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Emotions and #BPD
A person with BPD is characterized by having a diminished ability to regulate their emotions during interactions with other people. This means that someone with BPD will likely react much more emotionally to a given situation than someone without BPD. A person with BPD is likely to get angry and, at times, fly into a rage at seemingly trivial events and interactions. She also will have a tendency to personalize external events. In other words, the person suffering from BPD will believe that other people’s behavior and comments are “about her,” sometimes interpreting veiled criticism or judgment of her behavior when the evidence shows that there is none. The person…
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Why do we need emotions?
We need our emotions for protection. When a car swerves in front of yours on the highway, your mind takes that cue as dangerous, triggers fear and almost automatically reacts to swerve out of the way. Even after the fear has dissipated, you may still feel the fear in your body. I remember once when I was on the highway (and talking on the cell phone), I saw a car seem to fly into the air two lanes over from me and a few cars in front. It was as if everything was happening in slow motion, because a postal truck, one of those with a van-like cab and a…
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What are emotions and why do we have them?
Emotions are built-in mechanisms for keeping us safe. The “base” of emotions in our brain is in the limbic system, deep within the core and just above the brain stem. I like to refer to emotions as the “land-bridge” between the mind and the body. When you experience emotions both your body and mind react. If you feel fearful, your body reacts by speeding up your heart-rate, contracting capillaries in your extremities (that is why you can “go pale”), and releasing adrenaline into your bloodstream. Your emotion, fear in this case, is preparing your body to run away fast, which is the natural reaction to fear. Emotions are, in some…
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Family Dynamics Around the Holiday Table
The holidays are often thought of as a time of warmth and happiness, family gathered around the table creating wonderful family memories. But for many of us, it can also be a time of angst and anxiety. (link to the article) There are many reasons you may feel stress. Perhaps you are a student struggling with school and are afraid of criticism from your family. You may be unemployed and don’t want to face questions about your job search or finances. Maybe you’ve put on or lost “too much” weight this year and are feeling self conscious. If you have been struggling with depression, mood swings or anxiety, you may…
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Overactive Midbrain and Stress Tolerance
From Nora Gedgaudas’s latest book “Rethinking Fatigue”: CHRONIC MIDBRAIN OVERACTIVATION When the reticular activating system is stimulated, it fires off in different directions, and at times particularly strong emotional reactions to events can become stuck in a self-perpetuating feedback loop. In other words, particularly pronounced reactions to traumatic or stressful events can cause the brain to become hardwired for stress. This can also lead to long-term anxiety-related issues. The overactivation of this area of the brain, say by a particularly upsetting, traumatizing event, can lead to a chronically exaggerated stress response. A person may become hypervigilant and have an exaggerated startle response or possibly other symptoms similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).…
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Interesting Study on Self-Injury and Borderline Personality Disorder
Among the BPD factors, emotion dysregulation and disturbed relatedness were both associated with non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) history, but only disturbed relatedness was associated with NSSI frequency. The relationship between non-suicidal self-injury and borderline personality disorder symptoms in a college sample Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a major concern in both clinical and non-clinical populations. It has been approximated that 65-80% of individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) engage in some form of NSSI.Despite such high co-morbidity, much still remains unknown about the relationship between NSSI and BPD symptomatology. The goal of the current study was to identify individual BPD symptoms and higher order BPD factors that increase one’s vulnerability of NSSI engagement…