freakingID

I find this totally fascinating! I don’t like the way the author flip-flops genders when using third person singular personal pronouns, but I guess this isn’t about grammar — is it!

Credit: This post is basically a re-post of info from somewhere else: http://samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders32.html, by Dr. Sam Vaknin.

The masochist has been taught from an early age to hate herself and consider herself unworthy of love and worthless as a person.

Paul says: I don’t think it has to be an early age — or, at least, I think that phrase needs qualified better. How early? Also, I think “has learned” is better than “has been taught.” That better implies that this conditioning is a result of the person’s experiences, rather than some deliberate conditioning imposed by someone else.

Consequently, he or she is prone to self-destructive, punishing, and self-defeating behaviors. Though capable of pleasure and possessed of social skills, the masochist avoids or undermines pleasurable experiences.

Paul says: They may be friendly and personable, but when the going gets good, they can’t help wrangling it in a negative direction.

He does not admit to enjoying himself, seeks suffering, pain, and hurt in relationships and situations, rejects help and resents those who offer it.

Paul says: Avoiding happiness at all costs, because they don’t believe it’s their right to have it. Anyone trying to help is just setting them up for a fall.

She actively renders futile attempts to assist or ameliorate or mitigate or solve her problems and predicaments.

Paul says: Nice sentence (NOT.) That just means they will make half-hearted attempts to dig themselves out of misery and find happiness. They are intelligent enough to realize they have problems needing solved, and that they need to take action. Their deep-seeded belief that they are not worthy, however, is not related to intelligence, and works against it. Indeed, if happiness gets within reach, they will unknowingly sabotage their own efforts.

When someone asks them later “why did you do that?” and they respond “I don’t know,” they are speaking the truth: they don’t understand why they took action that seems to have deliberately derailed their happiness.

These self-penalizing behaviors are self-purging: they intend to relieve the masochist of overwhelming, pent-up anxiety. The masochist’s conduct is equally aimed at avoiding intimacy and its benefits: companionship and support.

Paul says: Being happy, successful, and having positive relationships is seen as an uphill battle that requires constant vigilance to maintain. They believe having these positive things is against their natural order (they don’t deserve it,) and so it is going to be difficult to maintain. That perceived difficulty creates anxiety. Removing sources of happiness, then, also removes the anxiety. That is, they don’t have to worry about trying to maintain happiness, which ultimately they believe is unmaintainable for them, anyway.

A simplistic example is to say it’s better to have never loved at all than to have loved and lost.

Masochists tend to choose people and circumstances that inevitably and predictably lead to failure, disillusionment, disappointment, and mistreatment. Conversely, they tend to avoid relationships, interactions, and circumstances that are likely to result in success or gratification.

Paul says: I used to call some people “King of the Dipshits,” because they would gravitate towards leading a group of negative, expendable people.

They reject, disdain, or even suspect people who consistently treat them well. Masochists find caring, loving persons sexually unattractive.

Paul says: If you begin to enjoy happiness, you become vulnerable, with something valuable to lose. Since they think they don’t deserve happiness, they fully expect to lose it, if they ever possess it. So, persons who try to bring them happiness are seen as harbingers of painful loss.

“How dare you try to make me happy, because sooner or later your efforts will diminish, and since I don’t deserve happiness, it will fall away, leaving me injured.”

The masochist typically adopts unrealistic goals and thus guarantees underachievement. Masochists routinely fail at mundane tasks, even when these are crucial to their own advancement and personal objectives and even when they adequately carry out similar assignments on behalf of others. The DSM gives this example: “helps fellow students write papers, but is unable to write his or her own”.

Paul says: Blah, blah, blah. Believing you do not deserve happiness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, literally.

When the masochist fails at these attempts at self-sabotage, he reacts with rage, depression, and guilt. She is likely to “compensate” for her undesired accomplishments and happiness by having an accident or engaging in behaviors that produce abandonment, frustration, hurt, illness, or physical pain. Some masochists make harmful self-sacrifices, uncalled for by the situation and unwanted by the intended beneficiaries or recipients.

Paul says: Someone recognizes their skill and hires them for a decent job. They see their boss as failing to acknowledge who they really are: unsuccessful and undeserving. What follows is a nearly-comic show of “I’ll show you, you never should have hired someone like me. You don’t know me at all.”

The projective identification defense mechanism is frequently at play. The masochist deliberately provokes, solicits, and incites angry, disparaging, and rejecting responses from others in order to feel on “familiar territory”: humiliated, defeated, devastated, and hurt.

Paul says: I want to say this is kind of like a criminal wanting to get caught, but I think I’m not on the right track, there.