Why the Drama in Cluster B Personality Disorders

Constant state of artificial crisis, emotional dysregulation, switching, chaos, disruptive behaviors, identity diffusion/disturbance, mixed signals, inconstancy, indeterminacy, capriciousness, arbitrariness, and unpredictability Dramatic-erratic cluster WATCH Apocalypting Narcissist, Borderline: Drama, Crisis, Catastrophizing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nTta3bSavU Dramatization n. 1. attention-getting behavior, such as exaggerating the symptoms of an illness to make it appear more important than the occurrence of the same illness in another person. 2. in psychoanalytic theory, the expression of repressed wishes or impulses in dreams. —dramatize vb. 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 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. 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) Psychopath: control, manipulation (creates information asymmetry, disorientation, anxiety and thus induces dependency on the psychopath in others) Borderline: drowning out internal drama, recruiting participants and sharing the burden (drama loves company), intensity to avoid intimacy Histrionic: ostentatious display of hyperemotionality Narcissist: attention-seeking, self-enhancement, substitute to narcissistic supply in protracted states of reduced narcissistic supply or collapse (hunting for morsels): distraction and self-supply (e.g. in paranoid drama) Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Sam-Vaknin/author/B000APLOFK/allbooks