In the Clinicians Seminar in Zagreb, I said that what characterizes all Cluster B personality disorder patients is a dismissive avoidant attachment style.
And inevitably, I was subjected to a flurry of objections.
Not true. People with borderline personality disorder don't have an avoidant dismissive attachment style. They have an anxious, preoccupied attachment style.
Well, I do not stand corrected and I beg to differ. I will explain in this video why.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, the first book ever written on narcissistic abuse. I am also a professor of clinical psychology.
On the surface, people with borderline personality disorder have a kind of insecure attachment known as anxious attachment or anxious preoccupied attachment.
But this is a completely wrong attribution. People with preoccupied anxious attachment style are capable of long-term, stable, committed relationships with the same partner.
Now, throughout the relationship, they're likely to be, as the name implies, anxious, they're likely to be preoccupied, they're likely to doubt the intimate partner, his commitment, his love, the relationship, etc.
They're the worrying kind of people. They constantly worry. Anxiety, in their case, is all pervasive, and one could even say generalized.
But these people usually maintain long-term, stable relationships. Very few borderlines do. Actually, the overwhelming vast majority of borderlines go from one relationship to the next, and the relationships are short, they're itinerant. Some relationships are casual. Borderlines, some borderlines are prone to casual sex, one-night stands, hookups, and so and so forth.
And so this is a major discrepancy, major difference between the preoccupied, anxious attachment style and the dismissive avoidant attachment style.
People with dismissive avoidant attachment style engage mostly in short-term, fleeting, casual, or otherwise non-committed or partly committed relationships, which is exactly the profile of the borderline.
Point number one.
Now let's have a closer look at the preoccupied anxious attachment style.
These people fear abandonment. And we know that separation insecurity, abandonment anxiety, is one of a major hallmarks of borderline personality disorder.
So put this aside for a minute, we'll come to it.
People with preoccupied anxious attachment style are highly insecure in relationships, of all kinds, by the way, not only romantic or intimate, all kinds of relationships, and consequently they exhibit clingy or needy behaviors.
They often search for external validation, and they're worried all the time that their love is not being reciprocated, or if it is, not with the same intensity. They're anxious about the partner, rejecting them, leaving them, and perhaps even in a humiliating, mortifying way.
So this is the profile of the preoccupied anxious attachment person.
But this is not the case of the borderline.
In borderline personality disorder, there are twin anxieties. One anxiety is the famous abandonment or separation anxiety, which is a colloquial term for what we know in clinical psychology as separation insecurity.
In short, the borderline is afraid to lose her partner, afraid of being rejected, humiliated, abandoned, dismissed, etc.
And that is that the borderline has in common with co-dependence and with people with preoccupied anxious attachment style.
But the borderline has an added feature, a bonus, not a bug, but a feature.
And the feature is engulfment anxiety. The borderline dreads not only abandonment, but she actually dreads intimacy.
Don't misunderstand me. Borderlines crave intimacy. They dream and fantasize about eternal love, about happily ever after.
This is the core of the borderline's fantasy, this ideal love that she or he is going to find one day. This is common even in covert borderlines.
So there is this gravitation towards situations of limerence and infatuations and love.
But the borderline is unable to maintain this fantasy because she dreads intimacy equally.
And this is, of course, not the case with preoccupied anxious people.
People with preoccupied anxious attachment style do not dread intimacy. They seek it. The more intimacy, the more reassured they are.
Intimacy serves to mitigate, ameliorate, and reduce anxiety. Intimacy is anxiolytic in preoccupied anxious attachments.
Intimacy in the case of the borderline increases anxiety. It's anxiogenic.
The borderline dreads intimacy because the borderline perceives it as suffocating, as engulfing, as consuming, as terrifying.
And so the borderline develops approach avoidance behaviors.
The borderline approaches because she wants love, she seeks intimacy, but then the reciprocation, if the partner reciprocates, is reactive, develops intimacy with the borderline, the borderline runs away, avoidance.
This is absolutely not the profile of anxious, preoccupied attachment style. Absolutely not.
And this is the profile of the dismissive avoidant.
In dismissive avoidant attachment style, there is a profound need for intimacy, love, compassion, empathy, the togetherness of being with someone. There's a profound craving for that.
And yet there is an inability to realize it, inability to materialize it, because there's a negative view of intimate partners and of interpersonal relationships.
The dismissive avoidant person anticipates abandonment, betrayal, and rejection. The dismissive avoidant person dreads all these.
And because this kind of person dreads, is terrified of the ineluctable betrayal, of the inevitable abandonment and rejection that is highly anticipated and is perceived as a fact.
So this kind of person abandons preemptively.
Like, I will abandon you before you abandon me. I reject you before you reject me.
Because I know you're going to reject me. I know you're going to abandon me. I'm going to do it first. I'm going to do it first in order to retain a modicum of self-dignity and to reassert my grandiose, inflated, counterfactual belief that I'm in control. I made it happen. I'm the one who did the abandonment and rejection, the abandoning and rejecting, not you.
So anxious preoccupied people are never going to abandon first. Never.
They're so needy, so clingy, so dependent, that they never walk away. They never break up.
On the very contrary, they stalk. They continue the relationship long after its expiry date, in mind as well as in body.
This is not the case with the borderline.
The borderline very often initiates the breakup. The borderline very often destroys the relationship, undermines it, sabotages it, passive aggressively or otherwise, in order to bring about the inevitable outcome of abandonment and rejection only with a self-deception that the borderline has been in charge and has initiated the whole process.
So preemptive abandonment is a key feature of dismissive avoidant attachment style and also a key feature of borderline personality behaviors.
The dismissive avoidant person acts distant and cold towards family or friends or intimate partners and so and so forth, and it is often perceived as haughtiness, perceived as narcissistic grandiosity, as a kind of arrogance.
And anyone who spend time with a borderline would immediately recognize what I'm saying.
The borderline exudes an air, I am superior to you in many ways.
It's compensatory, of course. Deep inside, perhaps the borderline thinks otherwise.
But there is this veneer, there is this emanation, there is this broadcast, which is immediately reminiscent of the narcissists.
And of course, again, it's a key feature of dismissive avoidant and does not exist in preoccupied attached people.
On the very contrary, preoccupied attached people present a facade of submissiveness, of obeisance, of fitting conformity, fitting into the other persons, fulfilling, meeting the other person's requirements, expectations and demands.
That's not the borderline. The borderline is rebellious. She is defiant. She sometimes acts out, and she's reminiscent in this sense of a psychopath.
The dismissive avoidant person refuses to become emotionally close to other people.
And here you could say, well, that's the exact opposite of a borderline.
A borderline is emotionally dysregulated. Her positive emotions, for example, her love overwhelms her, drowns her.
So this clearly can't be the case. That's not true.
Because the borderline's emotions are more like simulations, they are more like social edicts, scripts we call them in psychology, the borderlines emotions are scripted. She knows that this is how love should look. So she emulates and imitates the state of being in love.
The borderline is actually in love with love, not with her intimate partner. She's in love with the fact that the intimate partner is a stable presence who is able to regulate her internal environment. So she's in love with the situation.
The borderlines relationships are actually situationships. That's why borderlines have special friends or special people to whom they are attached equally.
The intimate partner is just one of these special people, and the borderline is incapable of getting truly emotionally close to anyone.
Because getting truly emotionally closed means exposing vulnerabilities and indulging in intimacy and the borderline never does any of these two.
In this sense of course the borderline is dismissive avoidant and the exact opposite of anxious preoccupied.
When the relationships gets too intimate, the borderline develops a form of anxiety known as engulfment anxiety, and then she withdraws from the relationship, which is the dismissive element in dismissive avoidant.
An anxious, preoccupied person would never do that, would never terminate the relationship because she feels there's too much intimacy. She feels suffocated. She feels taken over. She feels merged, infused, and consumed.
The preoccupied anxious person seeks all these things. She wants all these things. She wants to merge with her intimate partner. She wants to fuse. She wants a symbiotic state. She wants to become a single organism, a unitary one. She wants this.
And the further she is immersed in this kind of shared fantasy of intimacy and identity, the less anxious she is and the less preoccupied. This she self-medicates.
The preoccupied anxious person self-medicates with intimacy, self-medicates with togetherness, with closeness, with identification with the other, with becoming the other, with introjection.
That's the only way to reduce the anxiety in preoccupied, anxious attachment style.
That's absolutely the opposite of borderline personality disorder.
Borderline personality disorder people are avoidant when they are faced with reciprocation, with true love, with the demands of intimacy, with the risk of vulnerability.
They run away. They run away the other direction, and that is dismissive avoidant.
The borderline uses defensive strategies to avoid meaningful long-term connection, which is why most borderlines go through a dazzling array, a kaleidoscope of incredibly short-term relationships.
The engagement in distancing behavior comes later in the relationship, which is why many people, scholars included, are befuddled, are confused by the borderline.
Initially, the borderline appears to be preoccupied anxious. The facade, the initial approach, is very reminiscent of this kind of attachment style because of the emphasis on abandonment and rejection or the prevention of abandonment and rejection.
But this is a temporary phase and the borderline immediately embarks on a coping strategy of distancing herself.
It's as if the borderline says, if I were to distance myself, I would render myself less vulnerable to rejection and abandonment. If I were to detach, if I were to become cold and uninterested and rejecting, then nothing, there's nothing the other party, there's nothing my intimate partner can do to me.
The borderline disempowers, defangs, and castrates her intimate partner or friends or whatever by actually becoming that which she fears.
She fears abandonment, so she abandons. She fears rejection, so she rejects. She fears abandonment, so she abandons. She fears rejection, so she rejects. She fears coldness and detachment, so she becomes cold, distance and detached.
She simply becomes the specter and the nightmare that she's so terrified of.
It's as if she says, I'm going to abuse you before you abuse me.
And of course, none of this has anything to do with preoccupied anxious attachment style. It's exactly the opposite profile. Exactly the opposite profile.
Preoccupied anxious attachment style is typical of many people with dependent personality disorder, codependency.
Now, the borderline is also grandiose.
Preoccupied attachment people, people with preoccupied attachment style, they have an inferiority complex. They regard themselves as somewhat defective, lacking, inadequate, and inferior, and therefore not worthy of our relationship, not worthy of love.
They cling in order to not lose the partner because they believe that now that the partner has come to know them, he is likely to run away. They become needy because it's a way to control the partner from the bottom. The neediness conditions the partner to stay and service.
All these strategies are sometimes evident in borderline personality disorder, but they are not the main strategies.
Borderline's main strategy is grandiosity, similar to the narcissists. She cultivates an inflated, fantastic view of herself, her looks, her intelligence, her emotional capacity, her empathy, she aggrandizes herself.
And by aggrandizing herself, she actually pushes people away. It's very grating to see a borderline in her grandiose displays.
And she pushes people away as part of the, I am not open to engulfment, I am not open to be consumed, I am not open to be digested, message or strategy.
Stay away from me because I'm above your level, I'm outside, I'm out of your league. This is constant messaging by borderlines.
They also believe that they should team up or create a couple only with special people one way or another.
So this is very dismissive avoidant. This is the exact opposite of preoccupied anxious.
The preoccupied anxious person is preoccupied and anxious about their inadequacy, unworthiness and failure.
While the borderline has none of these issues, the borderline perceives itself as the perfect entity, a gift to humanity, or at least to her intimate partner.
The borderline realizes that her behaviors may be dysfunctional and hurtful to others, but exactly like the narcissists, she reframes. She has defense mechanisms that render these behaviors somehow justifiable, reactive.
And so borderlines are very loathe and reluctant to seek true help from other people.
Even when they attend therapy, it's about impressions management or about rearranging the furniture inside in a way which would be egosyntonic, which would support the borderline's view of herself, self-concept and fantasy.
And in this, again, she is very similar to the narcissists.
Borderlines are also highly secretive. One could even say duplicitous. They are deceptive.
And that is the exact opposite of preoccupied anxious people.
Preoccupied anxious people verbalize all the time. They can't keep a secret. They overshare. They are people pleasers.
Whereas the borderline very often withdraws into a private worldand is reminiscent of the psychopath in that she's cunning and skinning and premeditated in Machiavellian. Again, sometimes sharing a few traits also with the narcissists.
So the preoccupied anxious person has no private world, whereas the dismissive avoidant personhas mostly a private world.
Anyone who has shared a life with a borderline, anyone who has interacted with a borderline in the long term, anyone who is at a collaboration with borderline would immediately tell you that this is true.
There are vast areas of the borderline's personality, of the borderline's autobiography, of the borderline's emotions, vast swaths, vast regions that are inaccessible.
The borderline plays closed poker. She keeps her cards close to her chest.
Borderlines give the impression of oversharing, but they overshare gossip. They overshare information about other people. they undershare or do not share at all, meaningful data about themselves.
And it's like living with, when you're with a borderline, it's as if you are living with two people. One, the overt text, the public display, and one the real person, who is forever hidden from you, who is out of reach, and who is liable to act in ways which would shock, hurt, and destabilize, and disorient you.
The borderline, therefore, prioritizes her independence, her privacy, her plans, her activities over the relationship. The relationship is just an instrument of external regulation.
The relationship is there in order to stabilize the borderline and allow her to engage in private activities and to implement totally inaccessible private plans. The relationship is there in order to allow the borderline to remain independent.
The relationship is the locus of agency of the borderline. It's where her self-efficacy resides.
And that is why the borderline is terrified of abandonment and so on, because she outsources many functions, what Freud used to call, what Anna Freud used to call ego functions and so she outsources them.
And so she becomes dependent on her supplier but it's a supply chain concept unrecognizable to anyone who has had a healthy true relationship
And again all this is the exact mirror image, exact opposite of preoccupied anxious attachment style, where the emphasis is on a relationship that is ubiquitous or pervasive or consuming, a relationship that unifies to the point of identity, relationship that creates a symbiosis back to the womb kind of thing.
And so the preoccupied, anxious attachment style implies the pursuit of extreme dysfunctional intimacy, which leads to the disappearance of the individual, the suspension of the individual, whereas in borderline personality disorder, the relationship is a bridge, a bridge to external regulation, and then a bridge that inevitably leads to a breakup, to break up, to rejection, to abandonment, mostly done by the borderline action, preemptively, because she anticipates, she predicts that the other party is going to do it to her.
So the end result, people with dismissive avoidant attachment style have only casual or very short relationships, which usually end badly. They end up hurting people.
While people with preoccupied, anxious attachment style have usually long-term relationships. And they're very good to their partners. They are helpful, they're loving, they're compassionate, and so on. They never reject the partner, never abandon the partner, never hurt the partner, never act out in a way which would damage the partner. They are all dedicated to the partner.
The borderline is dedicated to herself, or more precisely, to the emptiness inside her. She sees everything the way a narcissist does. What's in it for me? How could I manipulate the environment and other people to benefit me?
In the process, the intensity of the borderline's emotions and her disinhibition in sex are very captivating.
And a specific type of individual, the savior-rescuer type, the healer fixer type, is likely to be very attracted to the borderline.
But that doesn't mean that the borderline is not dismissive or avoidant. Ask anyone who spent any amount of time with the borderline. And they will tell you how many times they've been dismissed, how many times they've been avoided, how many times they've been hurt and rejected and abandoned, even within the same relationship.
I rest my case.
Anxious, preoccupied people would never do this.