Violent Emotions, Emotional Instability and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DAT)

For decades, the term Borderline has been used in psychiatry and in common parlance. That people were borderline insane. They weren't just neurotic/severely disturbed mentally. It's a term that has survived to this day, and you can still find it in diagnosis books as an addition to how people can be mentally disturbed. I don't like the term myself and think it's an outdated relic of the past in psychology and psychiatry.

Fortunately, at the beginning of this century, in the noughties, the American psychologist and professor Marsha Linehan offered a different understanding: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). Inspired by cognitive behavioral therapy, Buddhism and meditation. People were emotionally unstable due to stress. They reacted quickly, violently and took a long time to return to their normal emotional state. It was about trauma, experiences that stressed people. It could be physical as a result ofAccidents, war or violence. Psychological due to manipulation or coercion for example. Sexual trauma due to abuse. It could be about physical illness; what we call Organic Basis/disease in the body or head. For example, I have it because of my sclerosis, which is a brain disease. I also react emotionally quickly and violently when I'm exhausted, for example. You can also react because of other brain conditions. Epilepsy, drugs or something else.

For me as a psychologist in psychiatry, it was a huge change to gain a different understanding of our emotionally violent patients. It was their psychological trauma system that was activated. It became meaningful and coherent, and it became possible to relate to it. Examine it and start experimenting with change. Do something about it. There were a number of reasons that led to their violent reactions. One of Linehan's methods, for example, is the Chain Analysis, where you look at a series of events that eventuallyleading to self-harm. Instead of writing patients off as hysterical and out of reach, psychiatry began to respectfully and caringly address their problems with violent emotions. Together with the patients, I challenged their destructive strategies of self-harm, which may have relieved them of psychological pain in the short term, but which in the long term destroyed a lot for the patients.

In this understanding, the violent feelings can lead to trying to do something to get rid of them. Some people start hurting themselves to get a physical pain instead of the psychological one. They hit themselves, scratch themselves, bite themselves, bang their head into something. It can take many forms, including people actually cutting themselves. It's rarely because people want to die, but more often because they want to escape the psychological pain. Danish psychologist Bo Møhl is a great capacity in the knowledge and treatment of self-harm on a psychodynamic level.Basis. Psychologist Stig Helweg-Jørgensen on Funen has for many years been a capacity in treatment and training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy by Linehan has had and still has great importance in my work as a psychologist. It has enabled me to better meet my psychiatric patients with understanding and support.