I was thinking this weekend of things I left out of this thread on Friday morning. One of the most important things I didn't get into was the concept of 'splitting'. Which from my reading seems to have two meanings.
The first is something we all do as children and sometimes hang onto well past childhood - the idea that people and situations etc. must be either all good, or all bad. Including us. If we aren't perfect, then we are utterly without value. That kind of thing.
This is understandable for kids, they need strong bonds to their parents, and they need to place absolute trust in their protectors when they are young... but it's a recipe for disaster if we don't outgrow it. Because if you're only ever all good or all bad, then it's impossible for you to ever admit that you might have a few flaws somewhere, while being pretty darned incredible somewhere else. If you can't admit any flaws are there, you're stuck with them. And can't grow, or change, or heal.
A crucial element in the conflict cycles I think I see does relate to splitting in this sense of the word. And it's an important part of the third-party dynamic I was talking about.
Sometimes, two people in conflict reach the point of exchanging very specific criticisms of one another. These criticisms may only be meant to hurt, but sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they contain extremely valuable pieces of truth. Absorbing them, sitting with them, thinking how they might be true and if so what that might mean, can be one of the single biggest steps a person can take towards healing. Merely setting the need to defend the self aside, long enough to even consider doing this, can be a major triumph.
But if a third party is witnessing the confrontation, and hasn't resolved their own splitting yet, they can feel an overwhelming desire to rush in and invalidate the criticism. Because they see it through that split lens. What they see is X making Y all bad, rather than X pointing out some problems that might make Y even more good - if Y could see and address them. So in they rush, well-intentioned but out of touch with the process that is actually going on, to quickly assure everyone that Y is really perfect just the way he is and X is just a nasty old grouchy meanie... which invalidates any useful truth coming from X, and elevates any distortions coming from Y to the status of Holy Writ.
When that happens, the momentum towards healing is lost. 'Making it all better' has prevented it from really becoming better. Peace at any price seems awfully expensive when you look at it from that perspective. Peace at the price of health? Peace at the price of honesty? Genuine peace has to include both. I can guarantee that nobody here has ever met a truly serene person who is not honest and striving towards health.
It just doesn't work that way.I'm making a mental tally - I can think of at least ten different instances of 'drive-by invalidation' like this, involving at least ten different people, right off the bat, going back to my first time here in '05. Including me, in both possible roles, giver as well as receiver. I am not casting stones or blame. This is something I think we N-trauma survivors are especially prone to, because Ns are absolute splitters. They split off their bad, and project it onto others, often their kids, often us. We learn to split in self-defense - or rather we may never learn how to stop splitting. We aren't Ns, but we can become so trapped in the all-good-or-all-bad dilemma that we overreact to even the mildest perceived criticism, thus we may not be capable of growth and change in certain crucial aspects of ourselves. And this may carry a terrible price for us, one that lasts throughout our lives.
Here's a link that talks about splitting in families of borderline personality sufferers - but some of the issues affect NPD families too...
http://www.borderlinepersonalitytoday.com/main/famarticle.htm One of the most important things about this type of splitting is that preserving it prolongs conflict - because it maintains enmeshment. As long as we think of someone as all bad, or all good, we have to find another place to 'store' the good, or bad, traits and characteristics they do have, that we are denying them. Often, that storage place is
us, especially for the 'good' traits
- otherwise, it's often a third party who is chosen to play the role of scapegoat, for the 'bad' traits. This brings everyone right into a Karpman Triangle again...
There is also a paradox associated with splitting, as I see it: when you've split someone off as all bad, you still can't seem to 'let go' of them. Not really... there's always that longing to 'check'... But if you stop splitting, and give them back
all the facets of their personality, it becomes much easier to give up on them - for a while, or forever, if necessary - when that is the only way forward. How can this be? Shouldn't it be easier to 'write someone off' if you regard them as purely bad?
It works the way it does because once you stop splitting, you are no longer carrying part of their personality within yourself. You're no longer enmeshed. You have returned to them what is theirs, good as well as bad; your integrity and theirs - in the sense of wholeness - is restored; and that makes it easier for you to own what is yours, separately, and do what you need to do to protect it.
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The other type of 'splitting' I encounter in my reading is one of the types of triangulation.
X tells Y things that Z has said about Y behind Y's back; these may or may not be true. X tells Z things that Y has said about Z behind Z's back; these likewise may or may not be true. If X is particularly skilled, X can elicit specific things to tell each of the two parties, embellish a little here and there for effect, and then claim in self defense that it was all true - sidestepping the issues of how destructively the truths were handled, and how intentional the destructiveness was.
As long as Y and Z continue to look at
each other as the main problem, rather than at
the game being played by X, they can go round and round in fabricated conflict for years. The payoff that X gets is fairly obvious - a sense of being 'the power behind the scenes', and the ability to feel contempt for both Y and Z for not seeing through such an obvious maneuver. The contempt keeps X from ever having to think about just how badly Y and Z are being harmed, and just how dishonest the whole interaction really is. It also keeps X isolated from any chance of meaningful, vulnerable, authentic relationship with either Y or Z, both of whom may actually be well worth knowing as real human beings rather than chess pieces.
In my reading I find this type of triangulation commonly described as a favorite pastime of people with specific diagnoses, and as though it only happens in an inpatient setting [patients playing staff members off one another].
I think it's much more prevalent than that. I've seen no end of it among family, friends, and associates. I work with people who do it automatically in their working interactions. There's an extra payoff to the game at work: if you keep your perceived competitors at each other's throats, you can make them look ineffective, and get more goodies for yourself. Interestingly, several of my coworkers have recently begun comparing notes, and at least one workplace X has been 'outed'. He doesn't know what's happened, he just sees certain people getting along now despite his best efforts, and he's totally bewildered. It's very encouraging... the bewilderment isn't hurting him any and it might just be the source of an awakening.
