Stressed Narcissists, Borderlines in Psychosis: Brief, Acute, Transient, Reactive (ATPD, BP)

There is also something known as transient psychosis. They are all the same. Brief, acute, transient, reactive, they're all the same. They're all the same.

They are forms of psychosis, which is passing, extremely short, and is intended to somehow take the person away from reality because there's a threat of being overwhelmed and disintegrating.

So this psychosis is defensive. That's why I suggest that brief psychosis is actually a defense mechanism, an unrecognized defense mechanism.

Before I proceed, I would like to focus a bit on acute reactive dissociative psychosis, because this is the more common form among narcissists and borderlines.

You remember that one of the diagnostic criteria of borderline personality disorder is actually dissociation. Amnesia, forgetting things, derealization, the feeling that whatever is happening to you is not real, not embedded in reality, and depersonalization. The feeling that whatever is happening is not happening to you, it's happening to someone else.

So these are all dissociative mechanisms which are very, very common in borderline personality disorder, and amnesia is very common in narcissism.

Narcissists are very forgetful in this sense. They have huge memory gaps.

And in a desperate attempt to compensate for these memory gaps, they confabulate, they create plausible, probable, possible narratives, and then they believe in their own confabulations and fantasies, they are committed, they become committed to them, and they cast them or describe them as reality.

So this is a general introduction to dissociation in narcissism and borderline.

Whenever the narcissists in the borderline are exposed to extreme, disregulating stress, tension, threat, menace, whenever they're exposed to this they react with psychosis it could be a psychotic micro episode which lasts about one minute or two minutes or three minutes and then you know the individual snaps out of it and is back in reality and it's pretty common something a bit longer something that lasts a few hours or even a few days and in the vast majority of cases among narcissists and borderlines this would be an acute reactive dissociative psychosis, ARDP.

What is this? What is it?

Acute dissociative reaction to a stressful event has been introduced in the DSM-5 in 2013 as one element in dissociative identity disorder, what used to be called multiple personality disorder.

There's a new category of dissociative identity disorder, it's known as OSDD, and I personally believe that OSDD and borderline personality disorder are flip sides of the same coin. I have a video dedicated to it.

So stress leads to a dissociative, acute dissociative reaction in some types of dissociative identity disorder like OSDD and these episodes have a short duration up to one month let's say but these acute these reactions of acute dissociation they're not psychotic we will I will describe the necessary elements in psychosis a bit later but the fact that you forget something or the fact you do you don't feel real or the fact that reality doesn't feel real, that's not psychosis.

That is dissociative. That's dissociation.

Psychosis requires a confusion between internal and external when you are no longer able to tell what is happening inside your mind and what is happening outside your mind. The two get confused, the inside and the outside. This is a process called hyper-reflexivity.

So non-psychotic dissociation has been described in the DSM, but the DSM in the text revision in 2022 also mentions on page 292 that there is a psychotic form of this reaction.

So what the DSM says is, when people with dissociative identity disorder are exposed to stress, they can react with classic dissociation, acute but classic, or they can react with a psychotic form of dissociation.

And this is what gave rise to the new suggested diagnosis of acute reactive dissociated psychosis.

And this is very, very common not only among people with dissociative identity disorder, like OSDD, but also among people with borderline personality disorder when a borderline personality disorder is pushed to the corner when she is rejected when she's abandoned when she's betrayed when she's ridiculed when she's shamed at that point the stress becomes too much the borderline's emotions overwhelm her she becomes dysregulated her defenses crumble so this is known as decompensation at that point some people with borderline personality disorder become acutely dissociative, but not psychotic.

And some people with borderline personality disorder develop acute, reactive, dissociative psychosis, which is a much more extreme form.

N is one of the types or kinds of switching.

It is then that the borderline switches.

There are other forms, other types of switching, but today I'm limiting myself to this type of switching.

When the borderline develops acute reactive dissociative psychosis, she changes, or he changes, visibly. There's a visible change. It's like another person has taken over. Even the facial features change. The body posture changes the verbal skills and acuity and even vocabulary change new traits appear like recklessness and defiance it's a bit psychopathic like secondary psychopathy, impulsivity, inability to control behavior, and so on and so forth.

The borderline transitions from one self-state to another utterly visible self-state, and she does this, or he does this via the bridge of acute reactive dissociative psychosis.

I wish to emphasize there are other types of switching other types of bridges which lead to the same outcome but today I'm limiting myself to psychosis.

Acute reactive dissociative psychosis is the contemporary equivalent of something that used to be called hysterical psychosis, as late as 1964 you can find articles by Volander and Hirsch, where they use this term, which was originally tackled at length by Jeannes, and after that, Freud plagiarized Jeanne.

Acute reactive dissociative psychosis, which again is very common in narcissism and borderline, resembles very much a schizophrenic, a manic, or even an organic mental disorder.

Dissociative symptoms are very difficult to identify because there's a mixture of symptoms. Some of these symptoms are known as Schneiderian first rank symptoms.

Thought alienation, delusional perception, passivity, third person auditory hallucinations. Someone is running a commentary, voices are talking to the patient, and so on so forth, so these are auditory hallucination. These are known as first rank or Schneiderian symptoms, and they're very common in acute reactive dissociative psychosis.

In this limited clinical sense, the borderline and the narcissist who experience ARDP are technically psychotic at that moment.

And it is the fact that borderlines and narcissists tend to react psychotically to stress that lend support and credence to Otto Kernberg's claim that narcissism and borderline are forms of attenuated, mitigated, light psychosis. They are pseudo-psychotic. They are on the border between neurosis and psychosis.

This makes narcissism and borderline, or especially narcissism, a severe mental health disorder. Not merely a personality disorder, but a serious, serious affliction, possibly the second worst after schizophrenia.

So once the reactive psychosis sets in, there's this disintegration which is visible. There's a switching to another personality.

And this is what gave rise to the ideas of demon possession and so on so forth in religion when we were all much more primitive and superstitious.

And the person changes.

I think the critical feature in reactive psychosis is not the hallucinations, not even the delusions.

Because in reactive psychosis, grandiosity, for example, can be dramatically enhanced, become much stronger, much more delusional, much more pervasive.

But I don't think these are the core symptom or the core or the presentation, the core presentation.

I think there's a feeling that you're not dealing with the same person. There's a feeling that you're dealing with someone else who has taken the place of the person you know and love. Someone else has taken possession of the person you're married to, the person you're working with, your friend.

The borderline, the narcissists, they become, however briefly, not themselves. Not being yourself is a great definition of psychotic disorder or psychosis.

But there are some distinguishing features.

When we want to tell the difference between a psychotic disorder and a brief or acute psychotic episode in narcissism and borderline, there are some things that are different.

For example, in borderline, there is no affective flatness. There is no flat affect.

On the very contrary, the borderline becomes hyper-emotional, histrionic, all over the place, whereas the typical psychotic becomes immobilized, poker face, flat, frozen, and much later it could even become catatonic.

So this is one difference.

The second difference, there is a good, pre-morbid psychosocial functionality.

In other words, even when the narcissist and the borderline are in the throes of an acute, brief psychotic episode, they still function socially.

They may appear to be a different person. They may give off a completely new vibe, which is very unsettling and gives rise to the famous uncanny valley reaction.

But throughout the psychotic episode, they continue to function socially at least.

Now, a brief psychotic episode has an unexpected and sudden onset. It's abrupt in its onset and it's abrupt in the improvement orsigns that an acute psychotic episode is about to occur, and there are no warning signs that an acute psychotic episode is about to end.

In other words, it has an autonomous functioning. A functioning that ostensibly is independent of environmental cues and possibly even internal cues.

We don't know. We don't know why these episodes start and we don't know why they end at this stage. There's a lot of research to be done.

In some cases there's hallucinations, visions, images, voices, in some cases, not in all, but in a big fraction of the cases.

And generally speaking, there is the detachment, a detachment from reality as it is shared by others and a reversion to a kind of internal space, internal reality, with its own rules and laws, with its own logic, with its own past and present, and with its own emotional and cognitive dimensions.

Acute reactive dissociative psychosis. Or as I said, what used to be called hysterical psychosis, is not the same as other types of psychosis, therefore.

So acute reactive psychosis is polysymptomatic, it's dissociative, but it has many symptoms, hallucinations, grossly disrupted behavior, delusions, and so forth.

And it leads us to ask the question, what is the role of these symptoms?

Everything in psychology has a reason.

When something arises, for example, grandiosity in the case of the narcissist, is compensatory. It compensates for something.

Similarly, we need to ask ourselves, what's the role of the symptoms of acute reactive psychosis? What are they supposed to do, these symptoms?

And I think the only plausible answer, we don't know, by the way, before I start, we don't know. We can speculate.

And I think the only plausible explanation is that the role of the psychosis, which involves dissociation, is to take us away from something in reality that threatens the internal coherence and cohesion of the assemblage of self-states.

Now you remember that the narcissist does not possess a unitary self.

Pathological narcissism is a disruption in the formation of the self, or the ego, call it whatever you want. There's no self there, there's no core identity, there's no central executive, there's no internal entity that regulates everything, directs everything, there's no prime minister, there's no president there. And so it's all very chaotic and so on.

And I think ironically, the role of acute psychosis is to impose structure and order on a state of chaos that is about to get out of control.

The minute the psychosis sets in, it creates a full-fledged internal reality, which is a simulacrum, a simulation of external reality.

And because this internal reality has many of the hallmarks and the elements of external reality, this internal reality imposes structure and order and functionality on the internal space.

It's like throwing oil on water, on rolling water, you know. It restores for a day, for a few hours, for a few weeks, for a few, it restores for a certain period of time, the semblance of internal normality.

It's as if the narcissist or the borderline tell themselves, I can't continue this way. I'm falling apart. I'm disintegrating. I'm becoming disregulated. I'm losing touch with myself and with reality. I'm about to die. It's dangerous. What should I do?

And the answer is, transition from this reality in which you're not coping well. You're not coping well in this reality. You're failing.

Transition from this reality to another reality of your own making. And in this new internal reality, which is psychosis, in this new psychotic internal reality, you will construct it in a way that will allow you to cope well within this internal space.

You're in charge, you're the boss, there is order, there is structure, there is direction, there is purpose, there are goals, and there is restored functionality.

It's a respite. It's a pause, a pause between two failures of coping with reality.

By establishing an internal reality, which is divorced from external reality, a sense of self-control is restored and with it the ability to regulate internal processes such as self-worth or self-esteem and memory functions and a sense of identity, however fake.

Consequently, we could say that acute psychosis, brief psychosis, must involve three processes, decompensation, dissociation, and hyper-reflexivity.

All three are connected to the idea of psychological defense mechanism.

So before I delve deeper into decompensation, dissociation, and hyper-reflexivity, the three pillars of the brief psychotics stool, before I do this, let me elaborate a bit on the idea of defense mechanism.

Defense mechanisms were first described by Sigmund Freud in classic psychoanalytic theory, and they were codified by his daughter, Anna Freud.

Consequently, the very concept of defense mechanism is now rejected in universities in the West and so forth because they threw away psychoanalysis as so much trash and corn artistry.

And by discarding psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic theory, and psychoanalytic literature, they threw away or gave up on many very useful ideas.

And one of the very useful ideas is defense mechanism.

According to Freud, a defense mechanism is an unconscious reaction.

It's a pattern of reaction, not a single reaction, not an event, but a process.

It's a pattern of reaction employed by the ego.

The ego tries to protect itself from anxiety.

What type of anxiety?

It's the anxiety that arises from an internal psychological conflict or psychic conflict.

Now, even if you think that psychoanalysis is rubbish and a lot of it is rubbish, there's no denying that internal psychic or psychological conflict is a reality.

There's also no denying that there is some central executive authority that organizes everything and is a kind of core identity. Freud called it ego.

So what's a problem there?

And finally, there's no deny that we are falsifying and reframing reality in ways which allow us to survive somehow, not to feel bad, not to feel discomfort, not to feel anxious, not to feel guilty, not to feel shameful, ashamed.

We lie to ourselves all the time and these lies and confabulations, these are the defense mechanisms, the mature defense mechanisms, immature defense mechanisms, they all negate reality.

This is the job of defense mechanisms to negate reality.

And this is why I keep suggesting that acute or brief acute psychosis is a defense mechanism because I think the main role of brief psychosis in borderline and the narcissistic personality disorders, the main role is to shut reality off, to just close the door on reality, not to let the individual access reality, at least for a while until there's a process of recovery.

Recovery from what?

From the inability to function in reality because of what? Because of injury? Because of shame? Because of rejection?

It could become overwhelming, could become life-threatening.

And psychosis is there to the rescue because it simulates, it's a simulation of reality internally.

And because it's internal, it restores agency. It restores a sense of mastery. It restores self-control and reduces anxiety.

So, defense mechanisms are a normal means of coping with everyday problems and external threats.

And they do this essentially by escaping reality.

Okay, so as I promised you when we were all much younger, let's discuss the three processes that underlie and lead to acute reactive brief psychosis in borderline and narcissism.

The first mechanism is decompensation.

Decompensation is a breakdown. It's a breakdown in all the defense mechanisms of an individual and in all the defensive structures and constructs.

For example, in both narcissism and borderline, there is a defensive construct, a defensive structure known as the false self.

The role of the false self is to protect the individual from information about reality that could be too overwhelming and to compensate for this information by creating a totally fictitious narrative of godlike omnipotence and omniscience and brilliance and perfection.

So this is in effect a defensive structure and the false self deploys or uses or leverages a variety of psychological escape or defense mechanisms.

And yet in decompensation, in the process of decompensation, all the defense mechanisms shut down one after the other, like in a failure in a power station, or failure in a nuclear reactor. One defense mechanism after another shut down.

And finally, because all the defense mechanisms are shut down, the false self can no longer be active because it has lost its arsenal, it's lost his weapons. It can no longer deploy defense mechanism to manipulate the internal environment.

So it is deactivated. At that point, we have total decompensation, a progressive loss of normal function and a worsening of psychiatric symptoms.

Decompensation is at the core of psychotic reactivity, and it goes hand in hand in some cases, not in all cases, but definitely in borderline and narcissism. It goes hand in hand with dissociation.

Dissociation is a classic defense mechanism. And it is intended to resolve conflicting impulses, traumatic memories, internal conflicts, to resolve them by keeping them apart. Threatening ideas and feelings are separated from the rest of the psyche.

So dissociation is like a prison or a firewall that compartmentalizes, dissociation compartmentalizes, areas and segments of the psyche, breaks the psyche down, fragments the psyche, so that it begins to resemble an archipelago, a kind of island, a group of islands, not a contiguous territory. That's dissociation and it's pretty common in acute psychotic reactions.

And finally, most importantly, there is a phenomenon known as hyper reflectivity. Hyper reflectivity is an intensified self-consciousness. You become so aware of yourself that your awareness of the outside world diminishes.

The more you are aware of your own existence, your own ego, your own self, your own internal processes, the less you are aware of anything outside your mind and body.

You disengage from normal forms of involvement with nature, with society, with others. And so you withdraw from the world, you become constricted, and the emphasis is on yourself you become the object of focal awareness.

But this is only the first stage in hyper-reflexivity the next stage because you are totally not aware of the outside world at some, hyper-reflexivity leads to 100% focus on yourself and zero focus on the outside.

At that point, you begin to confuse the outside with the inside. You become the world.

There's this psychotic song, you know, we are the world. That's psychosis.

The psychotic confuses his internal space, his own mind with external reality and with the universe, because he is not aware anymore of external reality and the universe is aware only of his mind, of his self, of his ego, of his internal space.

And he says, well, that's the only thing that exists. And if there are voices inside my mind, they're actually not inside my mind. They're out there. And if I see things, they're not inside my mind, they're out there.

So there's a total confusion between internal objects and processes and sensory inputs and the external world. This confusion is also common in narcissism.

The narcissist confuses external objects with internal objects. The narcissist internalizes external objects and continues to interact with the representations of these external objects in his mind.

So narcissism is reverse psychosis to start with. The psychotic mislabels internal objects as external objects. The narcissist mislabels external objects as internal objects.

The foundation of psychosis in narcissism and to a large extent in borderline is there. It's easy for the narcissists and borderline to transition to psychosis because they are psychotic to start with.

They have severe problems maintaining the inner world. They have severe problems interacting with the external world and they're in a total state of confusion as to which is which what is inside and what is outside.

Exactly like the psychotic, the brief psychotic disorder is a disturbance, it's a disruption, it's a sudden onset of at least one psychotic symptom. Incoherence, delusions like grandiosity, hallucinations, grossly disorganized behavior.

And this single symptom, single psychotic symptom, or two, but not more, take over. They become very pronounced.

So for example, if the borderline were to develop an acute reactive psychotic episode, she would begin to hallucinate, and it would be very pronounced.

When the narcissist develops an acute reactive psychotic episode, he becomes manically grandiose, megalomaniac, becomes insanely and fantastically grandiose, can compare himself to Jesus or in some cases to Freud.

So there's a lot of emotional turmoil there's a complete eruption of these one or two psychotic symptoms and they take over and then there's a remission, complete remission, of all the symptoms, and a full return to previous levels of functioning.

But it's all reactive to extreme stress.

But I mean extreme stress, like the loss of a loved one, breakup, divorce, denial of freedom incarceration and so on so forth.

Brief reactive psychosis as it used to be called is a reaction to all this a reaction to stressors.

Stressors are any event, any force, any condition, any input, any stimulus from the environment, internal environment or external environment that results in physical or emotional stress.

And that's the difference between mentally healthy people and mentally ill people, like narcissists and borderlines.

Mentally healthy people are reactive mostly, if not exclusively, to external input.

So it is external input that regulates or helps the healthy individual to regulate his internal environment. He interacts with reality, interfaces with it, incorporates information and creates a coherent picture which feeds into his identity and enhances it somehow. It's egosyntonic.

The mentally ill person is equally reactive to internal stimuli.

So even if the outside environment is totally at peace, totally tranquil, totally predictable, totally safe, totally stable, wonderful, the external environment is impeccable and immaculate and no reason for anxiety or fear or anything, the borderline the narcissist may still fall apart or become aggressive and violent because they are reactive to what's happening inside them.

Not outside them, but inside them. They're inwardly oriented, whereas the healthy person is outwardly oriented, and stressors in a healthy person come from the outside. In a borderline of the narcissists, most of the stressors come from the inside.

For example, paranoid ideation, anticipation of abandonment, rage, negative affectivity. They all come from the inside and they trigger the narcissists and the borderline to actually transition to psychosis as a way of coping with the reality which they perceive to be as intolerable, unbearable, threatening when actually it's not.

In short, they're solipsistic. They're playing solitaire, not poker. They are playing with themselves. They're reacting to themselves. They're talking to themselves. It's all an internal dialogue.

Stressors may be internal or external forces that require adjustment or coping strategies. They affect the individual, exposed to stress, usually adjusts and adopts.

And that's the same with borderlines and narcissists.

But their adaptation is maladaptation. There's an adjustment disorder.

They react to internal stressors as if they were much more important than external stressors.

And because of that, their solution is internal, not external.

They don't seek to modify the environment or the behaviors of other people, they withdraw into a state that is indistinguishablefrom psychosis.

The after effects of stressors, the residual effects that follow exposure to environmental stressors are very important immediately after exposure to acute or chronic stressors.

Individuals manifest negative effects. Negative effects, there's a reduced motivation to persist with a task or there's a reduction in altruistic empathic behaviors. This is common. This is normal.

People save on resources. They hoard resources in order to cope with a stressful situation.

But with narcissism and borderline, this dysfunctionality is permanent, it's all pervasive, it's ubiquitous.

The narcissists and borderlines dysfunctionality is their functional mode. That's how they function.

They leverage their dysfunctionality to manipulate people around them and to elicit behavior modification in others and to induce transformations and changes in the environment.

Their dysfunctionality is an adaptive strategy.

And of course when society itself is mentally sick, dysfunctional, and pathologize, the narcissism borderlines dysfunctionality in pathology are indeed positive adaptations. They are not maladaptations.

We have models in psychology which deal with stress.

There's this stress decompensation model.

It's a concept of the development of abnormal behavior as a result of high levels of stress that lead to the gradual but progressive deterioration of normal behavior to a level that is highly disorganized and dysfunctional.

So it is believed that stress decompensation model is a description of the gradual process, the incremental process that leads from stress to mental illness.

Another competing model is the stress vulnerability model.

It's a theory that a genetic or biological predisposition to certain mental disorders, schizophrenia, mood disorders, some personality disorders like borderline and antisocial.

So this genetic or biological predisposition exists and psychological and social factors increase the likelihood of symptomatic episodes.

I belong to this school. I believe that narcissism for example there's a predisposition for not for pathological narcissism a genetic predisposition and that when individuals as children are exposed to trauma and abuse, in those who are in possession of this genetic predisposition or genetic vulnerability become narcissists.

This is the Diathesis Stress Model.

The theory that mental and physical disorders develop from a genetic or biological predisposition for a specific illness. This is diathesis, combined with stressful conditions that play a precipitating or facilitating role. This is the diathesisstress hypothesis or paradigm or theory.

We are trying to understand the role of stress, not only in psychology, but also in classical medicine.

Stress has been undervalued or even totally ignored until the 1940s.

Stress is the physiological or psychological response to internal or external stressors. Stress involves changes affecting nearly every system of the body, influencing how people feel, how they behave, their health, in a variety of disorders, chronic and acute.

And so stress is very critical to making sense of certain dynamics in mental health disorders such as narcissism and borderline.

We know, for example, that stress augments negative emotions and creates longer durations of withdrawal, avoidance, and fatigue.

Their mind-body changes induced by stress and stress contributes directly to psychological and physiological disorders and diseases and affects mental and physical health, quality of life itself.

But amazingly, the first time stress has ever been mentioned in any psychology text was in 1940 by Hungarian-born Canadian endocrinologist, not a psychologist, Hans Selye.

So it's strange how in psychology we sometimes tend to ignore the elephant in the room.

Now, in today's world and environment, stress is not acute. It is chronic. There's a chronic background of stress, punctuated with acute episodes of stress.

And so the stressor need not remain physically present to have effects. It's all over the place, it's ambient, it's atmospheric, and even the memory of the stressor, even recollecting the stressor can create stress.

Because we're exposed to so much stress, we keep remembering the stress. And this creates additional stress, secondary stress.

And we develop stress, a stress reaction. A stress reaction is a pronounced or excessive byproduct of conditions of pressure, strain, tension, anxiety, stress, extreme feelings of panic, disorganized speech patterns, parapraxes, accidents even, substance abuse, alcohol abuse, emotional stress.

This is part and parcel of the modern experience, and many of us develop stress tolerance, the capacity to withstand pressures and strains, the ability to function effectively and with minimal anxiety in the conditions of stress.

This has become a typical coping mechanism.

Even children today have developed stress tolerance, which was unheard of 100 years ago, 200 years ago.

And there is growing stress immunity, a highly developed capacity to tolerate emotional abuse, emotional stress, emotional strain and anxiety.

And with growing stress immunity in the general population, not talking now about narcissists and borderlines, which actually have a reduced stress tolerance and reduced stress immunity.

I'm talking about healthy people in the general population.

Because we have become tolerant of stress, because we have become immune to stress in some respects, and to a limited extent, we fail to react to stressful situations or events.

There is stress fatigue.

We no longer notice stress. We take it for granted. It's a part of the fabric of life.

We see no reason and we have no capacity to react to it.

In any meaningful way, we are simply exhausted.

Indeed, what happens is stress is contagious.

When we are stressed, we stress other people. There is stress sharing. There are vectors of stress. There is stress transfer.

And so in many, many people there is what is known as general adaptation syndrome, GAS.

Many people have physiological and emotional and psychological consequences of severe stress.

Now when you're exposed to chronic stress or severe acute stress, you go through three stages, alarm, resistance and exhaustion.

When you're exposed to narcissistic abuse, for example, as a victim of narcissistic abuse, you develop general adaptation syndrome, GAS.

The first stage, the alarm reaction of the alarm state, comprises two sub-stages.

The shock phase, this is a decrease in body temperature, blood pressure, muscle tone and loss of fluid from body tissues.

And then there is the counter shock phase.

The sympathetic nervous system is aroused and there is an increase in adrenocortical hormones.

And this triggers a defensive reaction, the famous flight or fight response.

Having endured and survived this first stage, you transition to the next stage, which is the resistance stage or the adaptation stage.

And there is a stabilization at the increased physiological levels.

You're constantly aroused. You're constantly flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. There's a high blood pressure, which becomes chronic, hypertension. A risk of cardiovascular disturbances and events.

Resources are depleted. There's permanent organ changes. It's not a joke.

And finally, if you're exposed to stress for a prolonged period of time, on the psychological level, it creates what is known as complex trauma or CPTSD, and on the psychological level it creates what is known as complex trauma or CPTSD and on the physiological level there is the exhaustion stage there's a breakdown of acquired adaptations to prolong stressful situations

So you develop sleep disturbance irritability severe loss of concentration, restlessness, trembling that disrupts motor coordination, fatigue, jumpiness, startled reaction, low startled threshold, vulnerability to anxiety attacks, depressed mood, and crying spells.

Again, Hans Selye, the endocrinologist, was the first to describe this sequence, which is a strong indication that you're exposed to a source of stress, to a stressor which is chronic and that this source of stress for example a narcissistic abuser is sharing his internal stress with you and he transfers his stress to you it's like misery loves stress loves company.

And there's a stress contagion, and you end up with a general adaptation syndrome.

The mentally ill have a safety valve which you as a healthy person do not possess.

The mentally ill can wave goodbye to reality and withdraw internally into an internal space, a paracosm.

And within this internal imaginary, fantastic space, they recuperate, they recover and then they re-emerge from the internal space into onto reality or onto their perception of reality their processing of reality.

You don't have this luxury. You're not likely to become psychotic. Your personality is not as fragile and vulnerable and broken and damaged as a personality of a narcissist or a borderline.

You do have a self. You do have a core identity. You do have resistances and resilience. You are fighting back.

So psychosis is not an option for you, except in super extreme cases.

Psychosis is a beneficial defense mechanism against stress, which is not available to healthy people.

And this is the huge advantage of borderlines and narcissists. They process stress in a way more efficaciously than healthy people.

That's why borderlines survive with so much drama. That's why narcissists survive with so much adversity.

Because they process stress in some ways more efficiently than you do.

And they process stress more efficiently because they can simply shut the world and its stressors, shut it off. Just say goodbye. Withdraw, recede, disappear for a while and then reappear. Happy go lucky, untouched, invulnerable, impermeable, having endured a psychotic episode which to them is like going to a sanatorium or a vacation. It's a vacation from life.

And since anyhow they don't experience life as real, they experience life as kind of a movie or a theater production. They are tourists in their own lives.

Because they don't experience life as real, they don't experience psychosis as unreal. It's all one and the same, but not to you as a healthy person.

You are affected, stamped, and branded for what remains of your life.