Cluster B PDs: Overreact, Abuse, Destroy (Intl. Summit on Depression, Anxiety and Stress Management)
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2020-08-11

4 Paths of Trauma Release and Reactance (International Summit on Depression, Anxiety and Stress Management)

Presentation to International Summit on Depression, Anxiety and Stress Management

Fear of abandonment and rejection (BPD)

Narcissistic injury and mortification (NPD)

Frustration (AsPD, HPD)

Cause reactance.

There are four forms of release:

Cognitive release: Catastrophizing or flashbacks (re-experiencing)

Intervention: controlled catastrophizing via imagery

Emotional release: "Triggering cascade" is when a seemingly minor trigger results in vastly disproportional trauma.

Intervention: chair-based (chairwork dialogs), mindfulness, reframing (CBT), DBT, Gestalt, Scema

Behavioral release: Total reactance characterizes Psychopaths, Borderlines, trauma victims (PTSD and CPTSD), and people with mood disorders and impulse control issues. They escalate every conflict, however minor or imaginary, to the level of nuclear, apocalyptic, all-annihilating warfare and make disproportionate use of every weapon in their arsenal simultaneously.

Defiance, posturing, hostility, aggression, recklessness, and abuse are part and parcel of these recurrent pitched battles with one and sundry: all bridges are burnt and relationships are shattered hurtfully and irrevocably.

Intervention: alliancing, self-efficacy agencing, reinforcement, DBT

Somatic release: conversion symptoms, somatisation

Intervention: dream work, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapies


Narcissists and psychopaths are dreamwreckers: they are particularly adept at provoking triggering cascades by aggressively and contemptuously frustrating both individual and social expectations, cherished and life-sustaining hopes, deeply held beliefs, and ingrained fantasies and values.

Their lack of empathy, innate, goal focused cruelty and ruthlessness, absent impulse control, and mind boggling recklessness create a whiplash of shock and disorientation coupled with agony and a pervasive feeling of being existentially negated. Intolerable angst is the inevitable outcome.

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