LOVE, ADMIRATION OR SAFETY?
WHICH ARE YOU SEEKING?
UNDERSTANDING PSYCHOLOGICAL ADAPTIONS IN TRAUMA INFORMED CARE, COUNSELLING AND SOMATIC PSYCHOTHERAPY
One of the things we have endeavoured to achieve through our Trauma informed Somatic Counselling Online professional certificate program is to offer a genuine middle way between two worlds that have traditionally remained somewhat disconnected.
On one side, we have conventional clinical psychotherapy and psychological training, which has laid down phenomenal academic foundations, but has also historically been elitist, prohibitively expensive, and, in many respects, rooted in outdated and pathologising models of human suffering. Models that have often overlooked the body, which we might understand as the active, living subconscious itself.
On the other, we have the growing world of holistic, somatic, and "alternative" therapeutic training, which can offer a wonderfully human and integrative approach, but sometimes lacks the depth and substance of the psychological foundations upon which our work should also rest.
Our intention has never been to reject the extraordinary contributions of traditional psychotherapy, but to bring those principles to life. To make them accessible, relatable, and, perhaps most importantly, genuinely applicable when sitting across from another human being who is suffering.
Over the years, I have encountered countless highly trained psychotherapists, both through teaching retreats and in my own therapeutic practice, who have confessed that despite years of education, and sometimes even years of clinical experience, they still felt profoundly ill-equipped to actually help people. They had accumulated enormous amounts of information, but struggled to translate that knowledge into something meaningful in the therapeutic relationship.
And this speaks to something I believe we have misunderstood culturally: complexity is not necessarily a measure of depth, sophistication, or effectiveness. Sometimes, the simplest approaches are the most potent. Yet we have inherited deeply entrenched, often elitist and patriarchal ideas about knowledge, expertise, and authority that encourage us to mistake complexity for wisdom.
One of the ways we attempt to bridge these worlds within our training is by introducing psychological territory that is frequently omitted altogether from more holistic or somatically oriented programmes, including the subject of personality disorders, or what psychotherapist Elinor Greenberg more compassionately refers to as personality adaptations.
Historically, these presentations have often been regarded as exceptionally difficult to treat, sometimes even untreatable. I have personally heard highly esteemed clinical psychotherapists suggest, within professional training environments, that there is very little we can offer such individuals beyond a sympathetic ear and a cup of tea.
And whilst we absolutely acknowledge that some presentations are profoundly complex, requiring specialist expertise and, in certain circumstances, a clinical holding environment, this is far from the whole picture.
But before we go any further, let me ask you a question.If you had to choose just one of the following three things, which would you say most profoundly influences the choices you make, the relationships you form, and the way you interact with yourself and the world around you?
Love. Admiration. Or safety.
Take a moment to really consider this. To reflect, feel in.
What are you ultimately seeking?
Love? Admiration? Or safety?
Be brave enough to be honest with yourself.
You might initially feel that all three are equally important. You might even discover that one is disguising itself as another. Perhaps your pursuit of admiration is really an attempt to secure love, or your pursuit of love is fundamentally about feeling safe.
But imagine being confronted with a situation in which you could only preserve one. Which would you be most reluctant to surrender? Which need, when threatened, would most powerfully shape your behaviour?
There is no right or wrong answer. And the question is not intended as a diagnostic exercise, but an invitation to become curious about the deeper motivations that shape our relational worlds.
Because what we begin to discover through this simple enquiry is that many of us recognise, to varying degrees, the very same relational patterns that underpin what clinical psychology has traditionally described as personality disorders.
And whilst that recognition might initially feel confronting, it need not be.
Enter Elinor Greenberg and the world of personality adaptations.
Drawing on decades of clinical experience specialising in narcissistic, borderline, and schizoid presentations, psychotherapist Elinor Greenberg offers a profoundly human way of understanding these patterns.
Rather than viewing them simply as pathological defects within an individual, Greenberg explores how they can develop as understandable adaptations to early relational experiences, developmental trauma, and environments in which fundamental emotional needs were not adequately met.
Within her framework, we can begin to understand three broad patterns through the needs and vulnerabilities that often organise them:
Narcissistic adaptations — the pursuit of admiration. A relational orientation in which self-esteem becomes heavily dependent upon external validation, recognition, and admiration. Beneath the apparent confidence or grandiosity may lie a deeply vulnerable sense of self, organised around avoiding shame and feelings of inadequacy. Very prevelent within our highly narcissitic culture - a culture that has learnt to trade love and safety for admiration ("success", followers, status, etc)
Borderline adaptations — the pursuit of love. A relational orientation in which the longing for love, connection, and emotional security is accompanied by profound sensitivity to abandonment, rejection, and relational instability. The individual may desperately seek closeness whilst struggling to trust that it will remain available.
Schizoid adaptations — the pursuit of safety. Not to be confused with schizophrenia, schizoid adaptations can be understood through a profound need to preserve psychological safety, autonomy, and a sense of self. Intimacy and closeness may be experienced as threatening, intrusive, or overwhelming, creating a tendency to retreat into independence, distance, or an internal world that feels safer than relationships.
Of course, these are simplified descriptions of far more nuanced psychological structures. Greenberg’s work explores much more than three competing motivations, and these patterns cannot be reduced to a single question.
But what an extraordinarily accessible starting point.
Suddenly, what might once have appeared to be intimidating, highly specialised clinical territory begins to feel considerably more understandable.
We are no longer simply looking at disordered personalities. We are looking at human beings who have developed different ways of protecting themselves, preserving their sense of self, and attempting to secure the fundamental needs that were once threatened.
And perhaps most importantly, we begin to recognise aspects of these adaptations within ourselves. At first this may feel alarming - for me I felt shame. But with a little time and right support, it can offer us a missing clarity about the extend of the relational wounding we carry, and how to heal. Without this missing piece, often the adaption itself is driving the healing "show" and is invisibly present in the therapeutic container. So it is vital we bring our hidden motivations out of what Jung referred to as "the shadow."
We may pursue admiration when our sense of worth feels threatened. We may desperately seek reassurance and connection when we fear losing someone we love. Or we may retreat into independence and emotional distance when intimacy feels overwhelming.
Experiencing these patterns does not, in itself, mean that we meet the criteria for a personality disorder. But it reminds us that the psychological mechanisms underlying these adaptations are not entirely foreign to ordinary human experience and that everything exists on a spectrum.
For practitioners, this recognition is particularly important.
Understanding our own relational adaptations, defensive patterns, and countertransference responses is fundamental to safe and effective practice. We cannot hope to understand the relational worlds of our clients without developing an awareness of the ways our own histories influence how we perceive, receive, and respond to them. Equally beginning to identify whether a client is driven by pursuit of love, admiration or safety becomes a tool for better understanding them and helps shape our care.
And this is one of the reasons I believe an introduction to personality adaptations belongs within a genuinely integrative counselling and therapeutic education.
Although this is not territory we explore extensively within our 12-month training, we believe that even a thoughtful introduction is invaluable. Not because we imagine that completing a self-study certificate qualifies someone to move cavalierly into complex clinical practice, but because these adaptations are far more relevant to everyday therapeutic work than many practitioners might initially imagine or be taught.
The underlying patterns of shame, abandonment, emotional withdrawal, relational insecurity, and defensive self-protection are encountered throughout therapeutic practice, whether or not a client meets any formal diagnostic criteria.
What is particularly encouraging about Greenberg’s work is that it demonstrates how profoundly useful an attuned, relational, compassionate, and psychologically informed therapeutic approach can be, even when working with presentations traditionally considered highly complex. Interestingly her book essentially reflects much of the model we teach suggesting that quality care isnt necessarily fundamentlaly complex - although it may take time to develop skill and competency.
And in many ways, this is precisely what we are seeking to cultivate.
With continued practice, appropriate supervision, growing competence, and a clear understanding of the limits of our expertise, the principles introduced throughout our training can provide a meaningful foundation for understanding and supporting a much wider range of human suffering than students might initially imagine.
We are not suggesting that personality adaptations never specialist knowledge or additional training. Rather, we are challenging the idea that this territory must remain so intimidating, inaccessible, or shrouded in clinical complexity that it cannot even be meaningfully introduced to developing practitioners.
Because when we begin to understand the human needs beneath the adaptations, the work itself becomes less mysterious.
Not because we have somehow simplified the complexity of the human psyche, but because we have made the work of understanding it more human.
And perhaps that is the real middle way: not abandoning psychological depth in favour of simplicity, but discovering that genuine depth need not be complicated to be profoundly transformative
COUNSELLOR AND INTEGRATIVE THERAPIST SPECIALSING IN TRAUMA AND SOMATIC APPROACHES TO HEALING AND WELLBEING: FOUNDER & DIRECTOR OF ISOHH LTD
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