Looking for the Wise Mind: Finding Balance through Mindfulness in BPD Treatment

For people with BPD, emotional dysregulation can be highly disruptive to everyday life. Emotional swings from happy to furious, or from calm to deeply sad and scared, can be triggered by everyday experiences, or even just thoughts that pop into your head. These emotional reactions can last much longer than you’d expect, and reach an intensity that isn’t always proportionate to what’s happening around you.

Why are people with BPD more susceptible to emotional dysregulation?

Emotional dysregulation for people with BPD comes from a combination of biological factors that lead to increased biological sensitivity to emotions, and life experiences that repeatedly invalidate their emotional experiences.

People with BPD are often told from childhood on that they’re “too much” or wrong for how they feel, without being provided any guidance on how to actually understand and manage their strong feelings. This invalidation leads to chronic patterns of emotional dysregulation and self-invalidation.

A comprehensive dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) program can help you understand your emotional reactions and moderate the behaviors that follow. In such a program, one of the concepts you’ll explore is one we’re covering here today: all-or-nothing thinking.

How can all-or-nothing thinking in BPD impact your life?

All-or-nothing thinking, sometimes called dichotomous thinking, is where it feels like only one side of the story is the absolute truth, and you’re unwilling or unable to consider any other perspective. It’s a common experience for people with BPD, particularly at times of emotional dysregulation.

What can all-or-nothing thinking look like?

• Suddenly hating a good friend and cutting them out of your life because they didn’t respond quickly enough, or in the “right” way.
• After an argument, thinking you’re worthless or unlovable.
• Suicidal thoughts or being filled with self-loathing after a small flub at work.
• Saying extremes like “You always do this!” or “You never cared about me!”
• Ruminating over thoughts, feelings, or experiences, running them over in your head to try to “solve” them.
• Throwing away an entire project because you made a small mistake.
• Being disgusted and angry with someone else because they don’t share the same point of view as you.

As you can see, and may know from personal experience, when all-or-nothing thinking leads you to take action by cutting off a friend, tossing an entire project, or sinking into a shame-spiral, it’s a problem.

How can you find balance when you regularly resort to all-or-nothing thinking?

All-or-nothing thinking pulls your focus to one side of a situation and often results in emotionally-charged judgment of yourself or others. Mindfulness, where you take time to refocus on everything that’s happening around you and within you in the moment, without judgment, is an effective antidote to the stress and reactivity that all-or-nothing thinking can create.

Mindfulness is a cornerstone of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) in part because it helps you turn away from all-or-nothing thinking. For people with BPD, the Wise Mind DBT skill can be a great starting point for incorporating mindfulness into everyday interactions.

How can the Wise Mind DBT skill help people with BPD?

The Wise Mind skill is a mindfulness skill where you use both your emotional mind and your rational mind, together, to guide you in the moment. This skill takes regular practice, redirecting our focus toward mindful attention to the moment, self-acceptance, and nonjudgment.

Your emotional mind uses feelings to guide thoughts

Your emotional mind is the part of your mind that pulls thoughts from the emotions you’re feeling. It’s the part of your mind that brings you joy, helps you experience and express grief, and gives you insight into your needs and values through your emotions. When it is totally in charge, your emotions can feel very urgent and lead to impulsive thoughts and behaviors.

When you have BPD, sensitivity to emotions often leads to your emotional mind taking charge, especially when you’re emotionally dysregulated, making it hard to be thoughtful and deliberate.

Your rational mind uses facts to draw conclusions

Your rational mind uses facts and logic to guide your thoughts. It is the part of your mind that makes plans and executes them, and thinks things through step by step. When it is totally in charge, however, you may suppress your feelings, ignore your needs, and invalidate your feelings.

Your Wise Mind uses thinking and feeling together to guide you

Even though your emotions can be overwhelming with BPD, they are crucial to understanding your wants and needs, and add a lot to living your life. And while your rational mind relies on facts, overreliance on it can lead to ignoring your needs and feelings, which is self-invalidation and can make emotional dysregulation worse.

When you use your Wise Mind, you’re focusing your attention in a way that balances what your emotional mind and your rational mind are urging you to think and do.

• You recognize, validate, and name what you’re feeling.
• You recognize and describe what’s happening within and around you.

With the Wise Mind, you use all the information you can mindfully observe to help you decide what to do.

Here are some examples of using your Wise Mind:

• When your friend doesn’t respond quickly enough to you, you notice that your emotional mind is full of fear of abandonment and anger at being ignored by someone important to you. Your rational mind lists the facts: your friend isn’t always next to their phone, it’s a work day, and they usually respond the same day. Your Wise Mind recognizes that you are scared and want connection, but this moment isn’t really a sign you’re about to be abandoned.You can now wait for a reply, and you think about what plans you might make with your friend to help you enjoy the connection. You may still be emotionally uncomfortable, but you’re not going to end a friendship because Wise Mind helped you see both sides of the situation.
• During an argument, you notice you’re emotionally overwhelmed because you want to tell the other person they never consider how you feel (and you know they do consider you sometimes). You use your Wise Mind to ask to take a break so you can sort through your thoughts.As you observe your emotions and the situation, you recognize you’re feeling anger, and like you’re being invalidated. You also recognize that the other person is also emotionally dysregulated, and they’re probably struggling to manage their own emotional mind, so what they’re saying is reflecting their feelings, not facts.

  Your Wise Mind guides you to talk to the other person and ask them to wait until you’re both calmer before continuing the discussion.

Our Bellevue DBT treatment center in Washington can help people with BPD to manage all-or-nothing thinking

Looking for the truth somewhere in the middle with Wise Mind can help you manage the emotional dysregulation of BPD. By recognizing that your emotional mind and your rational mind can work together to help you stay present, you can make wiser choices in how you respond to your feelings.

With DBT, you can turn away from emotionally reactive behaviors and thought patterns that continue to damage relationships and derail your life, choosing behaviors that make life feel like it’s worth living.

Mindfulness, along with emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness, is a key pillar of a DBT-based holistic mental health treatment program like those available through THIRA Health. Whether you or your teen is looking for inpatient mental health treatment, a partial hospitalization program, or an intensive outpatient program, our expert clinicians at THIRA Health in Bellevue can help you find emotional regulation and a balanced approach to life, even when BPD tries to get in your way. Contact us today to get started!