Posted by alexandra_k on April 24, 2005, at 19:05:43
In reply to Re: Borderline stigma, posted by Shy_Girl on April 24, 2005, at 17:16:53
It sounds like you have a really good p-doc! Really. You don't need to go looking anywhere else.
> I don't know whether DBT is available here in Canada. I think it is only available in one or two places here. I highly doubt there are any DBT programs where I live. :-( I'll ask my p-doc about DBT.
There might not be any. It is only offered in a few places in NZ too, and it is hard to get into. Worth a shot though.
>I don't know if she's familiar with it.
I'm sure she will have heard of it.
>I'm not even sure what type of therapy she uses with me. We mostly talk about the thoughts I have and then dicuss whether or not there's evidence for my thoughts to be true or not.
That sounds like cognitive therapy (cognitive restructuring). She may well be modifying that slightly in a DBTish way. DBT outperformed alternative treatments for BPD - it is currently the best treatment for BPD that there is. IMO that is because it is non-judgemental. Your p-doc may well be using ideas from DBT to inform her practice even though you aren't formally doing DBT.
> "Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder"That one is the treatment manuel for individual therapy. It starts with looking at the history of the BPD dx and how the criteria have evolved through time. Then the conceptual underpinnings of DBT and into specific techniques etc to be used in individual therapy and the rationale behind them. It is useful because instead of the usual judgemental explanation that is typically offered for borderline behaviours she offers non-judgemental explanations. I was able to take those on board to a certain extent and it helped me feel a lot better about myself and the reasons why I act out sometimes. It can be a little hard going. But you don't have to understand everything. I would reccomend that you give it a go and take what you can from it.
> "Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder"
One of the ideas behind DBT is that borderlines do the best they can with coping strategies - but quite often at least some of the coping strategies they use are maladaptive (in the sense that there are better ones out there). Thats not our fault - we were never taught these better coping strategies and skills. In DBT you work with an individual therapist for therapy and you also go to skills training which is typically in a group therapy environment. There are (from memory) three sections to the skills that are taught in skills training: Mindfulness skills; interpersonal skills; emotion regulation skills. It takes about 6 months of weekly skills training to go through learning all the skills. Individual therapy is supposed to help you apply those skills to problems in your daily life. It is helpful to go to 1 year of skills training to go through all the skills twice (they make much more sense on the second time around). Basically we were given handouts that are in the skills training manuel. They pretty much photocopied the whole book and gave it to us. We just worked through that over the course of a year. It is worth having a look at as well.
> I've read some good reviews on these two books. I'm wondering whether or not I need to read both books to be able to learn to apply DBT techniques on myself?Hmm. It is helpful to read them. I thought that if I read them I could be my own therapist - but it doesn't work like that. Knowing something rationally and knowing something emotionally or through experience are two different things. You can be told 'you are worthy of being loved' but that doesn't compare to someone SHOWING you that you are worthy of being loved - by loving you if you get what I mean.
>
poster:alexandra_k
thread:488384
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050420/msgs/488946.html