Splitsen (splitting) als afweermechanisme

Splitting as a defense mechanism

Defense mechanisms, Psychiatry, Psychology

Splitting is a defense mechanism in which you view something, someone, or yourself as “all good” or “all bad.” A person who splits sees the world in terms of black or white, all or nothing. It is an inability to integrate positives and negatives into one whole; often you alternately idealize and devalue something or someone.

Splitting can disrupt relationships and lead to intense and self-destructive behavior. When you use splitting as a defense mechanism, you will usually place people or events in terms that are absolute, with no middle ground or nuance. What makes splitting even more confusing is that sometimes your beliefs seem ironclad and unchanging, or they can completely turn around from one moment to the next.

What is a defense mechanism?

When you have difficult emotions or impulses you often look for ways to deal with these unwanted feelings. Unlike conscious strategies we use to deal with daily stress, these defense mechanisms work on a completely unconscious level. They are a way your mind unconsciously tries to reduce your anxiety and restore emotional balance.

Sigmund Freud was the first to talk about psychological defense mechanisms against anxiety and stress, and Anna Freud was the first to define defense mechanisms. After this original definition, however, researchers continued to look for other possible defense mechanisms. One of them is splitting.

Splitting as a defense mechanism
Splitting as a defense mechanism: illustration of someone with a broken heart
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How does splitting or splitting as a defense mechanism work?

Splitting is an unconscious attempt to secure your ego and avoid fear by seeing things in all-or-nothing terms. Splitting allows you to easily forget or abandon things you label as “all bad“ and embrace things you consider “all good, ” even if those things are harmful or risky.

Splitting is often a reaction to the fear of rejection, abandonment or other possible emotional trauma. It is a common reaction and often an unconscious protective layer so you can avoid feeling hurt, rejected or abandoned.

You can have extremely positive or extremely negative feelings about:

  • yourself
  • objects
  • beliefs
  • other people
  • situations

Split in different mental disorders

Splitting occurs in many people during childhood or adolescence, but is then considered transient. If the cognitive habit of splitting persists into adulthood, it is often part of a trauma. In some cases, it develops into a personality disorder. It also involves the use of other related defense mechanisms such as idealization and devaluation.

Splitting yourself: dissociative identity disorder (DIS)

When you split yourself you grasp your unwanted side as an annoying part that you are trying to cut off or split off. This often occurs from early childhood trauma and can be at the expense of your character’s completeness, mental energy and sometimes a significant part of your memory. You may lose the connection between your personas or alters in the process. A combination of splitting yourself and dissociation can lead to dissociative identity disorder (DIS).

Dissociative identity disorder (DIS) is characterized, among other things, by the presence of two or more personalities or alters and identity changes; changing alter warrants remembering only the things that this personality has experienced.

“How Do I Become Tim?” is about living with dissociative identity disorder (DIS). A disorder in which multiple parts of the personality can completely take over thinking and acting.

Splitting from others: trauma and borderline personality disorder (BPS)

People who split someone else have varying feelings about others. They exhibit extreme anger alternating with cheerfulness. This often stems from an attempt to deal with excessive opposing feelings about parents or caregivers. It is difficult for a child to deal with two diametrically opposed feelings. Splitting from others is common in early childhood trauma and can lead to borderline personality disorder (BPS), among others.

Splitting is common coping in people with borderline personality disorder (BPS). In fact, one of the DSM criteria for this disorder directly describes splitting: “A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternations between extreme idealizing and devaluing.” Although this is a dsm criterion, it does not mean that everyone with borderline splits. Nor does it mean that everyone who splits has borderline.

Splitting in narcissistic personality disorder

People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPS) also use splitting. This is also a form of splitting in early childhood trauma. People who meet the diagnostic criteria for NPS use splitting as a central defense mechanism. They often see themselves as purely good or admirable and others who do not conform to their will or values as completely bad or despicable.

Splitting in depression

In depression, excessive all-or-nothing thinking can form a self-reinforcing cycle. Typical all-or-nothing thoughts are:

  • My efforts are either a success or they are an abject failure
  • Other people are either all good or all bad.
  • I am either totally good or totally bad.
  • If you are not with us, you are against us.

Examples of splitting or splitting

  • Saying hurtful things: I say something mean to express my pain. Then I quickly say sorry and ask the other person to please stay.
  • Becoming emotionally distant: I feel so hurt that I reply gruffly or ignore someone.
  • Over-analyzing everything: I think too much and see problems everywhere, even when there aren’t any. I often explain things multiple times because I think no one understands me.
  • Ignoring people: If I no longer like someone, I stop talking to that person and pretend they are not there.
  • Annoy you: I get quiet and withdraw because I’m afraid of saying something I’ll regret.
  • Getting angry about little things: When I am very angry, I turn a gnat into an elephant.
  • Blocking people on social media: Someone I used to care about a lot suddenly I don’t want to see or talk to. I delete that person from social media until I feel different again.
  • Canceling plans: I push people away and cancel appointments, but find them again later to say how important they are to me.
  • Drawing strange conclusions: I make strange thoughts quickly, such as thinking that someone doesn’t like me anymore because they don’t reciprocate quickly.
  • Feeling physically cut off: If I don’t like someone anymore, I don’t want that person to come close to me or touch me.
Splitting as a defense mechanism
Splitting as a defense mechanism: illustration of someone with a broken heart
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How long does a split take?

Splitting often occurs cyclically and very suddenly. A person who splits can see the world in its complexity. But they often change their feelings from good to bad quite frequently.

A divisive episode can take days, weeks, months or even years to turn around.

What can trigger a splitting episode?

A split is usually triggered by an event that causes you to take extreme emotional positions. These events can be relatively ordinary, such as having to go on a business trip or getting into an argument with someone. But often triggering events involve small splits that are close to your heart and fuel your fear of abandonment.

Symptoms of destructive cleavage

Splitting can become severe or destructive if it is accompanied by other symptoms, such as:

  • Acting-out (acting without considering the consequences)
  • Avoidance (consciously ignoring a fact or reality)
  • Emotional hypochondria (trying to make others understand how severe your emotional pain is)
  • Feeling of superiority (the belief that you possess superiority in intelligence or power)
  • Passive aggression (an indirect expression of hostility)
  • Projection (attributing one’s own unwanted emotion to someone else)
  • Projective identification (denying your own feelings, projecting them onto someone else, and then behaving toward that person in such a way as to force them to respond to you with the feelings you projected onto them)

How does splitting affect relationships?

Splitting often leads to extreme – and sometimes destructive – behavior and personal turmoil in relationships. People who split often report having intense and unstable relationships. Someone who is a friend one day may be seen as an enemy the next.

People who split are often seen as overly dramatic or overwrought. Such behavior can be exhausting for those around them.

Some relationship characteristics are:

  • difficulty trusting others
  • Being irrationally afraid of the intentions of others
  • quickly break off communication with someone they think might eventually let them down
  • rapidly changing feelings about a person, from intense closeness and love (idealization) to intense dislike and anger (devaluation)
  • Quickly begin physical and/or emotionally intimate relationships

Treatment for division

Splitting is a defense mechanism usually developed by people who have experienced early life trauma, such as abuse and abandonment. Long-term treatment involves developing coping mechanisms that improve your perspective on the events in your life. Reducing anxiety can also help.

If you need help dealing with a divisive episode in the moment, here’s what you can do:

  • Calm your breathing. A surge of anxiety is often accompanied by divisive episodes. Taking long, deep breaths can help you calm down and prevent your extreme feelings from taking over.
  • Focus on all your senses. Grounding yourself in what is happening around you in a given moment can be a good way to distract yourself from extreme feelings and help you better relate to what is happening around you. What can you smell, taste, touch, hear and see in a moment?
  • PRobtain help. If you find that you are in a split, consider seeking psychological help. Your psychologist may be able to calm you down and help ease the split while it is ongoing.

Dealing with a loved one who splits

There is no easy answer to how to deal with a loved one who splits. However, there are some guiding principles that can help, including:

  • Be empathetic. Remind yourself that extreme splitting is often part of a disorder. While certain actions may seem intentional and manipulative, your loved one is not doing this to get satisfaction. It is a defense mechanism they turn to when they feel defenseless.
  • Learn as much about your loved one’s disorder as you can. It’s easy to feel offended by hot-and-cold – behavior from someone with trauma or personality disorder. But the more you know about the disorder and how it can affect behavior, the more understanding you will be of your loved one’s behavior.
  • Know your loved one’s triggers. Often the same events are triggers over and over again. Knowing your loved one’s triggers, alerting them to them, and helping them avoid or deal with those triggers can prevent a split cycle.
  • Encourage and support treatment. Your loved one can live a better life with treatment. Encourage him or her to begin or continue treatment, and learn all you can about what he or she is going through. If necessary, participate in therapy with your loved one.
  • Remind your loved one that you care about him or her. People who split are often terrified of being rejected or abandoned. Knowing that someone cares about you often helps reduce the splitting behavior.
  • Maintain lines of communication. If you discuss a situation as it arises, you can isolate that event instead of piling one situation on top of another. Not communicating only fuels your loved one’s fear of rejection.
  • Set boundaries. If that boundary is ever crossed, explain why you are withdrawing, and try to do so in an impartial way. If you don’t feel equipped to help your loved one deal with their splitting episodes, be honest. Tell them when to seek professional help.
  • Take care of yourself. This may include finding your own therapist to help you balance your own needs along with those of your loved one.
  • Try to control your reaction. If your loved one has borderline or trauma, keep in mind that you are better able to control your temper. Yelling or acting hostile will only make the situation worse.

There may be times when you will have to take more drastic measures. In cases where the relationship is hurting your family, your job and your sense of well-being, you may be faced with the reality that the relationship cannot continue. While this is an incredibly painful choice for everyone involved, in some cases it may also be the healthiest.

Conclusion

People who split in anxious situations form extreme characterizations about themselves, others, objects, beliefs, and situations. Splitting contributes to unstable relationships and intense emotional experiences.

Although it can be difficult at times, dealing with cleavage symptoms is possible. Professional help can help you deal with your splitting cycles.

When you split, know that you are not alone and that your thoughts do not define you. Splitting is a very real and common part of living with trauma, borderline, or mental health issues for many people.

Book tips

An empty castle

“His fear of losing his parents’ approval eventually becomes so great that the child chooses the only option he sees: he puts away his own personality. The Feeling becomes disconnected from the Mind by that step. They become two separate entities.”

Laura Dijksman Hurt describes her own empty castle. She looks back on her process in which she overcame her borderline. To take the reader through her healing, she first lays out symptoms and concepts that help to understand exactly what borderline can mean. The chapters are concise: Attachment, Emptiness, How borderline arises, Anger, The effects, Bringing the symptoms home, My healing and Guide for loved ones.

Read more about: Defense mechanisms, Psychiatry, Psychology

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