Distancing and Detachment as an Interpersonal Strategy

When perusing the Internet and the recent research on BPD, I discovered a study from Dr. Harold Koenigsberg, et al. that seeks to understand the neural correlates of “distancing strategies” of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) patients. The study focuses on the use of “distancing” when faced with strong negative emotional pictures. The study analyzed brain activation – particularly in several emotional areas of the brain and the brain response to distancing. It says (HC means “healthy controls”):

… we aimed to better understand sources of emotional dysregulation in BPD by comparing the neural correlates of the passive processing of social emotional cues and of cognitive reappraisal of these cues in BPD and healthy control (HC) subjects. There are two main kinds of cognitive reappraisal strategies, known as reinterpretation and distancing. The former entails reinterpreting stimuli in a less disturbing manner, whereas distancing entails viewing stimuli from the perspective of a detached and objective observer.

What they found was this:

… BPD patients do not engage the cognitive control regions to the extent that HCs do when employing a distancing strategy to regulate emotional reactions, which may be a factor contributing to the affective instability of BPD.

So, as loved ones, what are we to make of this? It detachment an appropriate strategy for us? How does the person with BPD view it? I’m open for discussion of experiences.