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: trauma
5 Ways To Build Pandemic Resilience
According to a UN report, we are collectively living in the hardest time since World War II. Indeed, the coronavirus pandemic is responsible for an ongoing economic and health crisis. In challenging times like these, building resilience is crucial to surviving and thriving. What Is Resilience? Psychology Today defines resilience as “the psychological quality that allows some people to be knocked down by the adversities of life and come back at least as strong as before.” In simple words, resilience is a quality that enables an individual to bounce back from challenges like death, unemployment, and trauma. What is resilience theory? Resilience theory is a psychological framework used to understand what makes a person resilient or strong enough to withstand hardship in their life. Psychologist Catherine Moore thinks “it’s not the nature of adversity that is most important, but how we deal with it.” How Is Pandemic Resilience Helpful? While some people are naturally more resilient than others, anyone can build resilience. Having the ability to bounce back is essential to get through all kinds …
Mindsplain Book Review: “The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog”
What’s “The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog” About? The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog is a series of stories from a child psychiatrist, Dr. Bruce Perry, who applies his brain development and neuroscience expertise to study how traumatic experiences shape children’s behavior. Each chapter utilizes vivid yet straightforward illustrations to describe his former patients who have endured violence, abuse, and neglect. Simultaneously, Dr. Perry engages his readers to join him on a journey in understanding exactly what happens to the brain if a child is exposed to extreme stress. Readers will find their hearts swelled with compassion, empathy, and ultimately, hope. Key Takeaways from The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog The brain is capable of change despite severe trauma. In other words, healing is possible. Understanding this can provide even the smallest glimmer of hope throughout the darkest of times. The responses of traumatized children are frequently misunderstood. Dr. Perry shares stories in which family homes experience a similar theme-chaos and unpredictability. Given so, kids may respond with fear …
Sleep Tips for 2020
This is a comprehensive guide to better sleep. In this article you’ll learn six actionable sleep tips: The psychology of insomnia. Ideal conditions for sleep. How to stop nightmares. 7 actionable steps to sleep better. 8 sleep hygiene tools that get results. How to use “brain tapping” to fall asleep. Let’s get started. Psychology of Insomnia It’s useful to remember that, in one way or another, we all seek relaxation through sensations that bring us back to a state of complete, passive, dependency – the most profound of these experiences being the period in which we were nestled safely inside our mother’s womb. Sounds, beats, enclosed spaces can all take us back to this state, where letting go, relaxing, and falling asleep posed no challenge. Since sleep is one of the most natural things we do, insomnia is typically an issue with experience overriding this natural proclivity due to perceived risk to survival. This episode of Radiolab on sleep makes a compelling case that predation threat is one such environmental factor that could make falling asleep difficult. Difficulties falling …
Top 5 Reasons to Consider Psychiatric Medication
Introduction A surprising dichotomy of viewpoints seems to arise around the topic of psychiatry and management; the first is that psychiatrists are real doctors and psychotherapists are quacks. The second is that medication is for suckers, weaklings, and the desperate. The polarization I’ve observed about these topics is surprising considering all evidence seems to indicate that both work pretty well together. While it’s not my place to tell people they must be on medication (As in, legally I’m not allowed to), I can certainly tell you about my experience with medication as a supplement to psychotherapy, and why it may make sense to consult with a psychiatrist about your needs. 1. Step Outside the System Our personalities and individual psychologies are complex dynamic systems. Our character structures consist of many forces, mounting pressures, levers, sources of friction, algorithms, contingencies, etc. that come together to create an overall feeling of goodness or badness of some kind. The important point about our personalities being systems is that they seem to favor repeated, stable, and predictable outcomes, regardless …
Adolf the Cat: A Story About Trauma
Below is an excerpt from the article entitled: “Something Wicked This Way Comes: Trauma, Dissociation, and Conflict: The Space Where Psychoanalysis, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience Overlap” by Philip Bromberg, a leading figure in the world of trauma and psychoanalysis. I share it to add texture and depth to the term trauma–a term often tossed around without precision or a shared understanding. I’ll present some takeaways at the end of the post. However, the story stands alone as a parable about trauma. When I was a kid, an endless source of fascination was looking out of my bedroom window at our backyard garden to silently observe the mysterious interactions between the animals, birds, trees, bushes and flowers. But like the Garden of Eden, it received periodic visits from an infamous inhabitant of our neighborhood: A cat who was referred to by everyone in the vicinity as Adolf (I was a World War II kid). Adolf was an aggressive, predatory, seemingly fearless animal, whose viciousness and mean-temperedness terrorized the other neighborhood cats as well as most of …
Trigger Warning: Four Reasons to Remove the Word “Triggered” from Your Lexicon
The word “triggered,” which I used to hear only in mental health circles, has now fully permeated everyday language. What was once a term created to refer to the behavioral response (e.g., dissociation, panic, flashbacks) to cues resembling a specific, circumscribed, traumatic event, has evolved into having at least three additional common uses. First, the evocation of a painful emotion: “I was really triggered when she interrupted me and started talking about herself.” Second, a derivative of the first with a more narrow application, the elicitation of offense or political outrage: “The way the terms “poor people” and “racial minorities” were used interchangeably was highly triggering.” Third, its reappropriation for satirical use: “Stay triggered snowflakes” is Tomi Lahren’s, the provocative conservative political pundit, catchphrase. I confess to feeling annoyed with all of these uses, including the original use of the word. When the opportunity presents, I steer clients away from using this term, for reasons (beyond my own annoyance) I will explain. In no particular order, I list my reasons for cringing at the word …