Treating Addictions and Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms
Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes PhD, LPC-MHSP, LMHC
Executive Director, AllCEUs
Host: Counselor Toolbox Podcast
CEUs are available for this presentation at AllCEUs https://www.allceus.com/member/cart/index/product/id/1002/c/
Objectives
~ Review the characteristics of BPD and Addictions
~ Explore the functions of these symptoms
~ Identify interventions to help the person more effectively manage emotions and relationships
Internal Reality
~ Lack of a sense of self—If they aren’t someone’s something, then they are nothing
~ Unlovable for who they are
~ Constant fear of abandonment
Consequences
~ Lack of emotional boundaries
~ Anger is used to control others and is rewarded
~ Emotional dyscontrol
~ Inability to self-soothe/Impulsivity
~ Lack of coping skills
~ Relationship problems
~ Physical health problems and complaints
~ Cognitive distortions are reinforced
First
~ Identify the most salient symptoms
~ Their function (and alternate ways to meet that need)
~ Identify what it looks like for that person
~ When X happens, how do you feel? What do you think? What are your urges? What do you do?
~ How that behavior is being maintained (what are the benefits and other ways to get the same benefit)
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
~ Function: The person only knows how to exist as a role, such as being someone else’s spouse/parent etc. (Co-dependency)
~ Preventing abandonment means preventing death or dissolution
~ What does it look like (Benefits/Drawbacks)
~ Hypervigilant/hypersensitive to rejection/criticism
~ Anger at/belittling others to control them
~ Acting out to control through guilt, manipulation
~ Emotional dyscontrol
Abandonment cont…
~ Origins
~ Failure to develop a sense of self due to constantly trying to appease the caregivers
~ Addict –Don’t Talk, Don’t Trust, Don’t Feel
~ Borderline –Do as I say or else…
~ History of abandonment/rejection/CPR
~ If they are something to someone then they are filling a need and are less likely to be abandoned
~ History of neglect/abuse (You (as a person) are not worthy of love)
Abandonment Cont…
~ Interventions
~ Develop a sense of self and self-esteem
~ Differentiate between who you are and what you do
~ Explore what makes someone/something “lovable”
~ Dogs/horses
~ Children
~ Others
~ Which of those characteristics do you have in yourself?
~ Identify and address messages/events in the past that communicated unlovability
Abandonment Cont…
~ Interventions
~ Explore the notion of responsibility (Who and what are you responsible for)
~ Not responsible for the parent
~ Responsible for you
~ Nobody else can make you…
~ Explore and address abandonment/rejection triggers
~ Is it about you? What are alternate explanations?
~ Explore faulty thinking
Relationships are Unstable
~ Function: Controlling others provides a feeling of safety and predictability
~ What does it look like (Benefits/Drawbacks)
~ Intense and unpredictable interactions
~ If you do what I want, I love you
~ If you do not, you are rejecting me and I hate you
~ Everyone walks on eggshells
~ Jekyll/Hyde
Relationships are Unstable
~ Origins
~ Children were rejected (or the caregiver was unavailable) at an age in which they were still thinking in concrete, all-or-nothing terms
~ The A/B expects rejection and has never experienced an authentic relationship with self-or others
~ Inability to self-soothe is terrifying and the A/B fe