Borderline: Narcissist’s Mirror (and Avoidant Personality Disorder)

Narcissist is bothered by your presence – borderline by your absence Both try to dissolve you and eliminate your separateness, agency, personal autonomy, and independence Either by rendering you inanimate and penalizing you for any deviation and divergence Or by merging and fusing with you while outsourcing to you critical psychological needs and functions. Both need to devalue and discard you: The narcissist in order to reenact separation-individuation from a mother figure The borderline in order to ameliorate engulfment anxiety. Both of them become avoidant and schizoid at some stage. The narcissist either because of deficient or negative supply (narcissistic injury or mortification) or to process a corrupted introject The borderline in order to lick her wounds and develop abandonment anxiety sufficient to trigger another round of approach-avoidance repetition compulsion. Should not be confused with Avoidant Personality Disorder which is