Rethinking BPD: A Clinician’s View – YouTube

Rethinking BPD: A Clinician’s View – YouTube

As a form of self preservation, a way of coping with what was going on, a way that would allow that the future might have been in some way normal, by which I mean calm, and stable, I found myself trying to figure out exactly what was going on. I found myself trying to figure out exactly what needed to change. I needed to figure out what I needed to change in my own behavior so that she would feel more comfortable to change her behavior. I found myself trying to formulate a theory, a frame work within which I could work so that I would be able to react in the right way so that she would feel comfortable. It was absolutely critical, she was slowly killing herself, she is bulimic and I didn’t think she would live past forty. Bulimia causes a lot of damage, as well you can imagine, to the body. She was consistently ill, consistently unable to get out of bed, consistently unable to deliver at work. That in itself wasn’t helping her, she would feel unable to deliver at work and feel as though she was a failure, which would just lead to worse behaviour, worse emotional regulation. To me this just looked like a downward spiral with only one possible end. What made this incredibly difficult was that any of my attempts to help she would either perceive as criticism, or she would condescend so that she could for a fleeting moment feel superior and worthy. That didn’t help either, anything I said she would simply discredit in some way or another. She would use the knitting circle to reinforce her critical behaviour, by embarking on a smear campaign, so that later when one of the circle was critical she would feel that she wasn’t the only one to feel that what I was saying was not credible. I can completely understand what the therapist would go through. Here’s an interesting clip which explains some of what therapists treating BPD patients might go through, but also some learning from the experience.

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