The anxious-depressive position, within the narcissistic spectrum, is not identical with a diagnosed "anxiety disorder" or "major depressive disorder." It describes a mode of organizing self-worth around the anguish of loss, guilt, and the silent fear that "something inside me is inadequate" and that, sooner or later, this will lead me to lose the other, the world, or myself. It is a position to which the psyche returns whenever existence seems to hang on the question: "will the relationship endure? am I worthy enough not to be abandoned? can I bear what I feel wit In the anxious-depressive position, narcissistic functioning is organized around a core that could be formulated as follows: "if I lose what I love or if I prove inadequate, I risk losing myself as well." As long as the psyche moves within this position, the need to anticipate, to control, to over-care, to reassure the other and the self becomes stronger than the capacity to remain in a milder, ambiguous, and mutual reality. The world ceases to be simply a shared field of experience and is transformed into a field of constant evaluation: "am I enough? am I doing everything right? will I be abandoned? am I to blame for All of us, at some point in our lives, have passed through moments of anxious-depressive organization: nights when we recycle again and again a phrase we said, convincing ourselves that "it was surely misunderstood," days when we feel that every small ambivalence of the other means rejection, periods when energy drops, joy narrows, yet life continues "more or less," with a constant sense that something weighs on the chest and the gaze. These are the moments when we think: "maybe it's my fault," "if I had done something differently, it wouldn't hurt like this," "I'm not allowed to lose any more-will I endure it?"
Dimitris Seferiadis (Wed,) studied this question.