Threats

We talked yesterday about how splitting allows us and forces us to ignore evidence about ourselves and other people. At a certain point, though, reality becomes hard to ignore. 

Let’s say our ideal-self is to be the most beautiful person in the world. It’s hard to ignore when…

➡️ Someone glowingly talks about the beauty of another person. 

➡️  We have to wait in line at the DMV and can't cut ahead despite our beauty. 

If we were our ideal of beauty, then no one else’s beauty would come close, and we wouldn’t have to wait in line.

We call this evidence a threat. 

The natural response to this kind of threat is either anger (our needs are being blocked), envy (someone else is better than us and therefore more likely to meet their needs), shame (if we weren’t defective, maybe our needs would be met) or panic (we will never get our needs met!!!).

All of these emotional responses motivate us to do something about it. We may become angry and attack the source of the threat (they aren’t that attractive, right?), or we may become motivated to improve ourselves to eliminate the threat by once again being the best (heading to Sephora now…). In both cases, the threat must be defeated or eliminated. Our aggression allows us to accomplish these energy intensive, emotionally or physically violent actions. It allows us to survive and dominate in a world where others aren't on our side

If we aren't successful at returning to our compensated, self sufficient state, we may crash. Doubt starts to seep in. Maybe we aren’t good enough. Maybe we can’t get our needs met. Our very existence is at risk…

The drop from this idealized model of the self to a more real identity is felt much harder in this case because we can't trust anyone else to meet our needs. We are alone and insufficient.

In this state, individuals tend to look and feel depressed. We may retreat or withdraw from the world -- either from shame and humiliation, or to recover our illusion of self sufficiency somewhat by avoiding reality. In this withdrawal, we may be unable to move or do anything, feeling paralyzed by shame. Alternatively, we may retreat further into a fantasy world of our own making where we retain our ideal identities and further reject any evidence to the contrary.

In psychological terms, the split has been flipped – where once we idealized ourselves, feeling self-sufficient, we now feel completely devalued, incompetent, unable to meet even basic expectations. We give up. In this state, individuals may feel suicidal in response to the fall from grace and the intolerable feelings that we are, in fact, all that is bad in the world.