 drama, crazy making, chaos. Why? What for? What are the psychodynamic reasons behind such behavior or misbehavior? And what are the goals, if any? Why do people with borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, even antisocial personality disorder, aka psychopaths on the extreme end of the spectrum? Why do people with other personality disorders, histrionic, paranoid, with mood disorders, such as bipolar disorder, with a variety of other mental illnesses, why do they engage in dramatic erratic behavior? This is such a defining feature that the cluster B personality disorders are also called erratic, dramatic personality disorder, erratic dramatic cluster. So drama is not a minor thing. It's not a fringe event or occurrence. It's not atypical. Drama is at the very core of these mental health disturbances. And in this video, we're going to explore the why's, the how's, the where's, the when's, and the who's of dramatic, crazy making. My name is Sam Vakni and I am the former visiting professor of psychology and the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. And on, onward to this dramatic, crazy making video. You had my word. First of all, as you've already understood, well, some of you at least, crazy making, drama or dramatic behavior, chaos, dysregulation, acting out, even defiance or reactance, recklessness, all these are indications of mental illness. Mental illness can be severe personality disorders are considered severe mental illnesses. They could be mid, mid range, for example, mood disorders or anxiety disorders, or can be, they can be really extreme, for example, psychotic disorders. In all these disorders, there's an element of drama, element of theater play, element of production. The protagonist, in this case, the mentally ill patient or the mentally ill client is, Thespian is acting or play acting. It's like a character in a movie. And the whole thing feels very unreal. The escalation is immediate, disproportionate. And you want to, you want to grab these people by the lapels or whatever they're wearing and just shake them and say, wake up. What are you doing? Are you nuts? Why are you escalating? Why are you making this much, much worse? Where's the need? What's the need? Why do you need to be so dramatic? Why do you need to introduce an element of insanity, unpredictability, disproportionality, indeterminacy, fear into the whole situation? Aren't there other ways to tackle stress, catastrophizing, panic, anxiety, depression, adversity, conflict? Does it all have to go to hell in a headbasket? And there's no way to get to these people because when they are in the throes of an acting, their personal dramas, they're no longer with us. They're somewhere floating, detached. Indeed, many, many of these clients and patients, when they are being erratic or dramatic, unpredictable, arbitrary or capricious or dangerous or psychopathic, they are also at the same time dissociative. They experience amnesia or partial amnesia. They simply forget what they're done. They go through phases of derealization. It's as if reality is not real. It's a kind of fantastic movie-like, cinematic, theatrical space. And whatever they are doing to you and to themselves has no consequences, because it's just a script. It's just a piece of fiction. Depersonalization, which is another dissociative mechanism, they don't feel inside their bodies sometimes. So in many dramatic and erratic and crazy making moments, the person who is on a rampage, the person who is out of control is also dissociative. He's not there. He's not inside his body. Depersonalization, he's not in reality or he perceives, misperceives reality as unreal. He loses reality testing and that's derealization. Or there's a memory gap or a memory lapse for the entire period. Dissociation. Dissociation is actually, in this sense, amnesiac dissociation, depersonalization and derealization is a criterion in some of these mental health disorders, most notably in borderline personality disorder. So crazy making drama, theatre plays, rendering your life a movie. This involves dissociation. This involves slicing yourself off your own life, standing aside as an observer, sometimes a disinterested observer and just letting the energy out, letting it all go. There's a lot of, there are a lot of internal processes that are happening at the same time. For example, hyper introspection, immersion, immersion in oneself so that environmental awareness is at a zero or at a limit. Actually acting from within as if there's no outside, which is essentially a psychotic feature. This happens to narcissists in modification. It happens to borderlines when they're abandoned or rejected, especially cruelly and abruptly. This happens to psychopath when they see red, the famous Irish red mist. So there's a lot of withdrawal, a lot of avoidance of reality, environment, other people, including intimate partners and significant others, and kind of shutting the gates, withdrawing the bridge, being beyond positioning oneself behind a moat in a fortress under siege. Drama and crazy making are desperate attempts to fend off invaders and intruders and to redress the perceived asymmetry of power by acting crazy, by acting disinhibited, by being evil and cruel. I'm going to regain the power that had been has been taken away from me. I'm going to have the upper hand and therefore I'm going to be safe. It's an anxiety reaction actually. Now, each of the mental illnesses has a different combination of etiology or etiopathology and behavior. So the crazy making or the dramatic erratic behaviors in narcissism are not the same as they are in borderline or in psychopathy or in histrionic personality disorder or in bipolar disorder or in psychotic disorder or in paranoid disorder, the personality disorder. So we need to delve deeper to decipher and deconstruct the acts of crazy making and drama and the choice of drama because drama is a choice. Ultimately, these are choices. I mean, if you talk to borderlines or even narcissists and they will tell you, you know, I can't control it. I can't help it. That's who I am. That's of course nonsense. These are choices. They are learned choices. They are acquired choices. They are survival strategies and coping techniques developed over decades starting in early childhood. But still, ultimately, their choices. We know that there are choices because as the environment changes, these behaviors sometimes vanish. For example, in prison or in the army, we also know that following therapy, for example, dialectical behavior therapy, many of these behaviors abate or disappear altogether. So they are choices. Absolutely. There is willful control, there's voluntary control of these actions and inactions of these escalatory moves and defined conflictive postures are all utterly under control. Let's start with narcissists and paranoids. Now, before we proceed, you know my position. I think paranoids are actually narcissists. The paranoid says, I'm at the center of attention. It's a malign attention, malevolent, but I'm still the center of attention. And I'm important enough to be pursued by the CIA or aliens or whatever. So the paranoid positions himself as the pivot around which events and other people rotate is like an axis. And so there is a centrality, a self-imputed centrality of the paranoid, which is indistinguishable from the self-imputed importance of the narcissists, both paranoia and narcissism are forms of grandiosity. Now, in extreme cases, of course, paranoia is a hallmark of schizophrenia. And so it is psychotically tinged. But still, this is grandiose psychosis. So narcissists and paranoids, as far as I'm concerned, are in the same group. Paranoid personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. Now, why do these people engage in drama and in crazy making? Because they're prone to fantasy. And what is a fantasy if not a form of drama? A fantasy is a theater play. Narcissism and paranoid ideation are fantasy defenses, gun or eye. So the narcissist always inhabits a never ending tale or land of drama is his entire inner world is dramatic, populated by internal objects and introjects, which represent other people. And the same goes for the for the paranoid. There the game is afoot. There's some conspiracy unfolding. There's there's referential ideation, ideas of reference. Other people are busy, occupied in planning the demise or the end of the paranoid. And so everything and everyone revolves or revolve around the paranoid and the narcissists and this swirl, this cloud is the drama. The narcissists and the paranoid feel dead. They feel absolutely vacated, empty when their lives are routine and drab and predictable and safe and stable. They hate these things. Psychopaths hate the very same things for another reason because they have a very low threshold of boredom. They're bored easily. But narcissists and paranoics, they have a cognitive distortion. It's known as grandiosity. But how can you, how can you trust that you are perfect and brilliant and amazing and unprecedented and unique and a genius and super important, cosmically important and so on. So how can you trust any of this? If there's no drama around you, if other people don't affirm this and confirm it with their behavior or misbehavior. So grandiosity and paranoia are the twin engines of dramatic erratic behavior in narcissism and paranoid personality disorder because the drama and the crazy making aid a bet, buttress, uphold and protect the self-perception, the fantastic inflated self-perception of the narcissist and the paranoid and the cognitive distortion that filters out reality and end or reframes it dramatically, also known as grandiosity. With the borderline, the situation is not the same. I mean, the reasons are not the same. The borderline engages in dramatic behavior because she feels vulnerable. She feels that she's about to be hurt, that she's about to experience pain and the borderline is dysregulated. She is ill-equipped to regulate her internal environment. Emotions overwhelm her. Her moods are labile. She is like an ocean in storm. She cannot, she is skinless. It's as if she doesn't have a skin and everything immediately impinges on her inner core. If she, if she, the core, she believes that she is, which actually she doesn't have, but so she constantly experiences pain, being overwhelmed, drowning, and so she's vulnerable. As a defense against this vulnerability, most borderlines are aggressive. The aggression can be directed inwards and then the borderline becomes self-trashing. Self-destructive, self-harming, self-defeating, or the aggression can be directed outwards, which is the more common with borderlines. And then the borderline can even become violent or dangerous, especially when she switches to the secondary psychopathic self-state. It compensates, loses her defenses and acts out. So in the case of borderlines, the drama and the crazy making are a form of signalling, whereas many victimhood-oriented people virtue signal, there's virtue signalling, the borderline signals aggression. The borderline's crazy making and drama is a message. I am crazy, don't eff with me. I am unpredictable, don't scorn me. I am dangerous, don't abandon me. I am dramatic, don't drag me down. So vulnerability plus aggression, aggression, compensatory aggression. This is the background to the borderline's dramatic, erratic behaviors. What about psychopaths? Psychopaths are exactly the opposite of borderlines, whereas the borderline feels constantly exposed, constantly unprotected, unsafe, open to assault, vulnerable, fragile, broken, damaged, brittle. Psychopath feels exactly the opposite. Psychopath feels that he is invulnerable, impermeable, invincible, untouchable, king of the world, king of all worlds, emperor or whatever he sees. This invulnerability is actually an engine of drama and crazy making, because the psychopaths feel, psychopath feels disinhibited. He believes that he is above the law. He is a rule unto himself. He, he makes the rules as it goes along. And yet they can be contradictory, of course, because borderlines suffer from identity disturbance. Psychopaths do not adhere, do not conform, do not sign up to any set of values or beliefs or commitments. They are human beings, want to be imitation human beings, reconstructed on the fly, time and again. So you never come across the same psychopath twice. It's like a river. And so this invulnerability leads to a behavior which doesn't obey or conform to social mores, cultural edicts, sexual scripts. Psychopath feels he can do anything he wants. And so this leads to coercion and reactance. Psychopath is defined, he's conchumacious, he rejects authority. And he is, he imposes on other people his will. And his will is the ultimate and only arbiter that everyone has to succumb. And it's subjugation or nothing. And so the psychopath drama and crazy making are manipulative. They're Machiavellian. They're ways to render people submissive, to tame them, to brainwash them, to coerce them into behaving ways, ways which please the psychopath or cater to his goal orientation, fulfill his goals. Isrionics, isrionics are also dramatic. People with isrionic personality disorder are also, of course, dramatic, drama is, I mean, is the core feature of isrionics. And they're crazy making, but again, for a completely different set of reasons. They crave attention. They would do anything to gain attention. And that includes hypersexualize and objectify themselves. They and the attention is embedded in a fantasy. And that is why the isrionic person misjudges reality. For example, the isrionic person misjudges the intensity of intimacy. So a histrionic would claim to be in love with someone or about to marry someone when that alleged intimate partner is not even aware of this. So isrionics escalate generally everything. They escalate their emotionality ostentatiously and conspicuously. They escalate their sexual behavior. They dress provocatively and skimpily. They misjudge the depth and intensity of relationships, especially intimate relationships. Everything is blown out of proportion. Everything is bigger than life to be histrionic is to be dramatic. And the drama in this case and crazy making have a single a single role in mind and that is to obtain and to secure supply. Attention, not supply, sorry, attention. Now, the narcissist is focused on narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is intended to support the same self inflated grandiose view of the narcissist. The histrionic is hell bent on obtaining any kind of attention just to be noticed. It's as if when she is not noticed, she doesn't exist. So it's a need to be seen, writ large and gun or eye and embedded in a fantasy of I am being seen all the time, even when this is not happening. And these are the root causes of the dramatic behavior of the histrionic. In bipolar disorders, we have the manic phase. The manic phase involves losing touch with reality and again, entering a fantastic space, which is very much theatrical and cinematic where everything is possible. And that's why bipolar is in the manic phase. Engage in hair, brain, crazy schemes, get rich, quick schemes or amazing inventions which will change the world or, you know, adventures, circling the globe in 80 hours or, you know, crazy things. So the craziness of the borderline, the insane dramatic element in the bipolar, I'm sorry, the insane dramatic element has to do with a misapprehension of limitations, shortcomings, one's own weak points and flaws and frailties. And so at that point, reality testing is impaired beyond measure. The bipolar perceives himself or herself as divine in the sense that she's omnipotent or omniscient. And there is a convergence here between the manic phase of bipolar and narcissism. And I encourage you to watch the two or three videos I made about this misdiagnosis when manic bipolar is a misdiagnosis, narcissism or vice versa. At any rate, the crazy making in the drama in bipolar are intended to support the plans, the unrealistic, grandiose plans of the bipolar. Not the grandiosity itself because the bipolar is utterly convinced. It doesn't need any proof. Bipolars do not seek narcissistic supply, unlike narcissists. The narcissist is vulnerable, is fragile. The narcissist doesn't fully trust his own grandiosity. So the narcissist needs constant reassurance that he is the greatest of them all. The bipolar doesn't. The bipolar believes himself to be Godlike anyhow. He doesn't need anyone to tell him that. If people are stupid enough to not notice that, it's their problem. But he does need reassurance and succor when it comes to his super insane, unrealistic, crazy making grandiose plans. And that's where the drama comes in. And finally, in psychotic disorders, the drama and the crazy making are the direct outcome of the inability to tell external reality from internal reality, something known as hyper reflexivity. The psychotic confuses his internal space with the world out there. And because of this confusion, many processes which are internalized in healthy people and even in not so healthy people, many internal processes in the psychotic person are externalized. And because internal processes, mental processes, by definition involve all kinds of defense mechanisms, ups and downs, repression. There is forbidden material, trauma and so on so forth. The inner world is very chaotic, very, it's not structured. It's chaotic, it's volcanic. It's an earthquake, constant earthquake with prequakes and post tremors. That's the inner world. When this inner world is externalized and misperceived as reality, of course, behaviors become very dramatic, very erratic, very unpredictable, very crazy making. And you can see it, for example, in the movie Joker, which is a masterpiece for all ages. This was a brief overview of dramatic behaviors and crazy making. If you're in a relationship with any of these people, with the narcissist, with a borderline, with a psychopath, with a histrionic, with a bipolar, with someone who has a psychotic disorder, you are in for a roller coaster of your life. It could be even dangerous or risky because of their inability to tell reality apart from theater. They can end up shooting you in one of the scenes with a prop, so to speak, metaphorically speaking. You could become a victim of their own need to reenact their internal environment and then reenact the world to conform to it. You could be collateral damage. Here, you have been warned.