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Ask Bon: Why does this person idolize me one day and call me “the devil” the next?
Black-and-white thinking is the tendency for a person to believe that events or other people are either “all-good” or “all-bad” in any given situation. People with BPD will often vacillate between these two polar ways of thinking, sometimes about the same event or person. This way of thinking is also known as “splitting.” In the support community, loved ones of BP’s will say that they have been “split-white” (meaning, they are thought to be all good) or “split-black” (thought to be all bad). A person with BPD who thinks in this fashion will have an inability to see “shades of grey” in a situation or relationship. This approach can be…
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Seattle Hosts Ground-breaking International Training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Created by Dr. Marsha Linehan of The University of Washington
Seattle Hosts Ground-breaking International Training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Created by Dr. Marsha Linehan of The University of Washington Seattle, WA (PRWEB) July 18, 2013 Behavioral Tech, LLC (BTECH), based in Seattle and created to bring the benefits of Dr. Marsha Linehan’s research to the world of professionals serving people suffering from mental illness, is hosting the first-ever Dialectical Behavior Therapy Intensive Training TM designed specifically for independent mental health care practitioners. Private mental health providers have gathered this week in Seattle from all over the world to learn from Dr. Linehan, the creator of DBT, and her team of expert trainers at BTECH. Cited as one of the…
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Five things you can do as a supporter of a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
Five of the first things you can do when you discover that someone you care for has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I often have “newbies” or beginning non-BPD family members ask me some things they can do to get acclimated to the world of BPD. I have thought about this long and hard and have come up with these five things: 1. Watch “Back from the Edge”. This 48 minute documentary was made by New York Presbyterian Hospital and includes some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the treatment and understanding of BPD, including Dr. Marsha Linehan, the inventor of DBT. The video is available here: Back from the Edge…
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A system that fails troubled teens
Teens whose multiple diagnoses meant that her see-saw emotions were extremely challenging to treat, especially in a mental health system that is over-burdened and difficult for desperate families to navigate. A system that fails troubled teens GAYLE MACDONALD From Friday’s Globe and Mail – with correction Published Thursday, Jun. 27 2013, 9:00 PM EDT Last updated Thursday, Jul. 04 2013, 10:09 AM EDT Katherine Duff is 16. She comes from a close-knit Toronto family. She has a part-time-job and gets straight As. She loves poetry, watching movies with her younger sister, and going out with friends for dinner or to the mall. She adores animals, especially dogs. And she wants…
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Levels of validation
Karyn Hall at the Emotionally Sensitive Person blog has another great post on the levels of emotional validation… Self-Validation: What Do You Do? By KARYN HALL, PHD Validation is like relationship glue. Validating someone brings you closer. Validating yourself is like glue for fragmented parts of your identity. Validating yourself will help you accept and better understand yourself, which leads to a stronger identity and better skills at managing intense emotions. Being out of control of your emotions is a painful experience and damaging to relationships. Knowing how to self-validate is important to learning to manage your emotions effectively. Self-validation means you can accept your internal experience as understandable and…
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DBT Skill of the Day: Practicing A Nonjudgmental Stance
What are judgments? Describing things as good or bad, valuable or worthless, smart or stupid, terrible or wonderful, beautiful or ugly, etc. Describing how things “should” or “shouldn’t” be Describing by comparing or contrasting Usefulness of judgments? They allow for quick descriptions by creating simple categories They are fast, short hand for describing preferences and consequences Problems with judgments? They often distract from reality (judgments may replace facts; when we judge we often stop observing) They tend to feed negative emotions (anger, guilt, shame) Positive judgments are fragile: anything judged “good” can also be judged “bad” Steps for letting go of judgments Practice noticing judgments. Keep a count of judgments.…