… from an insightful blog post by Sonia Neale. Here is the text of the post:

Borderline Emotional Anaphylactic Reaction: Mindfulness and Acceptance

By SONIA NEALE

Sometimes, the smallest things in life can cause the greatest pain and physical reaction.  A bee’s sting is almost invisible to the naked eye and yet can easily kill someone when they have an allergic reaction.  A mere critical stinging comment can just as easily send a person suffering Borderline Personality Disorder into “emotional anaphylactic shock.”

When a person has a life-threatening reaction to the poison from a bee sting, an ambulance is called and the person is taken to hospital where they receive treatment for their illness as well as respect and dignity but when someone suffering an emotional reaction to life circumstances presents at emergency, they are sometimes treated with rejection, intolerance and disdain.  People can die from a bee sting and Borderlines can “die” from their own personal rage and self-hatred.  If you present at emergency with a swollen face and throat unable to breathe with all your body organs shutting down, is some doctor or nurse going to say, “OMG, it’s a tiny bee sting, how bad can that be, look at you, get over yourself,” like they sometimes do when Borderlines present at hospital with similar symptoms.

Yet both types of people are in much pain and danger.  One is considered entirely physical and the other is considered entirely emotional.  Or is it entirely emotional?  When a sensitive person with a history of trauma has an emotional “bee-sting” reaction to someone’s criticism there is a definite physical reaction.
Borderlines tend to be hypervigilant, which means they live with permanent muscle tension and a certain excess of adrenaline pumping round their system at any given time.  So when criticism hits, the body goes into an emotional anaphylactic state where cortisol floods the brain and body system and a type of blackout occurs where nothing anyone says or does registers.  Your body has gone into “shock.”  When I used to get into such a state someone could have cut my arm off and I would not have noticed.

Things are said during this time that are simply appalling.  I have used language I would not use in normal everyday life.  I have said things that are deeply hurtful and as my husband has said, “you can mend a vase but the cracks are always there for those to see.” My therapist says it is best to repair those cracks with gold. Her favourite quote, by Barbara Bloom is “When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold, because they believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.”  I prefer her take on this matter.

Therapy has taught me that my perception of events and criticism is usually erroneous.  Even if people are critical and disrespectful, it is about them and not me.  If my ideas get criticized it is not because I am a loser and I deserve to die, it is because we both have a different belief system and ways of handling situations.  There is no right or wrong, just opinions.

I have criticized my therapist on many occasions including recently when she raised her colleagues’ fees in the light of almost certain public benefit cuts.  Her reply was that her practice survived before the benefits were given and hopefully will survive after the benefits are cut.  She raised her fees because she valued herself and her colleagues.  She did not feel the need to get upset or question herself or her actions because she believed that what she was doing was the right thing to do.

It is this sort of self-valuing that is empowering to people like myself who always feel others are more valuable and powerful than I will ever be.  When we assert ourselves and say, “No, I don’t like that because….” we can start to realize that it is ok not to people-please all the time.  I said no to unpaid overtime because I value myself as a worker otherwise I will feel undervalued and get resentful.  Like my therapist I am worth it.

Mindfulness and radical acceptance of people and situations as in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy is the key to, well, if not happiness, then a more content and peaceful self.  It is the road to what Abraham Maslow calls self-actualisation – autonomy, independence, few but deep friendships, a philosophical sense of humour, resistance to outside pressures and transcendence of the environment.  These are the things I strive for and have spent much time in therapy trying to get a good grasp of.

A great book, which promotes self-actualization that I am reading at the moment, is “The Art of Happiness” by the Dalai Lama.  While I may not quite reach the emotional plateaus that His Holiness is capable of, I can certainly learn how best to inoculate myself when swarms of emotionally stinging bees are trying to infiltrate my brain and body system.

See larger image The Art of Happiness, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Handbook for Living (Hardcover) By (author) Dalai Lama List Price: $25.95 USD New From: $14.48 In Stock Used from: $6.97 In Stock Release date October 1, 2009.

Related posts:

1. DBT and Acceptance
2. What Diane Schuler’s story can tell us about emotional honesty and acceptance
3. A primer on Emotional Dysregulation and its role in Borderline Personality Disorder

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Mind Reading: Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen on Empathy and the Science of Evil
By MAIA SZALAVITZ Monday, May 30, 2011

Cambridge psychology professor and leading autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen is best known for studying the theory that a key problem in autistic disorders is “mind blindness,” difficulty understanding the thoughts, feelings and intentions of others. He’s also known for positing the “extreme male brain” concept of autism, which suggests that exposure to high levels of testosterone in the womb can cause the brain to focus on systematic knowledge and patterns more than on emotions and connection with others. (Oh, and yes, he’s also the cousin of British comedian Sacha “Borat” Baron Cohen.)

Baron-Cohen’s new book, The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, examines the role of empathy, the ability to understand and care about the emotions of others, not only in autism but in conditions like psychopathy in which lack of care for others leads to antisocial and destructive behavior.

What do you mean when you write about “zero negative” empathy?

Zero empathy refers to people at the extremely low end of the scale. They tend to be people with personality disorders, particularly antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). I focus quite a lot on psychopathy [the extreme form of ASPD] and also on two other personality disorders, borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.

The ‘negative’ is meant to be shorthand for this being negative for the individual but also for the people around them. It’s meant to contrast with what I call ‘zero positive’ empathy, which effectively describes the autistic spectrum.

[Autistic people] struggle with empathy just like zero negatives but it seems to be for very different reasons. I’m arguing that their low empathy is a result of a particular cognitive style, which is attentive to details and patterns or rules, which in shorthand, I call systemizing.

If we think about the autism spectrum as involving a very strong drive to systemize, that can have very positive consequences for the individual and for society. The downside is that when you try to systemize certain parts of the world like people and emotions, those sorts of phenomena are less lawful and harder to systemize. That can lead to having low empathy, almost like a byproduct of strong systemizing.

How do you account for people who are both highly empathetic and highly systematic, such as some of those with Asperger’s who are actually oversensitive to the emotions of others?

I’ve certainly come across subgroups like that. There are people with Asperger’s whom I’ve met who certainly would be very upset to learn they’d hurt another person’s feelings. They often have very strong moral consciences and moral codes. They care about not hurting people. They may not always be aware [that they've said something rude or hurtful], but if it’s pointed out, they would want to do something about it.

The other side of their moral sense is that they often have a strong sense of justice or fairness. They may have arrived at it through looking for logical patterns rather than necessarily because they can easily identify with someone, however.

People often think that autistic people are dangerous, like psychopaths, when they hear this idea that they have “no empathy.”

In a way, that was one of my motivations for writing the book. Low empathy is a characteristic of many different conditions or disorders. Often books are written where they either focus on psychopathy or autism but [not both].

We have to look at them side by side, and when we do that, we see that they are very different and it’s important to bring that out.

Is it the case, then, that autistic people are not good at the “mind reading” part of empathy, in terms of predicting people’s behavior and feelings, while psychopaths are able to do that but are not able to care?

I think the contrast between these two conditions provides some evidence for that dissociation within empathy. People with psychopathy are very good at reading the minds of their victims. That’s probably most clearly seen in deception. You have to be good at mind reading before it would even occur to you want [to deceive someone]. So you can see the cognitive part of empathy as functioning very well, but the fact that they don’t have the appropriate emotional response to someone else’s state of mind, the feeling of wanting to alleviate distress if someone’s in pain, [that suggests that] the affective part of empathy is not functioning normally.

What stunts the development of empathy in personality disorders?

In the book, I explore both early environmental factors and biological and genetic factors. I think it’s particularly clear in borderline personality disorder (BPD) that there’s a strong association between early environmental deprivation and neglect and abuse and later outcome of BPD. There’s an association [with abuse and trauma early in life] in psychopathy, but it’s not strong as in BPD.

What defines borderline personality disorder?

There seems to be quite a lot of difficulty in self-regulation, in the regulation of their own emotional state. A lot of people with BPD also have depression. Many are suicidal. Many have had a history of feeling attacked or uncared for’ they are almost hypersensitive to possible threats from others.

They react almost with a hair trigger — if they perceive they are being attacked, they go on the attack. People with BPD can be so preoccupied by their own sense of not being cared for and not being understood that they can become blind to the impact of their own behavior on others.

So how would you address increasing empathy in these conditions?

There are interesting and imaginative new approaches to treatment for empathy. Some are medications like oxytocin. Some are psychological treatments like Peter Fonagy’s work on mentalization therapy. I haven’t ever watched it done but the idea is to encourage the patient to stop and think about others’ thoughts and feelings. It’s particularly useful for BPD. When someone with that condition is mostly focusing on themselves, the therapist prompts them to take other people’s perspectives. And just through repetition and practice, people get better and better.

I don’t see how that would work with psychopaths.

People are doing some clinical approaches with psychopaths too, like getting them to meet their victims. That’s obviously got lots of traumatic risk attached to it [for the victim], but again, it’s an exercise in perspective-taking.

I think if we take seriously the idea that behavior is the result of the brain — that having low empathy [is] the result of the way the empathy circuit is functioning or has developed — it does raise moral questions. When someone is acting with low empathy, why do we judge them as bad and punish them? It does shift the locus of where [they should be treated] philosophically, from the criminal justice system to health care.

Don’t you think there are people who are actually evil, who know what they’re doing is wrong and harmful but choose to do it anyway?

I argue in the book that I don’t find the term evil very useful. Once you are down at zero degrees of empathy, all kinds of behavior become possible. I don’t find it scientifically useful to use that term. Empathy is a scientific term in a way that evil isn’t. You can try to localize it in the brain; you can look for which part of brain is activated. It’s normative behavior. Evil is kind of the opposite of good, I guess, but empathy, as we were talking earlier, is quantifiable and normal. You can measure it and look for it, whereas you don’t see evil in the brain.

It’s argued that humans were able to evolve cooperation and altruism only by having a way to detect and punish those who didn’t cooperate.

I could see an evolutionary benefit for both empathy and lack of empathy too. Low empathy allows you to act selfishly, which could be in your interest, but high empathy fosters social cohesion and it’s good for the individual to end up as part of a social network.

I speculate that maybe most people end up in the middle, which may be the optimal position. It’s good to have some empathy, so at the very least you avoid offending or inadvertently hurting someone, but too much empathy might mean never completing your own projects.

How does your cousin Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of Borat, rate on empathy? His work can really make you cringe, but he must be excellent at mind reading to do it.

First of all, he and I have a family agreement that we don’t talk about each other. I respect his work. I think that sometimes that kind of comedy can create what you called a “cringe reaction,” cringing with embarrassment, but that has a purpose.

Why does empathy seem especially lacking in the teen years?

It’s kind of interesting that parents comment on adolescence as being a low point in empathy. But there’s still quite a lot of maturation going on in the part of the brain that involves empathy during that period. There could also be hormonal factors, particularly in males with the increase in testosterone. That could change empathy levels.

I’m struck that if you look at the “terrible two’s,” kids who have tantrums when they don’t get their way, and teens, at one level it looks like very little development has gone on. There’s a transition at around age four to becoming able to apprehend that others have different perspectives. You would imagine that empathy would almost reach a peak in early childhood, but it seems to have a long protracted development.

It seems to me that the terrible twos and adolescence are both the most intense periods of brain development. Could that be why empathy is impaired then?

That’s really interesting. I think brain maturation is one thing and also just the experience of relationships. I think that empathy has to have an environment in which to work, and that environment is relationships. Making mistakes in relationships is all part of learning to empathize.

There was an interesting study I was part of. Women who took extra testosterone were given the ‘reading the mind in eyes test.’ [The test measures how well people can read others' emotions by looking at their eyes.] A dose of testosterone lowered scores on this test. It was one of the first demonstrations that changing testosterone levels affects your empathy.

If you’re taking an evolutionary approach, it might be very adaptive if you have to use aggression for self-defense. You’d be more effective if you didn’t have empathy getting in the way.

A U.S. doctor tried to treat autism by lowering testosterone levels, citing your work as justification, although he actually didn’t get the research right. He just lost his license because he was using a “chemical castration” drug on kids to do this.

We haven’t considering [lowering testosterone] as a treatment to study for autism. I’m not comfortable with it ethically in terms of side effects. They misquoted [our research], and cited it as evidence that there was elevated testosterone in autism when, in fact, we haven’t shown that. They presented it as if we’re endorsing it, which I’m certainly not.

See more of Healthland’s “Mind Reading” series.

Find this article at:

http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/30/mind-reading-psychologist-simon-baron-cohen-on-empathy-and-the-science-of-evil/

You can buy to book here:

See larger image The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty (Hardcover) By (author) Simon Baron-Cohen List Price: $25.99 USD New From: $13.92 In Stock Used from: $9.88 In Stock

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1. Are Borderlines Evil?
2. Amazing new study on BPD from Science Magazine
3. Nice Article about Empathy and Coping with BPD

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Mindfulness

Thanks to truerecovery.org for an excellent summary of the skill of core mindfulness from DBT:

States of Mind
Reasonable Mind — This is when we’re viewing things logically and rationally. We consider thing analytically, and with calm, but without necessarily factoring in how we feel about things.

Emotion Mind — In this state, we view things emotionally. Our preference and desires. We tend to be more easily swayed in this state, and are more likely to reach for dysfunctional behaviors and coping mechanisms.

Wise Mind — This is our goal in Mindfulness. In this state, we consider things logically and rationally, while factoring in our likes, dislikes and desires; our feelings.

Mindfulness “What” skills
Observe — Look at things as the bare experience. Focus on what’s there. Allow yourself to see everything that’s there using all five senses. Allow your thoughts, judgments and feelings about the experience to go.

Describe — Put the experience to words. Describe everything about the experience, even those things you may consider unimportant.

Participate — Consciously and actively participate in the experience. Don’t just be an idle observer. This is your life, your experience… step inside and be part of it.

Mindfulness “How” skills
Non-Judgmentally — Separate the bare facts from your thoughts, judgments, opinions and feelings. “A driver is honking his horn behind you” are bare facts, “The driver behind you is mad at you” includes judgments, we are just assuming he’s angry, and we’re just assuming his honk is a message to you.

One-Mindfully — Focus all your attention to every task you do. When you’re driving, drive. When you shower, shower. When you talk with someone, talk with them. Put everything you have into everything you do, one thing at a time.

Effectively — Do things to get things done effectively, don’t worry about doing them the “right” way. What are you trying to accomplish? What does the situation call for? What will work in this situation? Keep past experiences and resentments out of the picture. Reach your goal as effectively as you can.

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1. Ruminating, Mindfulness and BPD
2. Borderline Emotional Anaphylactic Reaction: Mindfulness and Acceptance

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All this material is from “Peace is Every Step” by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who
is one of humanity’s greatest spiritual resources. He was, among other things, responsible for getting Martin Luther King to come out against the Vietnam War (a very controversial move for him at the time). King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work (unfortunately futile) for peace in Vietnam. He is the author of *numerous* books, all of them lovely and wonderful, among them “Being Peace” and “The Miracle of Mindfulness”.  Here’s some of what he has to say about anger:

“Anger is an unpleasant feeling. It is like a blazing flame
that burns up our self-control and causes us to say and do
things that we regret later. When someone is angry, we can see
clearly that he or she is abiding in hell. Anger and hatred
are the materials from which hell is made. A mind without
anger is cool, fresh and sane.  The absence of anger is the
basis of real happiness, the basis of love and compassion.

When our anger is placed under the lamp of mindfulnes, it
immediately begins to lose some of its destructive nature. We
can say to ourselves, ‘Breathing in, I know that anger is in
me. Breathing out, I know that I am my anger.’  If we follow
our breathing closely while we identify and mindfully observe
our anger, it can no longer monopolize our consciousness.

Awareness can be called upon to be a companion for our
anger.  Our awareness of our anger does not suppress it or
drive it out.  It just looks after it. This is a very
important principle.  Mindfulness is not a judge.  it is more
like an older sister looking after and comforting her younger
sister in an affectionate and caring way. We can concentrate
on our breathing in order to maintain this mindfulness and
know ourselves fully.

When we are angry, we are not usually inclined to return to
ourselves. We want to think about the person who is making us
angry, to think about his hateful aspects – his rudeness,
dishonesty, cruelty, maliciousness, and so on. The more we
think about him, listen to him, or look at him, the more our
anger flares. His dishonesty and hatefulness may be real,
imaginary, or exaggerated, but, in fact, the root of the
problem is the anger itself, and we have to come back and look
first of all inside ourselves. It is best if we do not listen
to or look at the person who is the cause of our anger.  Like
a fireman, we have to pour water on the blaze first and not
waste time looking for the one who set the house on fire…

When we are angry, our anger is our very self. To suppress
or chase it away is to suppress or chase away our self. When
we are joyful, we are the joy. When we are angry, we are the
anger.  When anger is born in us, we can be aware that anger
is an energy in us, and we can accept that energy in order to
transform it into another kind of energy. When we have a
compost bin filled with organic material that is decomposing
and smelly, we know that we can transform the waste into
beautiful flowers… We need the insight and non-dual vision
of the organic gardener with respect to our anger. We need not
be afraid of it or reject it.  We know that anger can be a
kind of compost, and that it is within its power to give birth
to something beautiful. We need anger the way an organic
gardener needs compost. If we know how to accept our anger, we
already have some peace and joy. Gradually we can transform
anger completely into peace, love and understanding.

Expressing anger is not always the best way to deal with
it. In expressing anger we might be practicing or rehearsing
it, and making it stronger in the depth of our consciousness.
Expressing anger to the person we are angry at can cause a lot
of damage.

Some of us may prefer to go into our room, lock the door,
and punch a pillow. We call this “getting in touch with our
anger”.  But I don’t think this is getting in touch with our
anger at all.  In fact, I don’t think it is even getting in
touch with our pillow. If we are really in touch with our
pillow, we know what a pillow is and we won’t hit it. Still,
this technique may work temporarily because while pounding the
pillow we expend a lot of energy and after a while we are
exhausted and we feel better.  But the roots of the anger are
still intact, and if we go out and eat some nourishing food,
our energy will be renewed.  If the seeds of our anger are
watered again, our anger will be reborn and we will have to
pound the pillow again…

…In order to have real transformation, we have to deal
with the roots of our anger – looking deeply into its causes.
If we don’t, the seeds of anger will grow again. If we
practice mindful living, planting new, healthy, wholesome
seeds, they will take care of our anger, and they may
transform it without our asking them to do so.”

So here is Thich Nhat Hanh’s anger meditation:

“When anger arises, we may wish to go outside to practice
walking meditation. The fresh air, green trees and plants will
help us greatly. We can practice like this:

Breathing in, I know that anger is here.
Breathing out, I know that the anger is in me.
Breathing in, I know that anger is unpleasant.
Breathing out, I know this feeling will pass.
Breathing in, I am calm.
Breathing out, I am strong enough to take care of this
anger.

To lessen the unpleasant feeling brought about by the anger,
we give our whole heart and mind to the practice of walking
meditation, combining our breath with our steps and giving
full attention to the contact between the soles of our feet
and the earth…After a while, our anger will subside and we
will feel stronger.  Then we can begin to observe the anger
directly and try to understand it.

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Mass General Hospital Mood Charting (thanks to Tides…)

DBT Skills Help:

Emotional Regulation Skills… from dbtselfhelp.com … from Borderline Personality From the Inside Out

Mindfulness Skills… from dbtselfhelp.com

Distress Tolerance Skills… from dbtselfhelp.com

Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills… from dbtselfhelp.com

DBT Family Skills Training… from middle-path.org

You can gain access to more DBT resources, to other pertinent files, and to advice from me and other group members by joining the ATSTP (Anything to Stop the Pain) Google Email List.

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Hope is important, because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear.

But the funny thing is, this quote is taken out of context. This quote is from a longer one called “Hope as an Obstacle.” A more complete quote is this one (emphasis is mine):

Hope is important, because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. But that is the most that hope can do for us – to make some hardship lighter. When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic. Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment. We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace, or the Kingdom of God. Hope becomes a kind of obstacle. If you can refrain from hoping, you can bring yourself entirely into the present moment and discover the joy that is already here.

Enlightenment, peace, and joy will not be granted by someone else. The well is within us, and if we dig deeply in the present moment, the water will spring forth. We must go back to the present moment in order to be really alive. When we practice conscious breathing, we practice going back to the present moment where everything is happening.

Western civilization places so much emphasis on the idea of hope that we sacrifice the present moment. Hope is for the future. It cannot help us discover joy, peace, or enlightenment in the present moment. Many religions are based on the notion of hope, and this teaching about refraining from hope may create a strong reaction. But the shock can bring about something important. I do not mean that you should not have hope, but that hope is not enough. Hope can create an obstacle for you, and if you dwell in the energy of hope, you will not bring yourself back entirely into the present moment. If you re-channel those energies into being aware of what is going on in the present moment, you will be able to make a breakthrough and discover joy and peace right in the present moment, inside of yourself and all around you.

- Peace Is Every Step (1991)

In the context of BPD, I take this as hoping for something to happen which will not happen without recognizing the current situation. In other words, you are hoping for something you wish to happen while ignore what actually IS. I would suggest that in this context hope is a form of “magic thinking” or “wishful thinking” and, without work and practice of effective skills, that hope is empty. Acceptance of the current situation is the first step toward change.

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When emotionally dysregulated a person with BPD is experiencing strong emotions in the moment, but the meaning of those emotions is almost always linked to something in the past that they are angry about or something in the future that they fear. This is an aspect of “ruminating.” It is a thought pattern that turns things over-and-over in their mind, looking for danger or embarrassment in situations. It is very “not in the moment.”

Often, the ruminating will extend over long periods of time, from hours to days, and will cause the person with BPD to look for hostile meanings to interactions with others. During this “search for meaning” the person with BPD may ask others about what they meant by certain actions or words while clearly implying that the BP believes that the other person is judging them or angry at them. Ruminating is a form of personalization and fear of judgment. The person with BPD will likely feel that situations which are not “about them” are, in fact, not only “about them” but are exclusively about how they feel about the situation.

Ruminating can lead to emotional reasoning – the situation in which a person’s feelings equal actual facts. If they feel that there is a malicious intent or a negative judgment in a given situation, there MUST be one and ruminating is a method of finding this negative and/or judgmental meaning. Ruminating most often occurs when a person with BPD either has time on their hands or is bored. It also can occur as the person with BPD tries and fails to fall asleep.
Ruminating can be combated with distraction with something the BP enjoys and engages their mind. Physical activities are a good salve for ruminating. Mindfulness, which is a component of DBT, also helps stop ruminating because the point of mindfulness is to be “in the moment” and not consider past or future events.

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You can read the transcript here.

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(snip)
Acceptance, mindfulness, values – how do we use them in dealing with
our emotions? We need to:

Learn to accept our feelings, without being dictated to by them and
without quickly acting to remove ones we do not like. Trying to get
rid of feelings only drives them underground, while simultaneously
giving them more capacity to control behavior without our awareness.
Acceptance of emotion requires another step, however.

Learn to watch our thoughts, without reflexively adopting the
worldview mindlessly structured by them. Thoughts are easily
programmed, and they are nothing to be right about – or wrong about.
They are just thoughts. Some of those thoughts will not be attractive,
because they are constantly being programmed by sources we do not
control. We will hear in our own minds the echoes of judgment, bias or
prejudice to which we are exposed nearly every day.

The point is not to “feel bad” about the existence of such thoughts in
our heads, nor to feel self-righteous about the thoughts that we agree
with – the point is to be more conscious, open and flexible in how we
translate thoughts into action. Knowing how to do that requires a
final step.

While staying aware of our feelings and thoughts, make mindful choices
about what we’ll actually do based on chosen values. Our emotions are
a legacy of our entire development as a species, and our thoughts are
an echo of our history. Fear, anger and desire are part of the human
condition. They can sensitize us to what is going on in the moment -
but we have to learn how to have them without being had by them.

The emotional imperative of “now” is just too automatic and mindless
to be trusted. We need to learn to be guided by our values and
choices, not just our emotional and cognitive programming. Human
beings are the only animals who can interpose mindful awareness and
values-based choice between urges and actions. Now, more than ever,
that is what we need.

If we do not learn how to be wiser, we have a difficult road ahead of
us as a species: expanding waistlines and expanding hate; indulgence
and suppression; rigidity and loss of control. Feel-goodism meets the
technologically expanded capacity for dehumanization. All linked to
the demand to change the emotion now.

We are conscious beings riding in a primitive emotional vehicle
programmed for another day and time. That vehicle is careering down a
mountain road with only a prayer to save us. Unless we learn to drive.
(unsnip)

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There are at least three ways of looking at the universe (and it’s
interaction with our minds). They are basically this:
1) The western way (or the “clockwork universe”). Because rationality,
science and technology is so ingrained in our way of thinking the model
of the universe is that of a giant mechanism. We (or bodies) are also
mechanisms. The mind/spirit/soul/self is some kind of “ghost in the
machine” – living inside it’s machine skin and going on after death to
another realm.
2) The Indian way (or “all the world’s a stage”). Every person and
thing is a hiding place for god – he (or the ultimate spirit – the pure
brahma – ok my spelling will be crappy and I don’t have time to look it
up) is reflected in you (in “your” ultimate spirit called “atman” in
sanskrit). God wears a “you” mask and a “me” mask. Basically, (in
computer terms) we are all particular instances of a class called
“spirit”. That is the “true” reality, the rest is illusion (maya). This
grew out of the society (which, with it’s caste system is very
role-based). However, Buddhist thought shattered that world-view (more
on that later).
3) The Chinese way. (or “organic systems” – in Chinese I think it’s
called Wu-Li). The universe and you are a tightly integrated organic
engery system. You are a natural extension of the world and the world
is a natural extenion of you. You can not exist without the world, it
can not exist without you. Think of the Yin-Yang and that symbol sort
of summarizes this position.

As Buddhism integrated Chinese concepts #2 and #3 sort of merged and
mixed. Buddha, however, pretty much dismissed “atman” (or essential
essence, see below).

OK, on the Buddhist thing. Buddha espoused three core concepts (called
the 3 “marks of existence” – he BTW had a lot of lists of ideas. Why?
because these ideas were not written down for hundreds of years, so the
monk had to remember them.) – they are:
1) Dukkha – suffering. Suffering exists and it exists because of a
basic inability of the mind to accept the state that it is actually in.
We thrist for “other” and cling to what we think we “have” (including,
paradoxically, our own mind).
2) Anicca – impermance. Every thing is in a state of flux, passing in
and out of existence, including ourselves and our minds. There is a
really interesting related concept called “Dependent Arising” (although
there are a number of translations of it). I don’t have time to talk
about that, but it is facisnating (and implies there is no creator of
the universe or beginning at all, BTW).
3) (OK here is the biggy in the Joseph Campbell sense) Anatta means
“no-self”. Buddha didn’t believe that we had a “core”
personality/mind/identity. This concept is that the mind (or self) is
made up of five “bundles”. A quote from the buddhism scripture (written
long after buddha died BTW):

“A chariot is neither asserted to be other than its parts, nor to be
non-other. It does not possess them. It does not depend on the parts,
and the parts do not depend on it. It is neither the mere collection of
the parts, nor it is their shape.:

Basically, we created the “charriot” in our minds and call it “me”. But
it is made up of parts that, on their own, can’t be called a charriot.
It is a concept that we label something with wheels and a seat and a
place for horses to pull (or race in like “Ben-hur”). But it is nothing
more than a label we slap on that concept. Buddha was suggesting that
our identity is the same way. There is no “you” there. Instead there is
a flux of feelings, thoughts, memories, sensory perceptions (or
“cognitions” – mental floral and fauna) that you throw together, slap
your name on it and say “hey that’s me!” However, are you the same you
as you were at 9 years old?

What does any of this have to do with BPD? Actually, probably a LOT. If
they feel that they have no core – they, according to the Buddha
anyway, might be experiencing reality as is really is. But it scares
the living sh*t out of them. Like doing acid? I think
it is probably a whole lot like doing acid. Nothing to stand on,
nothing to build on. You can’t build a castle on top of a river.

So, DBT borrowed more from Buddhism than mindfulness – it also borrowed
the concept of radical acceptance – deep acceptance and knowing of the
way things REALLY are. If you can’t accept it, if you cling to that
illusion, if you feel that your mental afflictions are real, then you
are in for a whole lot of suffering (see “mark of existence #1″). But
the interesting things is: what if our BP’s are actually MORE sensitive
to the “actual” reality than we are? Sure, it’s scary, but it might be
more “real”? That, of course, only applies to their sense of “self”,
not the impulsiveness and the emotional dysregulation. I think there
was a psychologist that called schizophrenics “the hyper-sane” (but I
think he became a Scientologist and disavowed psychiatric meds and
stuff). Something to think about.

Anyway, that was fun. As you know I find Buddhist thought/philosophy
very interesting.

Related posts:

1. BF Skinner meets Buddha with DBT

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Underlying this skills-based approach is Dr. Linehan’s belief that borderline individuals are deficient in emotion management skills. According to her bio-social theory, borderline personality disorder results from a biologically based emotional vulnerability (high sensitivity, high reactivity, and a slow return to baseline) in combination with environmental factors that invalidate emotions over time and thwart the use of skills. This is a controversial departure from the psychoanalytic community’s view of borderlines as deficient in personality structure and personality functioning. In fact, Dr. Linehan advocates a name change for the much maligned borderline diagnosis, proposing instead the label of “”emotion dysregulation disorder”" and a reorganization of diagnostic criteria.

http://www.groupsinc.org/pubs/GC_0402_skinner.html

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2. Buddha and DBT
3. Some resources on the web

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When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you donít blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change. One day in Paris, I gave a lecture about not blaming the lettuce. After the talk, I was doing walking meditation by myself, and when I turned the corner of a building, I overheard an eight-year-old girl telling her mother, “”Mommy, remember to water me. I am your lettuce.”" I was so pleased that she had understood my point completely. Then I heard her mother reply, “”Yes, my daughter, and I am your lettuce also. So please donít forget to water me too.”" Mother and daughter practicing together, it was very beautiful.

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