Why do some people have more difficulty managing their emotions?
According to Dr. Marsha Linehan, who developed DBT, some people are born more emotionally sensitive than others. Not only do they feel emotions more quickly and intensely than other people, but it also takes them longer to “come down” from an emotion. That can work out fine if you learn skills for coping with strong emotions early in life within your family or elsewhere. This means that people around you “validate” you or acknowledge the reasonableness of your feelings.They also help you learn ways to soothe yourself, and/or show you what to do with strong emotions by demonstrating skillful behavior when they themselves have strong emotions. However, if you are raised without the opportunity to learn to cope skillfully with strong emotion, being emotionally sensitive can make life quite difficult. I’ve been told DBT would be helpful for me. Does that mean I have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)? It is true that DBT was originally developed to treat BPD and most books and articles
