The striking, albeit superficial, similarities between the narcissistic's inner child and the borderline's inner child, these similarities have led even eminent scholars to surmise and to speculate that borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder are merely flip sides of the same psychopathological coin, or maybe points on a spectrum, or maybe defenses against each other, but there was evidently some connection.
Indeed, these similarities between inner children, inner child is a metaphor, of course, but these similarities may go a long way towards explaining the intensity, the potency, and the ubiquity of the extremely powerful bonding between narcissists and borderlines in a variety of settings, but most notably in intimate relationships.
It's like two babes in the wood, two children making up a household, a relationship.
And this adherence, this attachment can be explained only by a common etiology, a familial etiology, a background in early childhood of dysfunction and trauma and abuse and adverse childhood experiences, ACEs.
So are there any differences between the borderlines' inner child and the narcissists' inner child? Should we regard both inner children as merely mirror images of each other? Is there any other way to conceive of the dynamic between narcissists and borderlines?
Start by saying that the narcissist's inner child is much younger than the borderlines, emotionally speaking, psychologically speaking.
The narcissist's inner child is probably 2 to 4 years old. The borderline's inner child could be as old as 12 years old.
The borderline is possessed of empathy, albeit a reduced level of empathy. It has access. The borderline has access to positive emotions. And the borderline's self is there. It is fragmented. It is not constellated. It is not integrated. And it gives rise to a sense of inner emptiness and a void, a black hole very similar to the narcissist.
But the borderline's self, borderlines ego, use any word you wish, the borderline's core identity, sense of being. This does exist, whereas the narcissist doesn't have a shred of core identity, doesn't have a hint of a self, a functioning self or an ego. The narcissist is emptiness and nothing but emptiness, whereas the borderline has a lot, her inner world is a lot richer and a lot more varied.
Therefore, the inner world of the borderline gives rise to dynamics which are much more intricate and complex.
The inner child is a way to describe a set of processes, emotions, cognitions, representations of self, representations of others, models, working models about relationships, about the world at large, and about the minds of other people, theory of mind.
If we put all these together, and if the outcome is infantile, is immature, not something an adult would recognize or endorse, then we're talking about an inner child.
Now, everyone healthy and unhealthy, everyone has an inner child.
The question is, what differentiates mental health from mental illness is whether the inner child intervenes actively in other psychological or psychodynamic processes.
If the inner child is active, if the inner child is dominant, if the inner child defines cognitive dimensions, emotional aspects, if the inner child is the decision-maker, is the one to make choices, if the individual sees the world through the eyes of the inner child, and is reactive to the gaze of other inner children, in that case, we have a pathology.
In healthy adults, the inner child is there, and it is responsible for joyful properties, delightful properties and traits such as curiosity, playfulness.
These are great things. These are wonderful things, even in an adult, or maybe especially in an adult.
But the inner child is not in charge.
Whereas in narcissism, there's nothing but the inner child, so to speak. There are no mature constructs. There are no structures that can counter the infantilism of the narcissist.
And so the narcissist is merely a child in an adult's body. Same typology thing goes for the borderline.
But there are differential features. The narcissist's inner child and the borderline's inner child may appear to be the same but actually they're not.
So you can watch the video how the narcissist's inner child sees you. There's a link in the description and compare it to what I'm about to tell you about the borderlines in a child.
First to make clear, the borderlines inner child, as I said, is much more mature than the narcissist.
It's also not the borderline's true self. Do not confuse the inner child with the true self or the self. These are not the same constructs.
In the case of the borderline, the inner child is a compendium, an anthology, a list of needs, especially the need to find someone out there who would serve as a rock, as a secure base, as an Archimedean point, as a fount of stability, predictability, determinacy, and certainty. Someone who would render the inner turmoil and tumult in the borderline's soul, would render it quietened, would quiet and calm the borderline.
In other words, someone who would regulate the borderline's internal processes, will come to it.
This rock, this stable presence, this secure base, this valve of safety, is a constant, reliable, unconditionally loving and accepting presence.
The borderline's inner child, more specifically, is in a constant state of terror. Borderline personality disorder is just another name for fear. All-pervasive, ubiquitous fear, all-consuming fear. Kind of fear that paralyzes and debilities, kind of fear that is built equal portions, real threats and anticipated ones.
In other words, a fear that is founded, among other features, on catastrophizing.
The borderline is in a constant state of terror. She is terrified of her internal processes. She is terrified of being overwhelmed, disregulated. She is afraid of drowning in her own emotions. She knows that she is capable of suicidal ideation and in 11% of her cases might end up dying by suicide. It's a serious threat and a real one, and this terror is the defining feature of the borderline's inner world.
In her dystopian mental space, terror is the godlike moloch entity. And she sacrifices everything to placate this primitive deity, to reduce the terror, to ameliorate and mitigate anxiety.
She may use or abuse substances. She may become self-harming and promiscuous. She may act recklessly and defiantly, but most commonly, in the most common case, she simply looks for someone who is able to inject into her soul, into her psyche, some peace of mind, able to introduce tranquility and calm into her daily existence, her quotidian being.
So the rock, the stable entity, the intimate partner, the regulator, the borderline inhabits, is a resident of a surrealistic paracosm, a kind of malevolent fantasy that involves impaired reality testing.
The borderline, for example, is highly paranoid. Paranoid ideation is very common in borderline personality disorder. She is often micro-psychotic. She devolves into psychosis much faster than, for example, the narcissist.
She overestimates other people's motivations, behaviors. She misreads. She is autistic in this sense.
By the way, I'm saying she all the time, half of all borderlines are men. For convenience sake and because of historical reasons, I'm using the word she, the gender pronoun she.
So this is what the borderline is faced with, a kind of dystopian malevolent Disneyland, a Disneyland which is reminiscent and akin to a horror movie.
And so she is this babe, she's a baby, she's an infant. And she needs someone to hold her by the hand as she enters the dark forests of her mind. Hansel and Gretel.
She needs her counterparty. She needs the stabilizer. She needs the protector, she needs the rescuer, she needsthe savior, the healer, the fixer.
And this appeals dramatically to narcissists with a savior, fixer, healer complex.
And so the borderline is an inner child trapped in a highly surrealistic landscape.
And she's torn between devastating, paralyzing, debilitating terror on the one hand, and the need to run away, the need to escape, which is a typical infantile reaction, typical reaction of an infant or a child when faced with the demons of the forest or the dark shade shadows on the wall or the monsters under the bed.
And as a child, she seeks someone next to her who is not only a parental figure, and that is also an element, but more so, someone who represents order and structure and justice and predictability, a kind of stand-in for the universe.
The other person, the intimate partner, for example, becomes her world.
Because she's a child, the other person becomes her world. She reverts, she regresses to the symbiotic phase of personal development, where mother was the world, the parental figure with the world.
And so the intimate partner now is the world.
And she's likely to verbalize it. She's likely to say, you are my world, you are my life. I have no life. I have no existence. I have no world without you.
And this is a very overpowering sensation.
When she comes across someone who is willing to accept her as she is, who is willing to love her unconditionally, regardless of her frequent misconduct, acting out, temper tantrums, losing it, psychotic microepisodes, paranoia, aggression, rage, someone who is willing to take her as she is, someone who is loving, who is accepting, who's warm, who's compassionate, who is affectionate, but above all, constant, reliable, strong, resilient, present.
When she comes across someone like that, she bonds with him the way a child bonds with mother.
There is a modicum of helplessness in this. It's like admitting helplessness on the one hand.
But there's more to it than that.
He becomes her channel, her conduit, the venue through which she interacts with reality. He becomes her reality testing and her reality.
And so the intimate partner or the rock or the special friend or the favorite person, whatever you want to call it, externally regulates the borderline, provides external regulation.
This rock-like figure, this constant, stable presence, is able to stabilize her labile moods, is able to roll back her emotions or put them in check so that they don't overwhelm her. This is external regulation.
And of course there's a lot of opposite parent issues here.
If the borderline is a she, she has daddy issues. If the borderline is a he, he has mother issues or mommy issues.
That's all quite true, but the parental role of the rock, the parental role of the Archimedean point in the borderline's life is super important.
It's all true because she is a child. Because she's still a child. It is the inner child that interacts with the outside.
Same as a narcissist. When the narcissist seeks an intimate partner for the shared fantasy, it is the inner child that is doing the seeking and the search. It is the inner child that is doing the seeking and the search. It is the inner child that sets up the fantasy, the shared fantasy.
And the partners of the borderline recognize the existence of the inner child, identify the inner child's face, smile, emotions, emotions which are pure, emotions which are unbridled, emotions which are clean, emotions which are unadulterated and therefore utterly irresistible.
The borderline's inner child provokes in the recipient, in the other party, in the counterparty, the inner child provokes a sense of maternal instinct.
Everyone has a maternal instinct, even men. When we come across a baby, we all become mothers. Men and women alike, we become mothers.
There's the need to protect, they need to interact with a baby, they need to smile, these are almost instinctual things, they are utterly uncontrollable.
And so the borderline provokes the maternal instinct in other people because she's a child, because it is the child in the borderline, the inner child, who ends up interacting with the outside, then it's very difficult to resist. It's very difficult to let go of it.
And as I said, it triggers ancient reflexes of protection.
It's a baby, I need to protect the baby. I need to save the baby. I need to protect the baby. I need to save the baby. I need to rescue the baby. I need to heal the baby. I need to fix the baby. I need to make the baby happy. I need to make her smile. I need to imbue her life with joy and meaning and direction. I need to be there for her. I need never abandon her, etc.
This is the inner child triggers maternal responses in people, exactly the same way. A baby in the crib triggers maternal responses in his of a biological mother of origin.
But the borderline's inner child is dependent. It's dependent on the outside, dependent on the intimate partner, dependent on the external regulator, dependent on the parental figure.
The borderline's inner child realizes this dependency, or at the very least experiences it, and it triggers in her anxiety.
This is known colloquially as abandonment anxiety, although the correct clinical term, is separation insecurity.
So she experiences a terror of abandonment. It's exactly as if a child would be abandoned in a dark forest or all alone in a shopping mall or a big city.
There is this impending sense of doom. He is going to abandon me. They are going to reject me. I am going to find myself all alone and I'm just a child.
So abandonment anxiety is a crucial feature of borderline personality disorder.
There is the issue of rejection, the anticipation of hurt and humiliation and fear, mostly fear. Abandonment anxiety, as the name implies, is about fear.
The borderline's inner child is terrified of being left all on its own, all alone, because the borderline's inner child knows that it is less than capable of coping with the exigencies, vicissitudes and demands of the external environment.
But as the borderline's inner child is catered to by the intimate partner, or by the good friend or by the special friend, whoever the rock is, as the borderline's inner child finds the rock, latches onto the rock, relies on the rock, relies on the rock, becomes dependent on the rock, this in itself creates anxiety.
This dependency, this neediness, this urge to cling, this inability to let go, this panic when one is sidelined even for a minute, this need to maintain the physical presence of the loved one or the special friend or the favorite person. They need to maintain their physical presence, to never ever let them out of your sight because of interjecting constancy. This is terrifying. This dependency is terrifying.
And so it creates its own anxiety, engulfment anxiety or fear of intimacy.
And so the borderlines inner child is caught between a strategy of approach, approaching the intimate partner, communicating with the intimate partner, triggering the intimate partner maternal responses, thereby becoming safe and converting the intimate partner into a secure base, the way a child does at the age of two years.
That's one strategy, and the other strategy is a strategy of avoidance, not getting too attached, not getting too bonded, not getting too dependent, not conditioning one's life and survival on someone else.
Because it's really terrifying.
So there is approach avoidance, approach avoidance, and this is known as repetition compulsion, and the borderlines inner child constantly is approach avoidant, hot and cold, there and gone, hateful, loving, all the time. It's an unstable construct.
The inner child in the borderline is actually two children.
One inner child is terrified of loneliness, terrified of solitude, terrified of an perceived inability to survive, and the other inner child is terrified of being consumed and subsumed, terrified of vanishing, terrified of the extent of dependency that renders existence non-viable.
And these two inner children in the borderline are in constant conflict.
So whereas in the narcissists, there is an attenuated version of this inner conflict, in the borderline, it's not only pronounced, it's a definitive conflict, it's the determinant of borderline behavior and personality.
The borderline therefore has two inner children.
And so these anxieties, the abandonment anxiety and the engulfment anxiety, plus the intensity of the interpersonal relationships, this combination often devolves into cycles of idealization and devaluation, exactly like in narcissism, but for completely different reasons.
The narcissist idealizes and devalues because the narcissist is reactive to an internal need to reenact early childhood conflicts with his original mother.
The borderline idealizes and devalues because she needs a stable rock. She needs a constant presence. She needs someone she can trust. She needs someone to accept her and love her unconditionally. She needs a secure base.
That is the approach side and she needs to idealize this kind of person.
But then she feels suffocated. She feels she can't stand it. She feels she's disappearing. She's vanishing. She feels she is being subsumed and consumed and digested and absorbed and dissolved.
And so she needs to run away. And to do that, she needs to devalue the partner.
Again, it's an autonomous dynamic. It's not dependent on the partner's behavior. The partner is not guilty of anything, not responsible for anything. It's not something triggered externally by the partner.
But the content and type of the internal dynamic in the borderline is different to the narcissism. Still, exactly like the narcissism.
The borderline's internal child, inner child, creates a fantasy. It's a fantasy of parenthood. It is also a reenactment of early childhood.
But instead of separation, individuation, which is the goal of the narcissist's shared fantasy, in the case of the borderline, the shared fantasy is about exactly the opposite.
Merger, fusion, symbiosis.
And so the two shared fantasies are diametrically opposed.
In the borderline shared fantasy, the partner is not only a good mother or a good breast, as Melanie Klein pornographically would have called it. The partner is not only a good mother.
It's existence itself, peace of mind, its tranquility, it's homeostasis, it's equilibrium, it's the ability to function, it's interregulation, it's everything. It's an outsourcing of the mind.
So the partner needs to be perfect, ideal, all good, because otherwise it wouldn't feel safe to go that far. If you go that far with someone, you need to feel that this person is ideal, all good, perfect, a secure base, safe, trustworthy, reliable, resilient, responsive. You need to believe that you would love you unconditionally, would be forgiving, accepting, authentic, rewarding.
And so the enmeshment between the borderline, or more precisely the borderline's inner child, and the parental, the externalized parental imago, the parent function in the intimate partner, for example, this enmeshment is fantastic. It is based on fantasy.
But while the narcissist idealizes, because he needs to idealize a maternal figure, because he needs to separate and individuate from a good mother, the borderline idealizes because she needs a mother who would make her safe.
She is in a constant state of terror. She doesn't want to separate from the mother. She wants the mother to never go away, because the world ismother. She wants the mother to never go away, because the world is full of shadows and monsters and chimeras and threats and risks and dangers, and the borderline is just a tiny child, a babe, and she can't cope with any of this, so she needs mommy to be there forever.
The irony of the borderline's existence, and what pushes her inner child to split and to become two inner children is the fear of engulfment.
In a minute I will explain why the borderline feels engulfed.
Why does she feel that she's vanishing and dissolving and disappearing when she is loved, when there is intimacy, when the intimate partner is there for her?
Why is that bad?
But at that point she devalues the intimate partner, also in a fantastic way, also within the shared fantasy. The partner becomes bad mummy or the bad breast, imperfect, all bad, persecutory, unsafe, untrustworthy, unreliable.
This is the paranoid aspect of borderline.
The partner is perceived as fragile, weak, disappointing, vulnerable, or maybe manipulative, transactional, fake, denying, rejecting, frustrating, traitorous, envious, passive aggressive, etc.
And here, the two inner children of the borderline battle it out, fight it out.
And since it is a repetition compulsion and a pendulum movement between one pole to another, one inner child is in control one day and the other inner child is in control another day.
And this is intimately linked to something known as identity disturbance.
The borderline has no stable identity. Her sense of self is fragile.
Her self, as I said, is fractured and fragmented, not integrated, not constellated, not clear, not marked, not boundaried.
So this identity disturbance or identity diffusion in younger borderlines, this lack of core identity, which is essentially rigid and largely immutable, this absence, masquerading as presence, this emptiness as Kernberg, in Kernberg's words.
So this identity disturbance also permeates the inner child spectrum or the inner child landscape. That's why she has two inner children, because she is not stable as far as her identity is concerned.
She has two inner children. She has half a dozen self-states.
So she appears to be a different person every day or every week or every month.
She changes everything, the way she dresses, the way she cuts her hair, the way she puts make, applies makeup, what she believes in, her values, her behaviors, her choices, her decisions, people she likes, people she hates.
Everything changes. Everything changes all the time. It's a crazy kaleidoscope.
And it applies to the inner children as well.
Whereas the narcissist's inner child is absolutely stable and predictable.
The narcissist's shared fantasy is inexorable and algorithmic.
The borderlines inner child is chaotic, stormy, not stormy Daniels, just stormy, chaotic, stormy, unpredictable, crazy making. Like the rest of the borderline pathology.
The borderline experiences herself as empty, compensates by creating a false self and uses fantasy defenses, exactly like the narcissist, but the content of all these vehicles and constructs, the content is dramatically different.
The clinical features of the borderline's inner children or inner child are very different to the narcissists.
The inner child in the borderline, both inner inner children are as I said in a constant state of terror, constant state of fear, apprehension, anxiety, and because of that they find life unbearable and intolerable.
Whereas the narcissist, when he is embedded in the shared fantasy, is joyful, exuberant, energetic.
The borderline is never this way. Maybe at the very initial phases of the shared fantasy, but normally she isn't.
The borderline is morbid, morbid, depressed, fearful. The borderline anticipates the worse, catastrophizes, is paranoid.
This leads her to self-harming behaviors, to suicidal ideation, to self-destructive cognitions and actions. She is highly self-punitive.
One could even postulate that the borderlines internalized parents, the voices or the introjects, or the internal objects, that represents parental figures in the borderline's mind are the enemies of the borderline's inner children.
The borderline's parental introjects hate, absolutely hate, the borderline's internal children, inner children. The borderlines parental introjects are the enemies of the inner children. They want them dead. They push them to die.
This self-destructiveness is a conflict between internal parent and an inner child.
Same dynamic, although much more attenuated, much, much lighter, happens in codependence.
And so the borderline's internal world is very self-punitive. The borderlines inner child realizes that it is surrounded by hostile, hateful introjects. The borderlines inner child knows that it is embedded in enemy territory. The borderline's inner child fully anticipates and predicts punishment, self-inflicted punishment, self-harming, self-trashing, self-mutilation, and finally, self-homicide, suicide.
To silence the internal turmoil, to call for help, to feel alive, because the borderline feels dead inside.
Inner child is paralyzed of fear. Fear paralyzes. Fear deadens the inner world.
When you're really, really, really terrified of something, there is no energy left for living, no energy left for joyful experiences. There's no pleasure. Nothing. The fear is all-consuming, pervades and permeates every cell.
And this is the state of the borderline.
So the borderline feels dead inside. And when she wants to feel alive, when she calls for help, when she wants to silence her internal tumult, the voices, the noises, she needs to revert or to resort to someone external.
Exactly as a child would ask for help, even from strangers, when the child finds itself stranded, or in an abnormal, unfamiliar situation.
And so the borderline is in a constant state of pleading, begging, begging, constant state of supplication. She constantly seeks reassurance, acceptance, warmth, love, compassion. She hunts for them. She can't subsist or survive without them. They are the borderline supply.
Whereas a narcissist subsist of narcissistic supply or sadistic supply, the borderline supply has to do with emotions. It is affective supply. Borderline needs affective supply.
And when she doesn't get it, when the child feels on the verge of catastrophe, on the verge of annihilation, on the verge of devastation, obliteration and extirpation, when the child knows it's the end. Doomsday is coming.
The borderline becomes reckless, impulsive, and a psychopathic self-state emerges to protect the child. It's a kind of a secure base. This secondary psychopath who resides inside the borderline, is a kind of second-hand secure base, last-resort parental figure.
But without any inhibitions, any morality, any socialization, it's kind of a primordial, primitive structure. And this secondary psychopath emerges when all else fails.
When everyone has let down the borderline, everyone has disappointed her, betrayed her, abandoned her, rejected her, humiliated her, shamed her, pushed her to the brink. Then she becomes a psychopath, secondary psychopath, reckless and impulsive.
And even this recklessness and impulsivity is very childlike, very infantile, because for example, there's no consideration of the consequences of her actions. There's no future horizon. Nothing. It's all oriented to the present. It's the way a child thinks.
The secondary psychopath, the protector figure which is essentially parental, is protecting an inner child that needs to act out. It is as if the borderline anticipates she's going to do horrible things and she's going to pay the price for this. She's going to feel ashamed. She's going to feel guilty. She's going to go to prison. Something really bad is going to happen.
And so then she trots out, she takes out the psychopathic parent protector. And the role of the psychopathic parental protectorout the psychopathic parent protector and the role of the psychopathic parental protector is to make sure that the inner child has the license and the legitimacy to act out, to go crazy, crazy making, to be disinhibited and reckless and impulsive and everything, but not to bear the consequences.
The protector of psychopath is going to make sure that there will be no consequence, at least in the dreamscape and the fantasy of the child, because that's how children regard parental figures, as all-powerful, as infallible, as superprotective, a secure basis.
So the outcome of all this mess is emotional volatility, affective lability, emotional dysregulation, anger, reactive mood shifts and changes. It's like a storm, perfect storm, which never abates.
Entrapped in this storm are the borderline's inner children, tossed to and fro by the waves, suffocated by the hurricane strength winds, unable to orient themselves, unable to find a safe shore, safe haven.
From time to timethe protector psychopath comes out, but then it vanishes. From time to timethere is someone in the borderline's life that she had convinced herself, fantastically, within a fantasy, could protect her, could make her feel safe, could love her unconditionally, could be the parental figure, she could outsource her mind to this person safely, but then he disappoints her, he lets her down, and even if he doesn't, she feels engulfed, suffocated and the child runs away, approaches, runs away.
This is very common in real children. As children develop attachment styles, they tend to approach and then avoid strangers, for example, they approach a stranger and then they run back to mommy. This is very common.
And yet this dynamic is trapped within the borderline's psyche, within the borderline psychology, and she cannot progress beyond it. She cannot mature or evolve, exactly like the narcissist.
The narcissist is trapped in the separationindividuationdynamic. The borderline is trapped in the approach avoidance dynamic as part and parcel of an attempt to attach, to bond, to love, and above all to trust someone finally.