#8: Session 7 > Understanding Personality Disorders

🎙️ Episode 8 – Session 7: Understanding Personality Disorders

Welcome back.

In the previous sessions, we explored emotions, attachment, and how these shape the way we think and relate.

Today, we focus on something that often carries a lot of misunderstanding: personality disorders.

Not as labels —

but as patterns that developed over time.

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📌 What this session is about

• What a personality disorder really is: long-standing patterns in thinking, feeling, and behaving that affect relationships and daily life.

• How these patterns develop through a combination of biological sensitivity and life experiences, especially early relationships.

• Why these patterns are not fixed — and can change over time.

• A closer look at borderline personality disorder, and how it relates to difficulties in mentalizing.

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🔎 Real-life examples

• Relationships that quickly shift from very close to very distant.

• Strong fear of being abandoned, even in small situations.

• Acting impulsively when emotions feel overwhelming.

• Feeling empty or unsure about who you are.

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📚 Why it matters

These patterns are not signs of weakness —

they are ways of coping that once made sense.

When emotions become intense,

the ability to mentalize can break down.

This can lead to:

• misunderstandings

• unstable relationships

• emotional ups and downs

Understanding these patterns helps you move from self-judgment to self-understanding.

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✨ How MBT works with this

In MBT, the focus is not on changing who you are,

but on understanding how you respond — especially under stress.

You learn to:

• Recognize when emotions take over

• Pause and reflect instead of reacting immediately

• Stay curious about your own thoughts and feelings

• Understand how your reactions affect others

Step by step, this creates more stability and clarity in relationships.

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💡 Practice from Session 7

Reflect on a moment this week where you felt emotionally overwhelmed.

• What did you feel?

• What did you do?

• What might have been happening inside you — and inside the other person?

Try to look at it with curiosity instead of judgment.

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🌟 Core message

Personality patterns are not who you are —

they are how you learned to cope.

When you begin to understand them,

you create space for change.

And in that space,

you can build more stable, meaningful connections —

with yourself and with others.