In escalation, the core-styled are centrally seeking to evoke connection/attachment/rapport where they feel it missing. In the escalating process, however, many additional variables emerge; the conflict itself tends to create rupture which can hugely increase the feeling of lost attachment. The protestive anger, meant to shake the distancing other into contact, typically results in the opposite; massive shutdown, withdrawal and unspoken shaming/blaming. During this process the core-styled commonly regress into desperation and primitive anger. An unconscious goal that begins to form during these escalations, that is not generally acknowledged, is to induce primitive acting-out behavior on the part of the part of the distancer, so as to prove that they have badness too, thus reducing the terrible feelings of ostracizing shame/badness in the escalated core-styled.
About Orin Borders, Ph.D.
Orin Borders, Ph.D, a psychologist in private practice with a long standing interest in the Marriage-Of-Opposites, is the originator on this site.