"Autonomous Sense of Self" - possible after 20 years?

[PearlsBefore]

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[TelHill]

You can tell them you're not interested. You don't have to explain why.

 My experience being in a dysfunctional FOO was to explain decisions I made. I think I was afraid of being disbelieved, abused or left in the dust. These explanations made the other person try harder to convince me. It became harder to get away from the request the more I explained.

Saying no thanks at the beginning was easier. A normal person will accept that and move on. Just my experience.

[Methuen]

This seems crazy.  Snake oil selling of a product kind of thing.  Seems sketchy at best, and something else at worst - since the "product" is expensive.

Sorry if this comes across as being a downer, but is it possible this T is themself BPD to believe this? Or are they benefitting from selling the product?

A firm no thanks seems the best way to go. No explanations.  Simply: "not interested".

[livednlearned]

Sounds like hooey.

This is one of the reasons we have the good/bad DSM making BPD seem like a bunch of symptoms that can be mixed and matched. It's what moved personality disorders away from Masterson et al towards empirical evidence to better track outcomes from interventions, everything turned into a study with tiny sample sizes mostly focusing on the worst cases (suicidal ideation, self-harm). So that people don't spend a lot of money or time on someone's pet cure.

Maybe take a look at Elinor Greenberg's book, although I'm not sure she states outright that quick fixes are hooey. She writes that it can take 5-7 years of fairly intensive work with a skilled therapist to reorient a person's PD adaptations (her words). By fairly intensive, I think she means a few times a week. Not DBT.

In Buddha and the Borderline it struck me that the pwBPD writing the memoir was so intent on discovering something I take for granted, the sense of having a self. She searched for it in a way that made me think the search was itself a symptom. What I found fascinating, though, is that her search reflected spiritual journeys and set her squarely in the realm of someone meditating on the self. So not a waste a time, just an intensity to understand something that must be horrifying to not know, implicitly.

It would seem more honest if this newbie therapist said, "Here's something that might make you feel better" rather than promising the moon.

[Riv3rW0lf]

Are you sure this therapist is not actually a life coach ?

 

[PearlsBefore]

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[kells76]

We have a newbie therapist getting involved here, who has opined that an expensive and likely useless experimental (read, not experimental - just invented by this therapist) may suddenly and miraculously result in our beloved pwBPD being able to develop an "autonomous sense of self" in her 40s after decades of failed treatment.

Out of curiosity:

Is this a tangible product/item? Or an intangible approach/modality?

How long is the T attesting that it'll take for this thing/approach to work?

[PearlsBefore]

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[Turkish]

In Buddha and the Borderline it struck me that the pwBPD writing the memoir was so intent on discovering something I take for granted, the sense of having a self. She searched for it in a way that made me think the search was itself a symptom. What I found fascinating, though, is that her search reflected spiritual journeys and set her squarely in the realm of someone meditating on the self. So not a waste a time, just an intensity to understand something that must be horrifying to not know, implicitly.

That basically describes my kids' mom the past few years after her divorce. She posts constant "seeker" messages on FB and her IG (I rarely check the latter), and videos of some new great insight she shares in an odd life-coachy voice, often ending with a wink and a smile. Self help book after self help book. She took the kids to a park this weekend and had our son take photos of her meditating in lotus position on a log across a stream. Nothing wrong with that, but why post it? Why not just, "kids and I had a great time at the nature park." Seeking validation I guess?