Splitting

-a term used in psychiatry to describe the inability to hold opposing thoughts, feelings, or beliefs

-some might say that a person who splits sees the world in terms of black and white, all or nothing

-it’s a distorted way of thinking in which the positive or negative attributes of a person or event are neither weighed nor cohesive

-splitting is a defense mechanism, by which people with BPD can view people, events, or even themselves in all or nothing terms

-splitting allows them to readily discard things they have assigned as “bad” and to embrace things they consider “good”, even if those things are harmful or bad

-splitting can interfere with relationships and lead to intense and self-destructive behaviors

-a person who splits will typically frame people or events in terms that are absolute with no middle ground for discussion

-things are either “always” or “never”

-people can be either “evil” and “crooked” or “angels” and “perfect”

-opportunities can either have “no risk” or a “complete con”

-science, history, or news is either a “complete fact” or a “complete lie”

-when things go wrong, a person will feel “cheated”, “ruined”, or “screwed”

-what makes splitting even more confusing is that the belief can sometimes be iron-clad or shift back-and-forth from one moment to the next

-people who split are often seem to be overly dramatic or overwrought, especially when declaring things have either “completely fallen apart” or “completely turned around”

-acting out, without consideration or consequences

-denial, consciously ignoring a fact of reality

-passive-aggression-an indirect expression of hostility

-projection, assigning an undesirable emotion to someone else

-omnipotence, the belief that you possess superiority in intelligence or power

-emotional hypochondriasis, trying to get others to understand how severe your emotional pain is

-projective identification, denying your own feelings, projecting them onto someone else, and then behaving toward that person in a way that forces them to respond to you with the feelings you projected onto them