Mentalization (MBT) as a therapy for BPD

[amazingcharis]

Has anyone had experience with Mentalization therapy (MBT) for their pwBPD.  Has it been effective?  This is not the same as "mindfulness" which is part of DBT. 

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[waverider]

I have heard of this, but have no experience with it.

There are many forms of therapy.

Full DBT is out of the range of most in Aus, so most people are being treated by therapist who draw there methods from various techniques. ACT seems to be popular at the moment here.

Have you come across it somewhere. ? Do you have a rough idea of the principles involved?

[amazingcharis]

Hi Waverider.  The therapist my husband and I are seeing is planning to use MBT for my husband who she and several previous therapists have unofficially diagnosed with BPD. She is not trained in DBT, but she said this type of therapy is not the same as mindfulness that is part of DBT.  I'm not sure I fully understand MBT, but below are excerpts I had pulled from various websites (Menninger Clinic and Psych Central):

"Mentalization based therapy (MBT) is a type of psychotherapy designed to help people with borderline personality disorder to differentiate and separate out their own thoughts and feelings from those around them.  This is accomplished through increasing the client’s capacity for mentalization in order to stabilize the client’s sense of self and to enhance stability in emotions and relationships." 

"Mentalizing refers to the spontaneous sense we have of ourselves and others as persons whose actions are based on mental states: desires, needs, feelings, reasons, beliefs and the like."   

"People with BPD show reduced capacities to mentalize, which leads to problems with emotional regulation and difficulties in managing impulsivity, especially in the context of interpersonal interactions."

"Failure to mentalize in relationships may leave one stuck in rigid, repetitive patterns of interaction. The inhibition of mentalizing leads to inappropriate responses that impair interpersonal relationships and perpetuate maladaptive cycles of experience and coping.  People who fail to mentalize may find it difficult or impossible to recognize the effects their behavior has on other people, to put themselves in other people’s shoes and to empathize with others."

"High levels of arousal tend to turn off the part of the brain that enables us to mentalize, the frontal cortex. Mentalizing and high arousal are in a reciprocal relationship: activating either one tends to deactivate the other. Learning to mentalize emotionally in the face of anxiety can help with emotional control."

[Mono No Aware]

"High levels of arousal tend to turn off the part of the brain that enables us to mentalize, the frontal cortex. Mentalizing and high arousal are in a reciprocal relationship: activating either one tends to deactivate the other. Learning to mentalize emotionally in the face of anxiety can help with emotional control."

Well the brochure looks nice, by which I mean that is a great sounding theory.

I hope it works, please keep us posted!