DANGER: Collapsed Drama Queens

Nothing more pathetic and venomous than a collapsed histrionic drama queen way past his or her prime in a desperate hunt for narcissistic supply, often casting herself as a victim or the target of some evildoers.

The collapsed histrionic, exactly like the collapsed narcissist, develops hypervigilance and grandiose paranoid ideation (“I am so important and unique that I am surely targeted by my inferiors or by evil people and malevolent conspiracies”).

The role of drama in the psychopathology of collapsed histrionics cannot be overestimated.

But not all drama is created equal. The specific content of the drama ties in with the self-concept and is a derivative of the psychodynamics and goals of the underlying disorder. It is a fantasy in a paracosm, except in the case of the psychopath.

So, if the histrionic sees herself as intrepid, daring, and fearless, the drama will revolve around imminent danger faced bravely by the histrionic.

If the histrionic’s narrative revolves around a mix of irresistibility and heroism, the dramatic narrative will amplify these self-imputed characteristics and behaviors.

Drama enhances self-efficacy and is a form of external regulation

Drama is addictive (a form of risk-taking and also a challenge or mystery)

Drama is an element of grandiosity, helps to distort cognition

Drama is a narrative that resonates with our sense of childlike wonder and fosters dissociation (like a movie)

Drama imposes huge costs in terms of mental resources (depletes) and renders its recipients more malleable and amenable to manipulation (defenseless), it is Machiavellian.

Reenactment of early childhood conflicts

Approach-avoidance repetition compulsion and the dynamics of insecure attachment

Attempts to generate theories of mind and internal working models by probing, testing, and dismantling the world, others, and relationships - the way a child does with a toy

Intermittent reinforcement and trauma bonding

Monopolizing the presence and attention of others (ersatz object constancy)

Channeling and sublimating aggression, projecting punitive introjects and then projective identification

Like in codependency, in some cases drama allows to control from the bottom through displays of feigned power asymmetry, helplessness, dependency, and neediness (it triggers the savior/rescuer complex and involves regressive infantilization of the drama-making individual)

Histrionic: ostentatious display of hyperemotionality

Collapsed histrionics are usually saddled with body image (somatoform) issues and a low sense of self-worth.

Yet, they still need romantic (not sexual!) targets and use them to regulate their flagging self-esteem and deficient self-confidence.

This could create dissonance and anticipatory anxiety when such a histrionic expects to be rejected and humiliated the target.

Low self-esteem often leads to an impaired reality test: the collapsed histrionic misreads the intensity and depth of environmental, social, and sexual cues and often ends up being mocked, shunned, abused, or sexually assaulted.

Collapsed histrionics compensate for their insecurities with brazen defiance and grandiosity as well as substance abuse, all of which compound their ability to properly gauge reality.

Their feelings of inferiority and inadequacy lead some collapsed histrionics to social withdrawal and reclusiveness while others embark on grandiose project and become promiscuous or compulsively greagrious.

Collapsed histrionics rarely dates and when they do, they aggresses against, push away, and abuse their dates when they perceive them as somehow superior, even when these potential partners are genuinely interested in a relationship (“preemptive abandonment”).

Instead, collapsed histrionics pick up "safe" intimate partners who are either emotionally unavailable or are very unlikely to painfully reject them.

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