 At the rate, my views are dwindling. Shortly, I will be talking to myself. There's nothing wrong with it. Don't misunderstand me. I am my favorite audience. So, not all is lost. And every YouTube cloud has an invisible silver lining. I'm going to be the unprecedented, first time creator on YouTube with negative views. What are negative views, you ask? I think it's speculative, mind you. But I think negative views is when I watch you, not the other way. So every time I watch one of you, I get minus one view. And because there are so many of you, I can end up with minus millions in negative viewing on my YouTube videos. So you see, there's always hope. There's always something to look forward to. Okay, Vaknin, enough with the drama. And drama is indeed the topic of today's lecture. Drama. Drama in narcissistic personality disorder. Drama in borderline personality disorder. Drama in antisocial personality disorder, especially among secondary psychopaths, and to some extent among primary psychopaths. Drama, drama, drama. I would suggest to the next DSM committee to replace the antiquated term cluster B with off-off-broadway personality disorders. Indeed, cluster B personality disorders is also known clinically and officially as the dramatic or erratic cluster, because everyone in cluster B is very, very dramatic. But of course the question is, what is the aim of being a drama queen or a drama king? Why expend so much energy, effort, creativity, imagination on generating, fostering and gendering drama? Where does all this lead? Is it goal-oriented? Is it controllable? I mean, drama queens, do they control the drama? Can they turn it off and on? Can they switch off and on? Or is it stronger than any individual? Is it like a reflex or an instinct, something like hunger, like thirst, like watching some Vakni, something you cannot control? Well, stay with me and listen to some of the answers. And as usual, as distinct from others, I'll bring you the latest cutting edge research, studies and so on. Now, the thing about cutting edge, it hurts. Cutting edge hurts, by definition. Cutting hurts. In a way, it's very typical of borderline personality disorder and has an element of drama in it. Borderline people with borderline personality disorder self-mutilate, attempt suicide and so on and so forth, partly in order to feel that they are alive, partly to quell and sort of mitigate and ameliorate the pain inside them, but partly in order to generate drama and get everyone around them, become the focus of attention, become the life of the morbid party. So we'll talk about this as well. Lydia Rangelowska had observed recently that the pandemic had rendered all of us, drama queens and drama kings, even if we don't wish to be. Drama is a tool, is an instrument, is a mode of communication. Drama is manipulative. When people are helpless, when they are confined, when they are denied access to comfort zones, familiar settings, familiar faces, they resort to drama in order to manage their lives and in order to act upon and in the world. Drama is a kind of last resort, the outcome of learned helplessness. What are the motivations? Why do people become dramatic, erratic, unpredictable, terrifying sometimes, hurtful always? I start by referring you to a previous video I've made about the victim and the triangle, the victim caught in a triangle. That's the famous Carpman drama triangle. It seems that one of the major roles of drama is actually acting. People in dramatic triangles, the hero, the victim, the abuser, the hero is the rescuer, the savior, and he saves the victim because she is abused by the abuser, everyone has his role. It's like a theater play, there's a script. And the amazing thing that Carpman and others have discovered is that people rotate, they are victims and then they assume the behaviors of the abuser, they emulate the abuser, they internalize the abuser and they become abusive. The rescuer can suddenly become the abuser. Actually, in the majority of cases, the victim comes to regard the rescuer or the savior as an abuser, et cetera, et cetera. So it seems that drama, the dramatic triangle at least, triangulation has a lot to do with acting. It's a role, it's a role play. What is the aim of acting? Why do we engage in roles? Well, there are two reasons. One, functionality. We settle into roles, we adopt emergent roles, we accept roles assigned to us by others in order to perform, in order to carry out certain functions. Why do we carry out functions? Because it's good for us. We are self-interested, we get something out of it. So acting role play allows us to function. Actually, scholars like Goffman and even Carl Jung had suggested that all social interactions are a form of acting. And of course, there's a famous book by Eric Byrne, B-E-R-N-E, and that's Games People Play, where he claims that all interpersonal relationships and relationships in general are actually games. And that people are like to play games. The ludic person likes to play games, and I have dedicated a portion of a video that I have made regarding the narcissist as a ludic person, someone who likes to play games. So acting accomplishes this function of functionality, secures functioning. But acting has another very important role, distancing. When we act, we are not ourselves. We are no longer ourselves. We are distanced from who we are. And much more importantly, we are distanced from our experiences. So for example, if I had experienced, if I had undergone a trauma, if I were traumatized, one of the tools at my disposal is to distance myself from the trauma. And I can distance myself from the trauma by pretending to be someone else, by acting a role. And of course, acting by definition is dramatic. Indeed, we observe a substantial increase in dramatic behavior among victims of complex trauma, CPTSD. And if you go to communities and forums populated by the covert narcissists known as empaths or self-styled as empaths, there's drama no end. These are highly dramatic people. I mean, they revel in their drama. They put on shows endlessly. I mean, so acting is an integral part of coping with trauma and coping with trauma via distancing. Here are the first two functions. The first two functions of drama to enhance functionality via playing a role and to distance yourself from ego-dystonic experiences such as trauma. And by the way, to distance yourself from things about yourself you don't like. So if you don't like a behavior of yours, if you don't like a trait of yours, you can distance yourself from such behavior or trait either by projecting them onto someone else, attributing them to someone else, or by acting, by becoming dramatic, by shedding your identity and assuming someone else's identity, distancing. The second reason to be a drama queen or drama king is that it tends to enhance, regulate self-esteem. Technically, clinically, it tends to regulate a sense of self-worth. How come? Why would acting, not to mention acting out, regulate your self-esteem? How is this accomplished? Well, by reverting the locus of control. Someone who resorts to acting, someone resorts to drama, as Rangelowska has mentioned, as I cited her earlier, as Lydia Rangelowska has observed, someone who does this is at the end of their tether. They are helpless. They ran out of solutions. Their coping strategies are not working anymore. The situation is dire because they don't have the recipes or the procedures to secure favorable outcomes from their human environment. So they resort to drama. They dramatize the situation. When they dramatize the situation, they assume a dual role. One role is a director of the drama. They're like a movie director. And the second role is the star of the drama, the main actor or main actress, the center of attention, the life of the party, the one who has access to privileged asymmetrical information because only the person who initiates the drama knows where the drama is going and how the drama is going to end. Drama is power. It's a power play. When you engage in drama, you throw everyone into a maelstrom of uncertainty and predictability, threat. Everyone around you is very frightened or very worried or very concerned or a bit ill at ease or a lot ill at ease. You control the moods and the emotions and the thoughts of everyone around you when you involve them in a drama. In other words, it's about power. Engaging in drama reverts the locus of control. When, for example, you're a victim, when you're a victim, your locus of control is external. The abuser has the control. You are objectified. You are the passive recipient of the control. You are the subject, not the object. So, suddenly, you reverse the tables. Suddenly, you are on top. You're not the bottom, you're the top. Suddenly, you are the dome, not the sub. Suddenly, you are in charge. You call the shots. You determine what's happening and what's gonna happen. And your abuser is thrown off. Your abuser is for a minute there, perplexed, baffled, unsure. Doesn't know how to proceed and what to do. Thereby, you regain the locus of control. It becomes internal instead of external. Your abuser is no longer in control. You are. Now, of course, when you have an internal locus of control especially when the locus of control reverts from external to internal, you gain a lot in terms of self-confidence and self-esteem. It uplifts you. It buttresses you. It strengthens and empowers you to regain the control and the locus of control. And that's the second reason to engage in drama. The classic reason given is actually not as important as people think. It's about attention-seeking. If you go online, everyone and his dog will tell you that drama is about attention-seeking. Well, most of the time, actually, it's not. But in some highly restricted cases and in some highly specific personality disorders, for example, histrionic personality disorder, attention is important. Narcissus, by the way, rarely engages in dramatics. There's a huge confusion online between borderline and narcissists. Borderlines are much more dramatic than narcissists. Narcissists prefer to obtain narcissistic supply via control. They are control freaks. Borderlines are drama queens and drama kings. And histrionics, for example, engage in drama in order to secure attention. You can secure attention in three ways. One, you are the hero. You are the rescuer. You are the savior. Using the Cartman model. So, this guarantees and grants you attention. Or, so, in other words, when people are grateful to you, gratitude is the engine of the attention. And the attention is a result of a drama. Now, very often, these so-called heroes, these saints, they engineer situations where they will become heroes, where they will save the day or the damsel in distress. They are covert narcissists, actually. And this is their passive-aggressive, manipulative way of creating circumstances and channeling and directing everyone to a stage set where they can attain and take on the role of a hero. So, their heroism is self-induced, self-imputed and self-created, self-generated. But still, it's a form of drama and its main, its pivot, emotional pivot is gratitude. So, hero, gratitude. The second possibility to obtain attention via drama is when you claim to be a victim. Then you get, for example, compassion, empathy, pity and face attention. So, attention seekers pose as heroes and make sure to engineer situations where they end up being heroes. Or they pose as victims. And when they pose as victims, they garner the attention and the positive emotionality that they seek. That is not to say, of course, that all victims do that. And it's also not to say that everyone who engages in attention-seeking as a victim is not a victim. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying many victims engage in dramatic behavior in order to garner and secure attention among other reasons. So, I'm mentioning all the reasons. One of them is attention. The third role is the seducer and it's very typical of the histrionic. It's the chase. It's the ostentatious flirtation. It's the the overt seductive behavior. So, histrionics do this. And it's another form of attention. The next reason for dramatic behavior is when one has a victim or a rescuer mentality. Victim mentality, I recently made a video about victim mentality which I recommend that you watch. It's one of two. The other one deals with the Carpman drama triangle. Victim mentality is simply the tendency to interpret life events and behaviors of other people in terms of victimhood. There are recent studies. I mentioned them in the aforementioned video. In the videos that I've made I mentioned specific studies. Dozens of them. And I want to repeat myself in this video as well. So victim mentality is simply an organizing principle. It's an explanatory principle. Why did he do this to me? Because I'm a victim. Why am I not getting what is owed me? Why am I not being promoted? Because I'm a victim. Why did my mother misbehave the way she did? Because she victimizes me. Everyone victimizes me. History, society, etc. You see the thin line between victim mentality and actually paranoid or persecutory ideation. And indeed victims of this sort professional life long committed victims. Victims who wouldn't hear any information to the contrary that maybe they are not victims or maybe they are contributing to their victimization time and again by behaving unwisely. They don't want to hear any of this. They don't want to hear any of this. Because their victimhood imbues their life gives their life sense direction, purpose. Life has structure and order and meaning if you are a victim. Exactly the same goes when it comes to the rescuer mentality or the saviour mentality. Just reverse the rules. It's someone who believes that he has to save people. It's especially common among men. They want to save women. Fallen women, damaged women, broken women. They have this saviour, rescuer instinct or reflex. I'm going to save you. I'm going to fix you. I'm going to fix you. It's common among certain professions like therapies. For example, bed therapies have rescuer mentality. And both people with victim mentality and people with rescuer mentality are very, very dramatic. Very dramatic. And they use drama to aggrandise themselves and to impose their interpretation of reality on others. And this leads us to projective identification in a minute. But they ferociously and sometimes viciously force other people to accept the dramatic elements in their narrative of victimhood or rescue. You see, these kind of victims, it's not enough to be a victim. You need to be a victim in exceptional circumstances. You need to be victimised by the most amazing, vicious, wicked, demonic abuser to have ever roamed the earth. Your victimhood is aggrandised, grandiose. It's fictitious and fictitious. It's out of this world, it's fantastic. It's HBO stuff. It's a movie. These victims and these rescuers they are emotionally invested in converting this victimhood their victimhood and their rescue exploits, their rescue shenanigans into movie-like, Hollywood-like level story. And very often these victims and rescuers would say I need to write a book about this or had you just witnessed my life you would have made a movie. You know? It's the stuff of movies. Or I'm going to write a book. Why write a book? Because my experience is unique. No one has ever had anything remotely close to this. So this is the drama element. Now the next reason for dramatic behavior is novelty-seeking. Novelty-seeking, risk-taking, thrills, adrenaline junky and impulsivity. Now all these together, if you put them together they are major elements major elements in psychopathy. Especially primary psychopathy. The psychopath has a low tolerance for boredom and a low tolerance for frustration. Consequently the psychopath is impulsive, reckless, novelty-seeking, risk-taking, adrenaline junky. These people are highly dramatic and this is the dramatic psychopath. That's a psychopath who is ostentatiously spontaneous, amazingly daring, daredevil, daring do. Happy go lucky in your face. That's the most reckless manner possible. Defies, defies God, defies fate, defies nature. Defies you, defies society, defies authority. Many creatures in the Capitol Hill riots and I'm using the word creatures judiciously. They were this kind of dramatic psychopaths. So this is another reason for dramatic behavior in cluster B personality disorders. Next, provocation. Drama is an instrument intended to provoke. Why provoke? Projective identification. I refer you to videos that I've made about the comfort zones. Some people I mean most people try to force people around them to conform to a narrative that is comforting. So we all have comfort zones. We all have expectations as to how other people should behave that's known as a theory of mind. We have a theory how what makes other people tick how they are likely to respond what choices are likely to make what decisions are likely to adopt and how they're going to treat us. So there's a theory of world and a theory of mind and it's known as the internal working model. So every one of us each one of us is an internal working model which dictates the way we communicate with people and dictates our attachment styles. So people with cluster B personality disorders many of them have grown up in abusive behaviors. Abuse, classic abuse, sexual abuse physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse and non-classic abuse. For example being parentified being objectified or being instrumentalized or being idolized. These are also forms of abuse because they prevent the child from developing boundaries separating and individuating becoming an individual when the parent is selfish, narcissistic absent, dead dead mother etc. So we discussed all this in numerous previous videos. So these kind of people having grown up in abusive traumatizing environments where the comfort zone is abuse they feel good only when they feel bad they feel relieved when they are tortured humiliated degraded, insulted, beaten up then they feel relieved they feel relieved because it's familiar they know the ropes they know what to expect, they know the rules and they know how to manipulate the other party the abuser. But what happens when such people team up with non-abuses missed a nice guy the girl next door what happens then? Well, they try to force their intimate partners, their colleagues their friends, their neighbors anyone, their boss, their employees they try to force people around them to abuse them they want to be abused because they feel good and relieved and comfortable only when they are abused this is their comfort zone and this is known as projective identification the provocation is dramatic. They engage in theatrics theatrics, dramatics erratic behavior immature, infantile purile behavior and all this is intended to push people's buttons to get them to misbehave to maltreat, to mistreat, to abuse to react with aggression they want people to do this because then they feel good that's another group you can see that attention seeking is actually in the minority drama, dramatic behavior has many many very very important psychological functions and caters to very critical needs regulation locus of control and so on the next thing is emotional the next thing is emotional blackmail drama is often used to emotionally blackmail someone to force them to force the other party to cater to your needs to serve you to save you to give you something to be present to not abandon you etc etc via emotional blackmail we all know the stereotype of the mother who wouldn't let her grown up son leave her side she is always mysteriously ill sick she always needs help with electricity, with groceries with something she wouldn't let her grown up son go have his own life and when he dares to try to attempt to be independent autonomous his own men she would tell him I sacrifice my life for you and you are not willing to change my bulb aren't you ashamed of yourself that's emotional blackmail but of course as you just saw it's drama it's family drama it's a morality play the son is all evil the mother is all good self sacrificial and the son the poor son is then motivated to act in ways which he would otherwise have chosen to not act in other words his agency is taken away from him drama any drama any stage play any production whose main target whose main aim and goal is to emotionally blackmail someone it has to do with removal or decrease of the other person's agency ability to act independently and have personal, maintain personal autonomy and this is another motivation for drama and then we have pure bare, naked manipulation stress drama creates the impression of breakmanship something really bad is going to happen drama creates heightened anxiety drama generates fears drama fosters uncertainty, extreme uncertainty and so drama is highly manipulative because people would do anything to reduce the anxiety to get rid of the uncertainty to introduce some predictability some element of predictability to somehow regain control of the situation to calm the other person down to avoid escalation people would do anything people are conflict averse, majority are conflict averse, they are peaceful so drama is an aggressive act of manipulation intended to go to the edge to the border I forgot how it's called when two cars travel at each other high speed the last minute the chicken turns this is a game of chicken this kind of drama manipulative drama and the dramatist, the person who initiates the drama drama queen or the drama king they are willing to escalate no end anyone who has lived with the borderline would tell you this they are willing to escalate no end they are willing to break things they are willing to go out and get drunk and sleep with a stranger they are willing to crush the car they are willing to harm the children they are willing to do anything for the sake of the drama until their wishes and needs are met and this could be a trifle don't go to work today I want you to be with me or again you are traveling you are neglecting and abandoning me it could be something both reasonable and trivial and the escalation is disproportionate to the alleged offense and this is the source the source of the power of the drama this drama is disproportionate ultimately you say to yourself to avoid this kind of drama I better make a small sacrifice manipulation accomplished mission accomplished and finally drama is a destruction a decoy something bad is going on something horrible has happened some trauma, some betrayal some external circumstance which is adverse some pandemic some war some hunger, some explosion there is that some fight which leads to a divorce or to break up or separation something bad with the children something which essentially threatens the precariously balanced disorganized personalities of cluster B people so what they do rather than cope head on with the impending looming problem even if they do identify the problem what they do is distract they create a diversion they divert attention they create a distraction suddenly they become extremely dramatic and everyone forgets about the real problem and gets focused on the drama the drama becomes the vortex the core the center of attention and everyone's resources goes towards ameliorating the drama controlling the drama converting, reframing the drama getting the person to calm down and stop the drama preventing escalation of the drama etc etc everyone is around the drama and the problem that gave rise gave rise to the drama is completely forgotten for a while at least so it's a diversionary tactic and an attempt to redirect unwanted attention from some problem so for example if someone with cluster B had misbehaved she did something really really bad like sleeping with a stranger she would create enormous drama in order to deflect attention and deflect chastising and opprobrium and criticism from what she had done if someone with borderline personality disorder is dependent personality disorder suddenly faces abandonment she would create drama and she would create drama because she can't cope with impending rejection and abandonment if a narcissist wants to do something at work and keeps hitting being stormwalled or believes himself believes that he is discriminated against because of envy he is not getting his due so he is going to create a passive aggressive drama but it's still drama and the idea is to attract attention to the damage that he can inflict so narcissists and psychopaths they create destructive dramas and it's a demonstration of their potential and power to hurt people destroy things and institutions and so on so while the borderline codependent and so on and so forth these kind of people create drama in order essentially to engage in distorted object relations with external objects in other words with intimate partners the psychopath analysis is the goal oriented and they are likely to engage in drama either to motivate someone to accomplish some outcome or to demonstrate how ruinous how dangerous how threatening how destructive they can be giving if they're not given what they have demanded what they've asked for so it's a kind of blackmail it's not emotional blackmail it's technically criminal blackmail you know you don't give me the promotion I'm going to destroy this company you don't give me what I want I'm going to cheat on you I mean this is narcissistic and psychopathic reactions and they are actually the lines are blurred because as I keep saying in my videos these patients transition between the various personality disorders and within each personality disorder they transition between three states overt collapse and covert so all these drama or dramatic behaviors come into play and the nicest most loving and caring and empathic borderline can engage in drama in order to convey and communicate to her intimate partner how much she needs him how much she wants him how afraid she is of abandonment and rejection but then if he doesn't pick up the thread if he doesn't respond in kind if he refuses to participate in the drama that she had initiated she flips on a dime and becomes a secondary psychopath her drama is malevolent her drama is intended to convey the message I'm going to hurt you badly and I can do it again and I'm going to do it again so better be careful so you see drama runs through all these personality disorders and it's not a fixed feature and it doesn't have mostly it doesn't have to do with attention although all these people are infantile all these patients are essentially infantile they're regressive they regress to early childhood and we know that children do use temper tantrums and so on in order to secure attention we are forgetting that children also use rage attacks and displays of misbehavior to secure outcomes to manipulate the adults and these two features are alive into adulthood in people with personality disorders they are they are children in adult bodies and this is how we should interpret their dramatic behaviors but add to this life experience knowledge thoughts, tools that children don't have and you're beginning to understand how seriously dangerous drama is dramatic behavior is drama queens and drama kings are not an oddity they are not an eccentricity they are not a sitcom they are probably the most dangerous among the personality disorder group they are drama dramatic behavior in cluster B leads to all the outcomes that we are terrified of including aggression including blackmail and so when we see a drama queen or a drama king we should be doubly careful doubly cautious triply worried and concerned with heightened defenses this is a major side drama including on a first date drama you see drama walk away walk away it's an exceedingly bad sign so I opened with my own personal drama and I have depleted my dramatic reserves like real Broadway I'm close for the season