Marsha Linehan is an American psychologist, teacher and author, creator of dialectical behavioral therapy, is a theoretical and treatment model developed for patients with limit personality disorder (TLP), combining behavioral therapy techniques with principles of acceptance of reality derived from Zen and dialectic. Philosophy.
Despite this, this woman still has the stigma of her TPL past, and the burn marks and cuts on her arms are proof of that. In the past, Marsha was a patient with a very severe prognosis and spent 26 months in the hospital. “He was in hell, ” he said of this period of his life.
- Chronic feeling of emptiness.
- Emotional instability and the need to please others become a nightmare for those with TLP.
In fact, your identity continually depends on each other’s grades. The fear of abandonment is so intense that the individual may feel that he inadvertently ends up provoking it.
Marsha Linehan has wandered desperately, specialist specialist, for 20 years, her prognosis indicated that she was unlikely to survive, suicide attempts continued and, with them, new hospitalizations.
Still, this awesome woman wanted to recover. Without giving up his struggle, she got a job as an insurance company employee, at the same time he started taking night classes at the university.
Very religious, Marsha regularly went to church. From that moment on, he said, “One night I was kneeling there, looking at the cross, and the whole place was golden. Suddenly I felt that something was happening to me, room and, for the first time, I addressed myself in the first person: I LOVE myself. From that day on, did I feel transformed?.
For a year she worked on her feelings of helplessness, during this time she understood and accepted her emotional storms: she learned to manage her emotions through a better knowledge of herself.
She also went through years of psychology studies, during which she earned a doctorate from Loyola University in Chicago in 1971, which helped her understand her metamorphosis.
What transformed Marsha Linehan’s experience was that it was accepted as it was, acceptance that became increasingly significant when she started working with patients, first in a clinic with people with suicidal thoughts and then in the field of research.
I wanted to show that therapy could help patients develop new behaviors and learn to react differently. However, deeply suicidal people have often failed countless times in their intentions to overcome the disorder.
Marsha’s approach imposes new reasoning: the behavior of these people is generally logical in the face of suffering and focuses on two main ideas:
Subsequently, the researcher scientifically tested her theory in the real world. “I decided to help people with suicidal tendencies because they feel the most miserable in the world. They think they’re bad and I realized they’re not. I understood it because I went through the hell of suffering, with no hope of getting out of it?
Marsha has chosen to treat people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, characterized by dangerous behaviors, such as self-harm, and did so through a reciprocal contract with these people: they must commit to follow therapy to the end to get the opportunity. Live.
Dr. Marsha Linehan rose in the academic ranks of the Catholic University of America at the University of Washington in 1977.
In the 1980s and 1990s, research was conducted showing the progress of approximately 100 high-risk suicide patients with TLP who had undergone dialectical behavioral therapy in weekly sessions.
Compared to other therapies, patients made fewer suicide attempts and returned to the hospital less frequently.
The fundamental objective of dialectical behavioral therapy is for the patient to learn to regulate emotionality and extreme impulses, in this way it is possible to reduce dysfunctional behaviors according to mood.
In addition, the patient learns to trust and validate their own experiences, emotions, thoughts and behaviors.
As a differential to other cognitive behavioral programs, dialectical behavioral therapy is an intervention based on therapeutic principles and not a treatment manual.
This program is based on a hierarchy of therapeutic objectives addressed according to their importance, the hierarchy established in individual therapy is as follows:
This structure allows a flexible approach to the needs of each patient and is also important because it refers to the change of direction of the intervention.
Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on finding solutions to emotional problems through behavioral and cognitive changes, while Linehan emphasizes acceptance and validation to achieve change from there.
Thanks to your work, thousands of lives have been saved around the world.