From Borderline to Psychopath to Narcissist: Abused Language and Self States

The cluster B personality disorders (narcissistic, borderline, and antisocial-psychopathy) may be mere kaleidoscopic facets of an underlying dissociative process, amounting, in extreme cases, to full-fledged DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder). In other words: these personality types are self-states, "alters" of each other.

Having endured narcissistic injury or mortification, a trauma, or severe anxiety and stress, these patients decompensate and act out along predictable pathways: the borderline becomes a vicious secondary psychopath, the primary psychopath morphs into a rabid grandiose narcissist and the quavering narcissist shape-shifts into a codependent clinging borderline. These phase transitions are startling to behold and throw off even the most experienced clinician.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that cluster B disordered personalities find it near impossible to access, process, or regulate both emotions and cognitions. These gaping deficits interfere with the meanings that they attribute to the events in their lives and to people around them. The psychopath sees no meaning whatsoever in anything or anyone. The borderline regards herself as meaningless and everyone and everything else as mission critical to her personal autonomy and self-efficacious agency. The narcissist regards only himself as totally meaningful, draining all the rest of any significance.

When under radical pressure, these actors attempt to reframe the situation in a less injurious manner by reallocating and relocating the foci of meaning, thus seamlessly and smoothly transitioning between these extended and extensive role plays that we call "personality disorders".

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