Splitting and reactions to perceived abandonment?

[Wilderhearts]

Hey folks  I'm happy to say I benefitted a lot from this community in years past, but haven't felt the need to visit for a while.

My therapist has already confirmed what I experienced from this person constitutes disorganized attachment, but would they also constitute splitting?

- Cycling between being very clingy, dependent, and emotionally enmeshed one minute, hyper-critical or dismissive the next (in a person who is normally hyper-independent and not critical)

- Asking how I want to work together (connective), then when I say I think we should work more independently but side-by-side (she was micromanaging me by critiquing everything I did instead of contributing and had completely eroded my self-esteem at this point), saying that I clearly want space and ditching me, only to run up to me with open arms and the sweetest sad bunny face, trying to make repair a few hours later (repair was successful but short-lived).  During repair she said she was feeling "rejected" because I was shrugging off her clingy and/or critical behaviour which she called "bids for connection."  I have learned she can masterfully reframe toxic behaviours with humanist language. 

- Being extremely defensive and dismissive when attention is brought to her hurtful actions (even in a gentle way and with consent to discuss).  I then asked if the way she treated somebody else was a little harsh and she went on about how it was justified, proud of it.  I pushed my point by saying that's how she treated me and calling her behaviour something similar to bullying.  She immediately said she "felt attacked" then asked me to qualify every opinion or perception I have as "just subjective and not objective, such as 'I feel your behaviour was bullying.'" I left the conversation and told her I was taking a break.  We both know I know reality is subjective - I literally couldn't do my job if I thought otherwise.  I recognized this as policing my words to deflect the conversation away from her harmful, toxic behaviour.  When I came back, I got the sad bunny routine again, then there was some listening and repair.

This was on an international trip.  We got to a stage where I thought we were past environmental stressors that seemed to be triggering all of this, and was looking forwards to things calming down and us having our usual dynamic, which didn't have any of this insane push-pull, criticism, or toxic defensiveness.  Then, when I got back to our room from a walk (I finally got some alone time), she was packing.  She gave me 20 minutes notice that she was leaving for the last 2 days of the trip.  When she got back the night before the flight out, she stayed somewhere she knew I wasn't - no communication except to tell me where she was staying. 

I would call this reactive abandonment for sure.  But I'm not sure if her ditching me is a "chase me" behaviour akin to frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, and I'm not sure about the scope of splitting, since she wasn't explicitly demonizing or devaluing me.

This was months ago and my neck (and soul) still hurt from the whiplash.

This was the second most trusted, safest person in my life, and this all spilled out in a 2 week trip.  Absolute nightmare that re-activated all of my childhood and adult trauma from PD abuse.

It's worth mentioning that her sister has diagnosed BPD.

[Wilderhearts]

There are actually other behaviours I'm wondering about as well:

Mirroring:
After the two week nightmare trip, in the time when we hardly spoke before breaking up, she decided to get her face pierced and get a tattoo with a similar theme as mine.  She doesn't wear jewelry and previously explicitly said she didn't want any more tattoos.  I was the piercing and tattoo girl in the relationship.  It all clicked and freaked me out when I learned she was coincidentally getting it at my shop (she apparently didn't know).  I then looked back and realized that once we started dating, her style started becoming more like mine.  Previously I shrugged all these things off as coincidence and just learning more about her that I didn't previously know.  My spidey senses went wild after I learned it was at my shop though.

[treesgrowslowly]

What you describe sounds like she was very reactive during this trip- and very likely she was emotionally dysregulated over and over. Your attempts to talk to her about her behavior resulted in her being defensive. 

My 2 cents...trying to feel close to someone who is cycling like that is going to be triggering for any of us who have suffered through childhoods with emotionally immature / mentally ill parents. I am affected by people who present those same erratic, confusing behaviors I dealt with from FOO. And if they expect me to help them or take over and parent them through their confused or upset state, that is also triggering. I have to pull away from people like that, for my own sanity.

Giving you 20 minutes notice that she's leaving is not healthy behavior. Any way you slice it, that is just not what someone who is 'regulated' would do.

In her regulated calm times, she may be a lovely person that you love hanging out with. But she's got a lot of different behaviors.

She might be someone whose behavior becomes more erratic the more bonded she feels to someone. You said she has felt like one of your most trusted people in your life. She may be suffering from abandonment melange which is something Pete Walker describes in his book and on his website. 

Trees

[Wilderhearts]

I've been aware since half way into the trip that there was a complete absence of emotional safety for me.  For months, I tried to figure out how to re-establish the emotional safety we had for three years, before realizing it was completely out of my control.

I've broken up with her and gone no-contact for an undetermined amount of time because I couldn't risk re-subjecting myself to that cycle.  It was just so extremely damaging.

I hadn't recognized the level of dysregulation.  She is so extremely "in control" when acting these ways.  She doesn't appear any more emotional in any way, in her expression or voice.  She doesn't become tearful or lash out.  She chooses words very precisely so her behaviour and words sound acceptable even when fundamentally toxic.

I do think the closeness during the trip, and being so far outside of her comfort zone, triggered these behaviours.  I also wonder if I had become something of an FP at this point.

What I found on abandonment melange sounds like that absolutely could have been her inner experience:

"At the core of the abandonment depression is the abandonment melange – the terrible emotional mix of fear and shame that coalesces around the deathlike feelings of depression that afflict an abandoned child. Surrounding the abandonment melange of the flashback are perfectionistic and endangerment cognitions and visualizations of the toxic inner and outer critic (See my articles on the critic), and at the surface is the self-destructive enactments of the fight, flight, freeze or fawn responses (See "A Trauma Typology")."

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi Wilderhearts,

I am glad you took those steps. I am sure it wasn't easy for you to go through all of this. I am sorry you've had to go through all of this.

In my learning about trauma, I came to realize it is just so very sad and heartbreaking that early attachment trauma from childhood, are carried with us into adulthood in these ways. Abandonment melange helped me to understand a lot about how childhood trauma affects the adult relationships.

Good for you for looking at this. I hope you are doing well and tending to your self in good ways right now.

Trees

[Wilderhearts]

thanks, Trees.  I always appreciate your very thoughtful and kind words.