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Evaluation ViewAttendees 1

Category: Personality Disorders

Symposium 49 - The Who What and How of Regulating Emotions in Borderline Personality Disorder

Saturday, November 18, 2023
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM PST
Location: Chiwawa (501), Level 5
CE: 1.5

Keywords: Borderline Personality Disorder, Emotion Regulation, Emotion
Level of Familiarity: Moderate
Recommended Readings: Dixon-Gordon, K. L., Chapman, A. L., Lovasz, N., & Walters, K. (2011). Too upset to think: the interplay of borderline personality features, negative emotions, and social problem solving in the laboratory. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 2(4), 243.,   Kuo, J. R., Khoury, J. E., Metcalfe, R., Fitzpatrick, S., & Goodwill, A. (2015). An examination of the relationship between childhood emotional abuse and borderline personality disorder features: The role of difficulties with emotion regulation. Child abuse & neglect, 39, 147-155,   Daros, A. R., & Williams, G. E. (2019). A meta-analysis and systematic review of emotion-regulation strategies in borderline personality disorder. Harvard review of psychiatry, 27 (4), 217-232.,   ,  


Theories (Gunderson, Zanarini, & Kisiel, 1995; Linehan, 1993) point to emotion dysfunction as a core area of disturbance in borderline personality disorder (BPD). Yet research has yielded mixed findings regarding emotion responding and regulation in this population, with some studies suggesting that individuals with elevated BPD features show amplified emotional responses (Dixon-Gordon, Chapman, Lovasz, & Walters, 2011) whereas other studies show negligible or inconsistent differences between BPD and comparison groups in emotional responding (Kuo, Khoury, Metcalfe, Fitzpatrick, & Goodwill, 2015; Kuo & Linehan, 2009). Likewise, whereas people with BPD report using fewer adaptive and more maladaptive strategies to manage emotions on trait measures (Daros & Williams, 2019), BPD has been associated with greater use of a range of strategies in response to identified stressful situations (Dixon-Gordon, Aldao, & De Los Reyes, 2015), and those with BPD evidence a comparable ability to those without psychiatric disorders in emotion regulation implementation (Fitzpatrick, Varma, & Kuo, 2021; Kuo, Fitzpatrick, Metcalfe, & McMain, 2016). Given that many treatments seek to ameliorate emotion regulation difficulties in BPD, it is critical to precisely locate emotion regulation deficits in this population.



 



This series of talks showcases the cutting edge multi-method clinical research identifying who struggles with emotion regulation, what type of strategies those with BPD use, and how strategies can be used effectively. Ms. DeFontes reports on how BPD interacts with one commonly co-occurring diagnosis (posttraumatic stress disorder) to predict emotional reactivity and spontaneous emotion regulation in the laboratory. Ms. Waite presents data on how BPD severity is associated with instructed implementation of emotion regulation in the laboratory, and the role of severity in this relation. Ms. Varma describes patterns of emotional expression as regulation across people with and without BPD, and its effects on physiological regulation. Finally, Dr. Southward presents how a novel treatment for BPD affects emotion regulation strategy deployment.



 



Dr. Fitzpatrick will bring her expertise in multimethod assessment of emotions in BPD and her unique vantage point as a treatment developer to contextualize this developing program of research. She will comment on the important clinical implications. In keeping with the ABCT conference theme, this line of work has the potential to reduce suffering and even cultivate joy for people with BPD.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the session, the learner will be able to:
  • Discern who struggles with emotion regulation, what strategies are used, and how they are used effectively.
  • Discuss the implications of concordance on measures of emotion reactivity and regulation.
  • Describe the efficacy of emotion regulation strategies for people with BPD when they are upset.
  • Identify two ways that individuals can improve their emotional expression to improve emotion regulation.
  • Discuss effective emotion regulation strategies for reducing BPD features and when to use them.