BorderlineCentral
Your One Stop Source For Information On
Borderline Personality Disorder

Web www.borderlinecentral.com

Does Your Loved One Have Borderline Personality Disorder?
Discover how to cope and deal with your loved one's Borderline Personality Disorder.
Click here for FREE information.
 

Do You Have Borderline Personality Disorder?
Discover how to cope and deal with your Borderline Personality Disorder disorder.
Click here for FREE information.
 

Child With Borderline Personality Disorder?
Learn How to REALLY Help and Support Your Child.
Click here for FREE information.
 

Borderline Personality Disorder and Dialectical Behavior Therapy – Part Three

Dialectical Behavior Therapy is a specific type of therapy for people who have Borderline Personality Disorder, developed by Marsha Linehan, a psychology professor at the University of Washington. In Parts One and Two of this series, we discussed the background of Dialectical Behavior Therapy and some of Linehan’s theories. In this article, we will finish the discussion on Borderline Personality Disorder and Dialectical Behavior Therapy.

In Part Two of this series, we left off the discussion talking about how Linehan groups the features of Borderline Personality Disorder in a particular way, saying that she describes the patients as showing dysregulation in the sphere of emotions, behavior, relationships, cognition, and a sense of self. As a consequence of these situations, the person shows typical patterns of behavior.

First of all, evidence of “emotional vulnerability” in the person is shown. He/she is aware of having difficulty coping with stress, but may still blame other people for having unrealistic expectations and/or making unreasonable demands of him/her.

On the other hand, he/she has internalized the characteristics of the Invalidating Environment and tends to show “self-invalidation” by invalidating his/her own responses, and has unrealistic expectations and goals of him/herself, feeling ashamed and angry with him/herself when experiencing difficulty or failure to achieve goals.

These two features constitute the first pair of so-called “dialectical dilemmas,” which is a term referring to the Borderline Personality Disorder person's position tending to swing between the opposing poles (each extreme being experienced as distressing).

Next, the person tends to experience frequent traumatic environmental events. This is in part due to his/her own dysfunctional lifestyle, and is made worse by his/her extreme emotional reactions with delayed return to baseline, another characteristic of Borderline Personality Disorder. This results in what Linehan refers to as a pattern of “unrelenting crisis,” whereby one crisis follows another before the previous one has been resolved.

On the other hand, because of his/her difficulties with emotion modulation, the person is unable to face, and therefore tends to inhibit, negative feelings associated with loss or grief. This “inhibited grieving” and the “unrelenting crisis” constitute the second “dialectical dilemma.”

In Dialectical Behavior Therapy, “active passivity” and “apparent competence” refer to the opposite poles of the final dilemma. People with Borderline Personality Disorder are active in finding other people to solve their problems for them, and yet are passive in relation to solving their own problems. On the other hand, they give the impression of being competent in response to their Invalidating Environment.

In some situations, the person with Borderline Personality Disorder may indeed be competent, but his/her skills do not generalize across different situations, and are instead dependent on the person’s mood of the moment. This extreme mood dependency is a typical feature of people with Borderline Personality Disorder.

A pattern of self-mutilation or self-injury tends to develop in people who have Borderline Personality Disorder as a means of coping with the intense and painful feelings experienced, and suicide attempts may be seen as an expression of the fact that for these people, life at times does not seem worth living. These behaviors in particular tend to result in frequent episodes of admission to psychiatric facilities.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy is the name given to the theories proposed by Marsha Linehan, and this type of therapy has found success in treating those patients who have Borderline Personality Disorder.

About the Author

David Oliver is the founder of BorderlineCentral.com a one stop source of information on how to cope and deal with borderline personality disorder.

Back to Article List

If you are in a crisis please call:
1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Special Survey For Those
Who Are Caring For Someone With
Borderline Personality Disorder

3 Steps to Wealth, Success and True Happiness
Click here to discover the self help formula that can make money, help weight loss, heal relationships and much MUCH more.

More Love, Money, Confidence and Inner Peace
Click here for more information.

Improve Your Emotional Health
Reduce Your Stress Levels
Increase Your Brain Power
Click here for more information.