Can someone familiar with psychiatry please explain the following...?!
Question:
Can someone familiar with psychiatry please explain the following...?
In regards to Borderline Personality Disorder, what does the following sentence fragment mean:
"alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation"
Answers:
With me, I will be idealizing a person completely; they are the best thing in the world, the only person who can help me, the only one who can save me, the only one who understands. That is the first extreme.
At some point some little thing will happen...they will tell someone something I said, they will not have time to talk to me one day, and all of a sudden they are evil. I will often stop talking to them altogether and basically cut them out of my life.
That is a really extreme example of what I do.
A less extreme example would be getting along really well with my therapist, for example, and then them saying they won't be checking their e-mail from home anymore. All of a sudden I am completely hurt and see them as this evil person who is out to hurt me. Not checking their e-mail from home probably had nothing to do with me in particular, but that is how I interpret it.
Other names for this are "splitting" and "black and white thinking".