Cycle 12 - Smarter Than BPD

Study Notes

Understanding Self-Destructive Beliefs and their Impact on Relationships

Safety and security can be achieved through stable early-life relationships, but childhood experiences and exposure to family dysfunction can undermine this sense of safety.
Childhood experiences can lead to the development of certain beliefs or sets of expectations/assumptions about people, life situations, and the world.
Without healthy living arrangements with healthy caregivers, individuals may invent ideas, concepts, and rules that provide them with a false sense of security.
Self-destructive beliefs may help individuals function and survive in the short term, but ultimately do not support healthy functioning in the long run.
Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) often have experienced instability during childhood and may develop self-destructive beliefs as a result.
Early experiences of betrayal or abandonment can lead to expectations (and beliefs) about getting hurt in relationships, resulting in distrustful and controlling behaviors.
Distrustful behaviors increase the chances of relationship breakdown and make it challenging for partners to live freely and free from abusiveness.
An important goal for a person with BPD in therapy is to recognize and adjust self-destructive beliefs to support a healthy and fulfilling life experience.
Adjusting unhealthy belief systems requires learning to self-reflect, becoming mindful, and understanding and managing emotional struggles connected to the beliefs.
Learning about emotions and beliefs later in life is possible, but it requires a willingness to be vulnerable and explore feelings without retreating into defensive anger or continual distraction/dissociation/redirection.
Recognizing the need to adjust unhealthy beliefs is an essential first step, followed by seeking a therapeutic connection to work through emotional sensitivities and thought patterns associated with unhealthy beliefs.
In time, and with trust and effort in a therapeutic relationship, individuals can adjust their beliefs and thoughts and process the emotions connected to the beliefs.