Personality Boundaries And Enveloping Aggression

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-18 02:26

It is known that aggression is felt by people as a threat if it "breaks through" psychological barriers and intrudes too far into internal boundaries. Then a person has to defend his sovereignty and expel the aggressor with available means. However, the aggression of aggression is different. It can be obvious, such as physical attacks, insults, threats directed at the opponent. Can be directed at the environment, such as smashing dishes or slamming doors. And there is also latent aggression. At its core, latent aggression is quite everyday actions, under which aggressive actions are hidden. After all, not all people can show aggression openly. They may be afraid of the answer, or they may fear that they will be condemned for aggressive actions, or they may simply consider open aggression indecent. A lot of people complain about their loved ones. Here, they say, I live in a family of parents / husband / wife / mother-in-law - wonderful people. But for some reason I somehow feel uncomfortable, I don’t want to see them, talk, I don’t want to. And by the way, people wish me well in every possible way, worry, worry, and "I don't even know why I am such an ungrateful bastard." Sam Vaknin called this kind of aggression or violence “enveloping”. At the same time, the aggressors use rather subtle, hidden methods of invasion into other people's borders. Even the victim often does not understand what is happening. Well, besides the fact that for some reason the victim is bad and for some unknown reason she dislikes these wonderful people who are next to her. Such aggression is based on various small acts of establishing control over the victim, creating his dependence, insecurity, feeling of helplessness, hopelessness of life, isolation, etc. charms. In the long term, this atmosphere undermines self-esteem and self-esteem. At the same time, the victim's personality acquires paranoid or schizoid features, becomes neurotic, which further opens the way for attacks by the aggressors. Vaknin identifies the following types of enveloping violence (aggression):

1. Gaslighting - there is a 1944 film Gaslight starring Ingrid Bergman. The husband, on the sly from his wife, searched the attic every night in search of hidden jewelry, and since he lit the lamps there, the total gas pressure decreased, and the light in the house began to dim, plus strange sounds were heard in the attic. Upon returning, allegedly from work, he convinced his wife that she had glitches, and almost brought her to psychosis.. So in the case of this type of aggression, the attacker convinces the victim that her feelings and suspicions are caused by some other factors include fatigue, hard work, magnetic storms, misunderstandings, lack of competence, and even latent mental illness and bad temper. Those. everything that the victim feels, what causes dissatisfaction, is immediately explained by the aggressor - "you just think", "you think so because you have neurosis / BPD / depression, but in fact everything is normal", "you are just too acute you react to ordinary remarks "," it's just that your family didn't give you the right experience, and you don't know how it happens normally. " Soon, the victim begins to really think that something is wrong with her, some kind of really illness that does not allow him to really look at things. And only the aggressor understands what is really going on, and you can't do without him.
2. Witholding - This includes measures on the part of the aggressor that do not allow the victim to somehow express their thoughts and emotions. They are forcibly detained. These are such actions as "boycott" (refusal to communicate), devaluation of emotions ("only idiots laugh at such jokes", "only mental patients get upset about such things"), devaluation of hopes and plans ("do you seriously think that you you can "," how can you dream of such a thing "),achievements ("any fool can do this"), cruel jokes, blocking communication (changing the topic, distraction to extraneous things during a conversation, bringing a serious conversation to a joke, postponing the conversation for later), accusation (when you start talking about your problems, then upset me and my pressure rises), criticism (if you have such thoughts, then you are not good enough (you are doing something), you have to do something completely different), denial of previously existing facts that caused negative emotions of the victim, labeling (“you say so because you are an idiot "). As a result of these measures, the victim begins to limit himself in expressing his opinions, emotions, desires and plans, as stupid, incomprehensible, inappropriate, unimportant. Those. forced to keep them.

This also includes such actions as "wounding by honesty" (don't be offended, but I'll tell you to be honest); ignoring; invasion of privacy (“I just cleaned your desk a little and read your personal diary a little, and why are you writing something indecent there that you can't read / yes I read your SMS / chat messages you hide from me); high expectations (you have to do much more because you have the ability to do so); tactlessness (inappropriate remarks, questions ("why do you still have no children"), actions, wishes ("you should write something completely different and not about this"), advice ("I would be in your place"), regrets ("In fact, I feel sorry for you"), unsolicited stories about my experiences; humiliation; shame; dissemination of information of an intimate nature; creation of various difficult situations in order to test the victim; control through other persons (for example, asks to keep an eye on neighbors, where and with whom he goes victim); unnecessary care; unnecessary gifts that are then required to be used; hinting actions (the daughter-in-law cries after a quarrel with her mother-in-law, and the mother-in-law demonstratively removes objects that can be used for suicide. The daughter-in-law is not going to do anything with herself, but the actions of the mother-in-law say, that she (the daughter-in-law) is too inadequate.) The victim has a feeling of inconvenience for the manifestations of his life, since these very manifestations cause a negative reaction from others. to make excuses, or in order not to make excuses it is better to hide it altogether.

Blanking - means denial of the value of another person, neglect of her, refusal to help her, share responsibilities, support. For example, a person fails the victim, does not attend an important meeting, does not provide the necessary documents, the husband refuses to allocate money for the necessary help) to a wife who is not working and sitting with a small child, because he does not consider this need important. And his money! The husband refuses any help to his wife with children, arguing that this is a woman's work. Parents refuse to take into account the interests of an adult child, independently rearrange the furniture in his room, make repairs there at their own discretion, and for the desired amount, throw out his things that they consider unnecessary. Unexpected arrivals of mothers to visit without warning and taking into account the time and the possibility of adult children (yazhem).

These models of aggression can be combined with each other, as well as interspersed with genuine care and fake care. For example, coffee in bed in the morning when the victim is still asleep and has no plans to wake up. The victim shows signs of discontent and receives 2 more valerian pills, from nerves. All these situations can cause a gradual breakdown of the victim's psychological barriers. Especially if the victim has such a quality as perfectionism and believes that he is really not so good and not so valuable. The situation becomes even more complicated if a "nice person" gets into a situation with enveloping aggression. Those.he does not even allow himself to resist, because “people tell the truth / want good”. In conclusion, I would like to note that this type of aggression occurs much more often than, for example, explicit aggression. Since the victim cannot always turn on his defense mechanisms, when due to personal characteristics, and sometimes because he does not understand what is happening for a long time, the consequences are quite sad and destructive. It seems that everything around is decorous and pleasant, and the boundaries of the personality are swept away. This applies not only to victims, real and potential, so that they are attentive to what is happening around. This also applies to the aggressors. Often these actions are not done out of malice, but out of a need to reinforce our own bad boundaries. Or the aggressors, again because of their own bad borders, do not understand that they have already invaded someone else's territory. So be mutually mindful of what's going on in your relationship.