Tag: Abandonment Anxiety

Borderline Enchantress

Tips: Survive Your Borderline Enchantress

The lecture discussed coping strategies for living with individuals, particularly women, with borderline personality disorder (BPD), highlighting core issues such as abandonment anxiety, identity disturbance, emotional dysregulation, and transient paranoid ideation. It emphasized the importance of establishing stability, reality testing, communication protocols, emotional regulation techniques, and gradual transfer of personal responsibility to help manage symptoms and prevent harmful behaviors like self-mutilation and acting out. While acknowledging the challenges and emotional toll, the speaker also recognized the deep, unconditional love and unique gifts that come with relationships with borderline individuals for those dedicated to sustained effort. Tips: Survive Your Borderline Enchantress

Read More »

Make Narcissist FEAR YOU: Abandonment Anxiety, Annihilation Dread (Twin Anxieties)

In this video, Sam Vaknin explains the narcissist’s fear of abandonment, highlighting the paradox where narcissists both dread abandonment by their idealized objects yet push others away during the devaluation phase due to their twin anxieties of abandonment and annihilation. He elaborates on how these anxieties influence narcissistic behavior and offers strategies to leverage the abandonment anxiety in the idealization phase through threats of leaving, while using implied power to deter abuse during the devaluation phase. Vaknin emphasizes that understanding these dynamics can help those involved with narcissists manage or mitigate abuse, although his primary recommendation remains to cut contact if possible.

Read More »

10 Signs: YOU are Broken, Damaged, Scarred

Sam Vaknin discusses the psychological patterns and clinical features common among damaged and broken individuals, emphasizing the impacts of trauma, mistrust, emotional detachment, and difficulties with intimacy and boundaries. He highlights defense mechanisms such as hypervigilance, emotional numbness, conflict avoidance, perfectionism, and the harsh inner critic, explaining how these behaviors serve as survival strategies but ultimately hinder healthy relationships. Vaknin encourages therapy and self-awareness to overcome these patterns, promoting the acceptance of inherent self-worth independent of achievements or others’ approval. 10 Signs: YOU are Broken, Damaged, Scarred

Read More »

When YOU Discard the Narcissist FIRST

Sam Vaknin explained the psychological effects on a narcissist when they are discarded by a partner before they have the chance to devalue and discard the other person, highlighting the resulting narcissistic injury or mortification. He detailed the narcissist’s subsequent reactions, including emotional dysregulation, abandonment anxiety, dissociation, and often coercive efforts to restore the shared fantasy through hoovering or replacement relationships. The discussion emphasized the narcissist’s internal struggle with self-image, grief over the lost relationship, and the repetitive cycle of idealization, devaluation, and discard with new partners.

Read More »