Cycle 10 - Smarter Than BPD - Main Text Quiz

Cognitive Distortions and Emotional Learning in Borderline Personality Disorder

• Those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) experience more powerful emotional reactions, making unhealthy thoughts more likely to occur and harder to adjust.
• Past trauma can influence current perceptions, thoughts, and emotions, causing new events to trigger old thought sequences and painful emotional states.
• Caregivers and genetics can influence a person's thinking, feeling, and communication styles, leading to extreme and irrational thought forms.
• Recognizing and adjusting cognitive distortions is a significant challenge in recovering from BPD.
• Emotions can make it challenging to remain rational and balanced, but becoming more mindful of thought experiences can lead to a shift in thought patterns.
• Living mindlessly without awareness of self and thoughts can lead to ineffective behavioral responding and unhealthy coping mechanisms.
• Self-judgment can be a barrier to the healing process, leading to thoughts of worthlessness, doubt, fear, or shame.
• Learning emotional management takes time, practice, patience, repetition, and exposure to excellent teaching and coaching.
• Mistakes and backsliding are normal during the learning process and should be viewed as practice opportunities for further self-awareness and skill development.
• The strong urge to avoid unwanted feelings can make adopting and sustaining a helpful attitude toward learning and change challenging.
• Western society tends to prioritize assigning blame rather than practicing mindfulness of feeling states to solve problems.
• Taking responsibility for one's feelings can eliminate the need for blame and save valuable time and energy for problem-solving.