Compensating for an Unstable Self

There are many strategies people use to make up for this painful instability.

In the pages that follow, we’ll talk through three of the most common strategies.

• Order

• Connection

• Control

Each represents ways that individuals in survival mode handle their stressful experiences of the world.

Personalities developed under less stress with less sensitivity, tend to be more generalized, while personalities developed under stress and sensitivity tend to be highly optimized to survive a specific scenario, and less effective in general.

While these strategies get results, they are also deeply painful – there are, as described, a lot of precipitous rises, hard falls, uncertainty and threats abound. These strategies also are often self defeating in a stable world.