ADULT
About Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a longstanding pattern of impulsive and self-destructive behavior, emotional dysregulation, problematic interpersonal relationships, intense fear of abandonment, and identity disturbance. These difficulties emerge from a combination of temperamental vulnerability and an invalidating environment.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) was developed by Marsha Linehan PhD, ABPP as a treatment model for those with borderline personality disorder. The method emphasizes the development of four skill sets: mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation and distress tolerance. A combination of cognitive-behavioral techniques and mindfulness principles are employed to help people gain better control over their impulsive self-destructive behavior and to allow for a different way of managing intense feelings.
Cognitive-behavioral strategies help people examine problematic thinking patterns and ineffective or self destructive behaviors and to replace these with more effective coping strategies. Mindfulness practice involves increasing self awareness by learning to focus on one’s experience of the present moment. DBT is an empirically supported technique, meaning that it has been clinically tested for its effectiveness in adolescents and adults.
