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u/Hello-Yellow22 6d ago
I have read that
A person can have insight into their personality patterns and still experience intense abandonment depression when their psychological holding environment feels unavailable or literally is. Patient has cut off contact with family who caused disorders.
Awareness is valuable, but it isn't the same as having fully internalized the capacity to regulate the resulting distress.
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u/DrNut8 6d ago
Podrías explicar cómo una persona puede tener claridad sobre sus patrones de personalidad? Cómo es eso de internalizar por completo la capacidad de regular la angustia?
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u/Hello-Yellow22 6d ago
Being aware of their own unconscious material being projected outward (projective identification)
Example: When that person made the remark, I projected my mom on to them. I saw criticism where there was none.
Intellectualizing, emotional repression, not actually feeling the feelings
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u/andreask 5d ago
I'm not a psychoanalyst, and who knows if this is meaningful to the conversation, but it got me thinking on the question of insight vs progress so I typed it in. I also don't know how bastardized this is, since when I read I tend to reformulate the concepts to puzzle them around in my head and this is just where I'm at right now.
I currently tend to try to understand object relations at its core as the map we made in our early years of what human interactions encompass, and we now navigate the world by it. This map filters how we all really shape and understand our relationships, regardless of if we're aware of this process or not. At best our map matches reality so well that it doesn't cause any significant friction or distortions. When we encounter something that doesn't match our map it makes us uneasy and we want to either distance ourselves or try to figure out a way to fit it in. As long as our map is one of mostly positive internalizations, this reflex works in our favor to build a positive life. If our map is one of mostly negative internalizations, it can put us in the position where negative relationships carry a relative feeling of safetly and positive relationships become the ones that cause us unease.
Insight here is just having been convinced of the existence of this map, and the limitations of the map. It doesn't really yet change the map one has, it's still all one has to navigate the world by. The blind spots will still be present. Mismatches will still cause same unease, and the defenses will still want to solve that unease.
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u/CoffeeDime 6d ago edited 6d ago
I am not an analyst. But I do read structure.
This has a borderline personality organization written all over it.
My recommendation? Highly recommend Nancy McWilliams Psychoanalytic Diagnosis. That has helped me tremendously.
I see you using the trauma discourse description of abandonment depression. Which calls to me a reading of Pete Walkers CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. In that department, a reading of Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery would be immensely beneficial.
I am not making any diagnosis here, just telling you what your description shows me.
For interpersonal interactions, I recommend How To Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist by Margalis Fjelstad.
If you have any other questions, I’d be happy to answer. This is a domain I am all too familiar with, lol. Cheers!
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u/Hello-Yellow22 6d ago edited 6d ago
Borderline is typically unconscious projection, splitting, etc though correct ? When you move into neurotic structure there is an ability to have whole object relations and see and work with the unconscious material. This person does not view others or themselves as all good or bad anymore … for the most part.
This is entirely conscious. Conscious of this fear but still to afraid to take more steps because it brings up fear. Still regresses in the role of the child because it’s familiar, and there’s a large somatic component.
There’s an observing self more accurate, just remnants of an avoidance of abandonment terror or encountering frustration via self activation. Does not want to experience discomfort. Is afraid of failing and therefore, being entirely abandoned.
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u/CoffeeDime 6d ago
There's different frameworks that you could see borderline organizations in, but within the one I'm employing here, it is Nancy McWilliams' framework of three personality organizations, that is psychotic, borderline, and neurotic. Within that framework, borderline is defined as regressing to primary defensive processes, things that we do when we are younger. And so this calls to looking at object relations. So another recommendation would be reading D.W. Winnicott's Playing and Reality, as well as some work by Klein that I have not ventured into, but I can say that Melanie Klein is apt in that domain.
So, as you say, projection, splitting, etc., can qualify within primary defensive processes. Those are described with detail early in McWilliam’s book. It is good that the person is making progress into more neurotic structures, though I will add that does not define who they are, neurotic or borderline. It is how the personality is currently organized and what defensive processes are happening at a frequency that can make that structure more or less visible. It is under relational stress where anyone, even someone who is a so-called defined neurotic, can still regress into primary defensive processes.
I can see the awareness that the person describes, knowing of the fear, knowing of the regression, especially into the role of the child. That's normal. And it doesn't need to be resolved today. Our society produces many people like this, those who occupy the paranoid schizoid position and working toward the depressive position within Klein's framework.
My recommendation for this person is to then look at what constitutes a holding environment. It isn't perfection. The holding environment is that which contains the good enough other, sufficient attention to the material needs of the body, as well as concretely their economic situation. This is what Herman recommends. Having stability in those domains lays a great foundation for this person to make progressive incremental steps toward the depressive position.
I do personally see trauma as living in the bodymind. That's my perspective. As you said, there's a large somatic component. Whatever it is this person goes through, take some wisdom from the Buddha: This too shall pass. Impermanence.
Regulation, as a word, doesn't stand alone. It stands with repair and rupture. No individual can be perfect. And when there is rupture, we take the steps towards repair, towards symbolization and articulation. Here psychotherapy can give us tremendous advantages towards making progress. Free association, speaking one's mind within an apt holding environment, a therapeutic environment, which can serve that function. I wish you the best of luck in understanding this individual!
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u/Hello-Yellow22 6d ago edited 6d ago
Thank you for this comment it’s wonderful.
The person has great, loving holding environments. They have strong interests and a job that fills their soul. The primary issue for security is financial security.
They recieve some temporary help, which feels like deep pressure ~ and also regression. They were financial abused - spoiled but very much coercive control, and they caught on to the fact and broke free, just to need assistance again. There is deep fear because without the help they’ll lose the holding environment they worked to get (living alone). They cut off contact with their family who caused their disorder after doing significant trauma work.
Financial security would permit more freedom, more self exploration, more giving to others which is a deep desire of their authentic self. They’re also disabled in other ways, so work has to be creative in that regard. There’s a propensity towards grandiosity though too of wanting to be empathic and giving all the time. Of course, no one is perfectly attuned. They hate feeling tired.
There may be glimmers of an ideal self - but I do think wanting more financial security to beable to explore and grow isn’t inherently disordered.
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u/Hello-Yellow22 6d ago
And what’s so cool is this person pretty regularly uses repair, moves on from ruptures quite quickly. Desires repair. ❤️ Takes accountability
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u/sleepy4815 6d ago
Just out of curiosity, what are the specific somatic symptoms?
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u/Hello-Yellow22 6d ago
Dissociation, lethargy, a somatic feeling of helplessness. Random pain throughout the body. Largely related suppression
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u/Ok-Draw-7427 5d ago
In my view, I would reframe abandonment anxiety and the experience of abandonment as an intolerance of solitude—a mature, universal feeling that exists regardless of whether or not one is in company. For the person diagnosed with BPD, abandonment is tantamount to disintegration; the intense attachment—persisting despite the individual's chronological age—arises because they have deposited precious parts of the self into the person who has left, via projective identification. Consequently, the patient is left feeling empty and possessing an unstable identity, while somatizing their affect; the underlying risk is the fragmentation of the self. In contrast, the individual with NPD—who is often abandoned for valid reasons—employs a manic defense. This involves devaluing the object—often driven by envy, which Melanie Klein described as a way of breaking free from the archaic object by destroying its goodness. The narcissist attempts to master the distant object through tactics such as disparagement, financial control, and emotional abuse (e.g., guilt-tripping). Generally, the BPD individual reacts with idealization—viewing the person who is leaving (or threatening to leave) as vital to their own self—whereas the NPD individual resorts to devaluation and objectification, thereby justifying their attempts to control and repossess the other. These speculations remain schematic, however, in the absence of specific cases with rich analytical material.