What Recovery Looks Like for those with Borderline Personality Disorder

in terms of recovery as we see it I would say to generalize there's two different trajectories and this gets back through something we mentioned earlier about how some people progress in ways differently from others in the best of cases a person looks like they've just moved beyond having a borderline disorder the way we would talk about it clinically perhaps slightly theoretically is they've just integrated their sense of self they have taken aspects of their psychological and emotional world that they use to project an experience as outside of themselves very often angry or aggressive parts of themselves that we're always perceived as being the outside reflect on them see okay that's part of me and our message to people is always you know it's better if something is in you to recognize it because then you can learn to master it if you don't recognize it instead of you being able to control it it controls you so people integrate these fragmented and sometimes unacknowledged parts of themselves they develop a much greater capacity than to modulate their emotions when they're really angry about something that happened they can remind themselves in a way that's partly an effort to begin with them then becomes more spontaneous yeah I'm really pissed that so-and-so we're so late for dinner kept me waiting but then last week they did this favor for me so like to bring the different parts of experience together so it's woven into a context that includes negative and positive and therefore if not eliminates significantly cuts I can say eliminates the extreme reactions one certainly has a right to emotional reactions both negative and positive but it just eliminates those extreme reactions it's wipeout any other feeling about the person in the moment you have an integrated sense of self and an integrated sense of others and you learn to live with the complexity of yourself of the world and you learn to navigate life going through the rough spots without giving up and going through the happy spots realizing there is no paradise and therefore you've got this more mixed and complex realistic view of things and with that often people can go on in their lives and be the way I put it is as happy as a person has a right to be in the world since it's naive to think we can be totally happy every life has its difficulties and its limitations and its regrets and so on the other I would say this lady who I quoted is an example of that because he or she is catching herself in her well not only catching herself but beginning I'm interrupting myself she's beginning to notice her projections her reading into situations her imposing things onto others that really come from her and as she observes that and is cognizant of that her integration into the world became much better she was a woman who hardly had any friends because she was convinced everyone didn't like her because they might not return a phone call now when you get right down that experience but if we all concluded a phone call that is not returned means the person hates you then we none of us ever have any friends because we just isolate so she was able to integrate these momentary disappointments into a broader understanding of who the people in her life were to not kind of eliminate or just be blind to the positive side of things and therefore she could experience others with both more understanding more compassion for herself and more compassion for them and now she's having friends and she's dating in a way that's much more satisfying than she was doing before she's moving making moves in her career that looked very promising so that's one trajectory the other trajectory is saying to generalize on my outline to possibilities there are some people who as I see it never stop having that initial very negative reaction you know they'll be the trigger event they'll be a that quick spontaneous oh they hate me or this is hopeless or you know I might as well just give up but they catch themselves it's almost something you can measure in time the degree the length of time a person requires before they catch themselves and as treatment progresses they can catch themselves almost moment amias lee you know it just takes a very short time before the quick familiar and old reaction and the correction and adjustment but at least in my observation this particular group of patients don't as the first group I mentioned it get beyond having that first kind of extreme and usually negative reaction they can observe it more quickly correct it well enough to move on more risks realistically and successfully with the situation but I suspect there's something in their brain chemistry that is just prone to quick and extreme reactions but the more evolves cortical parts of the brain have learned to see that when it happens identified as something they have to deal with and then gain control and mastery over

Channel: Amanda Wang

Views: 100,513

Keywords: Yeomans, Recovery, FrankYeomans, TFP, VimeoHD

Id: mGKO97UUUI8

Length: 6min 57sec (417 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 18 2013