Is borderline personality disorder curable?
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) can be lifelong, but it doesn’t have to be in most cases.
All posts tagged: BPD
Are the parents of individuals suffering from BPD aware of the role they had to play in the development of this disorder?
The most widely held theory of etiology for BPD is that sufferers of borderline personality disorder have both a temperamental predisposition (genetic emotional sensitivity and receptivity to one’s emotional environment) AND an emotionally invalidating environment during sensitive developmental periods. I would add that the larger context for both of these etiological factors is an intergenerational history of trauma. Explaining this is beyond the scope of this question, but an important point to hold in mind. This context is necessary to answer the question, since we have to consider how likely parents are to really empathize with the pain of their children. And, the short answer is that parents are not likely to fully comprehend how they have contributed to their child’s BPD. The reasons for this are as follows: Parents don’t tend to be aware of their contributions to the disorder without significant soul-searching because they are the source of the emotionally-invalidating environment. “Awareness” as used in the original question, in my reading, implies more than just intellectual understanding. Parents can cognitively “understand” that they …
Are psychopaths aware of their condition? Do they care?
Why are we so interested in psychpaths? Cold-blooded psychopaths and criminals are fascinating (and terrifying!) creatures. They fascinate us so much because they seem to express normal animalistic feelings, like rage, without much fear of social consequences, shame, or rejection.So what is the subjective world of the psychopath really like? Admittedly, it seems quite foreign to me, but let me take a stab (figuratively speaking–no one was harmed in the writing of this post) at an explanation. Psychopathy and antisocial Personality disorders are personality pathology Psychopathy and antisocial traits are fundamentally deficiencies in personality (i.e., they are personality disorders). A defining feature of personality disorders are that the “symptoms” are baked into someone’s day-to-day experience, and are therefore invisible–like water to a fish. The psychology jargon for this is that the traits are “egosyntonic”. In treating personality disorders, the first step is to build a discrepancy between the patient’s sense of social reality and a more widely-held feeling of social experience. Personality disorders bloom in families that are both extreme, harsh, and/or abnormal in their …
“My truth”: Why Sufferers of Borderline Personality Disorder Treat Feelings as Facts
People with a Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis can often seem to overvalue their own thoughts and feelings. In the cognitive behavioral therapy tradition, this phenomenon gets labeled as “emotional reasoning.” The logic of emotional reasoning goes like this: what I feel or think with conviction MUST be true because I feel so strongly that it’s true. The problem, of course, is many things feel true that aren’t. For example, the earth feels flat, but isn’t. A watched pot may feel like it takes forever to boil, but it always does given the burner works and is turned on. Here’s where it gets complicated. People with BPD treat their thoughts and feelings as facts because: Caregivers historically have not taken their thoughts and feelings seriously at all (i.e., invalidating emotional environment) The invalidating emotional environment makes sufferers of BPD self-invalidate; this means, they don’t take themselves seriously! Why would someone who doesn’t really believe that their internal world matters treat their thoughts and feelings as factual? The answer is quite simple: it’s too painful to relive …