child preserves the grandiose self-image typical in the early years, the child is blinded to the mother’s failures and imperfections which would cause depression if they were to acknowledge them. For the narcissistic child, the fused symbiotic image he holds of himself and his mother is never split. Healthy mothers teach their children about the realities of life, they deflate their children’s feelings of grandeur and bring them down to earth, the mother of the future narcissistic personality never dispels this notion. The fused symbiotic relationship endures and the child grows to adulthood perceiving himself to be just as omnipotent and grandiose as when he was a child, however, underneath this defensive fused grandiose self is the inadequate, fragmented, impaired real self with its rage and depression.
Deep in their mind is the image of the angry, attacking mother who disapproved of their emerging real self when it sought self-expression along lines other than the perfection and grandiosity she required. When other people mirror the narcissists grandiosity, the narcissist likes them, and when others frustrate their need for mirroring, they attack or devalue them. They shore up their shaky self-esteem by devaluing others.
Types of Narcissistic Personalities
The Grandiose or Closet/Covert Narcissist
A grandiose narcissist admires themselves and a closet narcissist needs to find another person, group or institution through which they can indulge their narcissistic needs while hiding their own narcissistic personality. They have the same personality structure – which is a grandiose self-image fused with an omnipotent parent image but the covert narcissist does not actively seek the mirroring of their grandiose self, rather, they idealise the ‘other,’ i.e., their partner, and hope to receive the other’s admiration or they simply, ‘bask in the other’s glow’ and this is how they defend against the underlying abandonment depression.
The Malignant Narcissist
A malignant narcissist is more paranoid and sadistic than the other variations.
“Malignant narcissism is the most severe clinical syndrome within the general spectrum of pathological narcissism and is therapeutically the most challenging. There is a narcissistic personality structure with intense paranoid features, aggression against others and/or the self with an emphasis on defeating others and there can be antisocial behaviour. Some may require hospitalisation but there are others who function relatively well in work, social, and relational life.
A malignant narcissist can either be thin-skinned or thick-skinned. A thick-skinned malignant narcissist has aggression infiltrating their grandiose self but not to the extent where it interferes with good overall control that allows them to function well. A thin-skinned malignant narcissist is usually functioning on a borderline level with generalised splitting (this is the black and white/all or nothing thinking pattern- the images of good and bad remaining split), and they may react with chaotic and impulsive aggression to perceived ego threats.”
Narcissistic personalities at an intermediate level of functioning have a relatively contained aggression in terms of brutality, usually limited to intimate relations, and antisocial behaviour limited to betrayal and the undermining of assumed enemies. The world of the malignant narcissist seems to consist of individuals to be used and exploited and ought to be feared. All patients with the syndrome of malignant narcissism show a more or less subtle arrogance and a lack of tactfulness in social relations that isolates them and evokes negative reactions from others that reinforces paranoid and related antisocial behaviours. The grandiosity and superiority, combined with hypersensitivity to any criticism, occasionally collapses with intense feelings of inferiority, worthlessness, and bitter resentment against the world that has plunged them to this depth of self devaluation. When not threatened they may present an image of security and self assertion that can impress those in their social environment, there can be a charm that masks their underlying lack of capacity for deeper relationships, their sense of entitlement, and their ruthless manipulation of others. Self-destructive, self-mutilating, and suicidal behaviours may be utilised as an assertion of their control over their environment. ‘Treating Pathological Narcissism,’ Diana Diamond et al.
Schizoid Traits
The criteria for SPD from the DSM-5 are as follows (American Psychiatric Association, 2013):
A persistent pattern of disinterest from social interactions and a limited variety of expression of emotions in a close personal setting, starting in early adulthood and there in an array of contexts, as shown by at least four (or more) of the subsequent:
- neither wants nor likes close relationships, counting being part of a family
- almost constantly picks introverted activities
- has little if any, thought in engaging in any sexual experiences
- seldom derives pleasure from any activities
- has no close friends other than immediate relatives
- appears apathetic to the admiration or disapproval of others
- shows emotional coldness, detachment, or flattened affectivity
The schizoid personality is characterised by symptoms of emotional coldness and aloofness, indifference to praise or criticism from others, and close friendships with no more than one or two people, including family members.
A person can have a lesser version of SPD. They can marry or live with a partner and can have a few friends but struggle intensely with trust and their primary goal is safety. Someone with schizoid traits may have relationships with unavailable people- who may be married, emotionally unavailable or live a long distance away. They have feelings of being dehumanised and used by others.
“A schizoid individual fears the dire consequences of their being seen or heard. A primary driver for their behaviour is safety. This schizoid disorder of the self results from a failure in unconditional loving care in the first few months of the infant’s life. There is a sense of starvation for validation. They become afraid to love and therefore erect barriers between others and themselves.
The critical difference between the schizoid individual developmentally and those with other disorders of the self is that the awareness of maternal emotional unavailability is an actual explicit experience and not a potential implicit possibility. There is a world of difference developmentally between these two positions, the former leaves little room for hope and little reason to turn to external reality to consummate the yearning for attachment.
Ralph Klein (clinical director of the Masterson Institute) sees the schizoid as uniquely different from both the narcissist and the borderline whose issue is with the nature of relationship; the schizoid is concerned as to whether there is hope for a relationship at all. The subjective experience of many, if not most, is that their efforts at relatedness were of no avail and they encountered either indifference or neglect. The family experience of the schizoid is of being a dehumanised and depersonified function that can be called upon to serve a purpose until another service or function is required. In this way, the schizoid learns to adopt a utilitarian existence devoid of a sense of self and value. There is a primitive agony and complete isolation that carries with it the most profound potential experience of despair.
Schizoid annihilation anxiety appears to qualify as a specialised form of the abandonment depression (which is a term applicable to all types of personality disorder) and in the case of the schizoid, it is the persistence of a terrifying fear of non-existence resulting from the experience of having to forgo one’s real self and having to live reactively, responding to the needs, expectations and impingements of others. Attempts to seek refuge from annihilation anxiety in either isolation or companionship fail as defensive resorts because withdrawal into seclusion triggers fantasies and memories of loss of the source of survival, while drawing too close to another cues fantasies and memories of engulfment. Neither alternative provides safety and leads to the schizoid dilemma – for the schizoid there appears to be no safe place to be, no choice and no options. There is the dreaded possibility that one is not even there to begin with.” The Unanswered Self – Candace Orcutt
There can be a belief of, ‘I have to be a slave or be alone.’ They have been treated as if they had no feelings and were there to serve the needs of others.
Some people feel like they are in a play or a movie rather than living in real life. Their life may feel as though it is not happening to them. Forming relationships with others can feel particularly difficult because of feelings of detachment and a schizoid personality may feel as though there is a wall between themselves and others. Sometimes a person can feel almost like a head ‘detached’ from their body and their internal life can feel very intellectual. They may be very out of touch with their bodies, for example, not being aware that they are hungry or thirsty. Someone with schizoid traits may have relationships with unavailable people- who may be married, emotionally unavailable or live a long distance away.
Clinical evidence suggests that the schizoid’s development is similar to that of the borderline’s.
The Disorders of the Self Triad
People can be stuck in a behavioural cycle. When self-activation and individuation tries to occur, the abandonment depression will be triggered and then the person will go back into defence.
An example of this would be – a mother feels ill on a Sunday morning and wants to stay in bed – this is self-activation, she has a need she is aware of and wants to meet that need, then, at the thought of this, the mother is overcome by guilt and tells herself she is not really that ill, and she is just being lazy, so she forces herself to get up and carry on as normal. She ends up pushing herself too much and this means she feels ill for longer.
Self-activation = a want and need to stay in bed
Abandonment Depression = the feeling of guilt
Defence = ‘I am not really that ill and I am lazy,’ going into submissive, people pleasing mode, where her need to recuperate is not met and other’s needs are prioritised above her own.
Defining the Underlying Drivers
In a nutshell:
A person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder feels merged with the mother. Activation of the real self in the narcissist evokes painful vulnerability. The narcissist who has not sufficiently established a cohesive sense of self fears self-fragmentation. They crave admiration.
In Borderline Personality Disorder, rejection by the mother feels like a loss of life sustaining supplies. Activation of the real self in the borderline evokes feelings of abandonment. For the borderline, whose psyche is the most structured, abandonment depression calls up the fear of literal abandonment of a semi-independent child by a still needed caregiver. They crave love.
Schizoid Personality Disorder comes from the earliest trauma – a feeling of being unable to connect to any other person and a fear of either having to be a slave to another or be alone. Activation of the real self in the schizoid evokes danger. The schizoid fears a loss of the self altogether – a loss of the sense of being. They crave safety.
Healing
We need to develop our self-awareness by tuning into and recognising our feelings, however unpleasant. Avoidance of the abandonment depression and our real self are strong components of our defence mechanisms. We can come to recognise our behavioural patterns and our triggered reactions and realise that it is likely that we are triggered for a large percentage of the time. Once we recognise this, it reduces the intensity of our reactions and over time we begin to feel more stable, and the triggered reactions subside.
We can become aware of which core beliefs we have developed and learn to question and challenge those, i.e., I am unlovable, I am unworthy, no one will ever like me, I will always be a failure, I always make mistakes, I am not good enough, I am boring etc.
We need to learn self-regulation by using grounding techniques and learning what soothes our minds and bodies like; being in nature, taking a bath, watching a comedy show, meditation, sports, a body scan, progressive muscle relaxation or a guided meditation.
We need to learn about our ‘attachment style’ and see how this has affected us throughout our life.
People with C-PTSD and personality disorders struggle to be in the here and now so there needs to be a strong focus on learning to be in the present.
We need to come to recognise our strengths, talents and competencies.
We need to work through the old emotional pain and come to terms with the past.
We can take healthy risks and tend to the neglected areas of our lives.
We can use affirmations such as, ‘It happened to me, but now it is over, and I am safe.’
We can learn to be the healthy parent to ourselves that we didn’t have and give ourselves the care we didn’t receive.
Sources:
The Search for the Real Self – James F. Masterson
The Unanswered Self – Candace Orcutt
Borderline, Narcissistic and Schizoid Adaptations – Elinor Greenberg
Treating Pathological Narcissism- Diana Diamond, et al.
