How Emotions Are Destroyed in People with Personality Disorders

Key points

• Research on borderline personality disorder has shown that reflections play a role in shaping the emotional cascade.
• New research shows that personality disorders in general, and not just borderline ones, are characterized by descending emotions.
• Controlling brooding thoughts and inappropriate beliefs about anxiety can help people better control their emotions.

When something bothers you, do you find it going on in your head in an endless cycle? Do you replay situations where you said or did something stupid, such as playing a bad joke at someone else’s expense?

You may have been on an online video chat where you did what you wanted to say as a humorous remark to someone else, someone you know relatively well, but instead managed to say something that that person found humiliating.

In a face-to-face meeting, you could probably cope with this mild teasing by saying something in private afterward, but in an online environment, this is not possible. Instead, you think over and over again about how you accidentally hurt this person and how much it hurt your future relationship.

It’s normal to rethink circumstances like this and wish them to turn out differently, but it’s unusual to let them bother you to the point that you can barely imagine anything else.

According to new research by Marcantonio M. Spada and colleagues (2021) at the University of London’s South Bank, the process of “repetitive negative thinking (RNT)” or reflection occurs when you “think carefully, repeatedly, or often about yourself.” and his world.

The two forms of RNT are reflection and worry, and the fact that they take up space in your mind means you have less room for other thought processes like focus, memory, resolution. problems and even the desire to behave in a certain way.

In other words, the more you allow the RNT to take charge, the less opportunity you will have to go about your day-to-day activities without having to experience a drain on your mental energy. Distinguishing reflection from worry, British authors note that reflection includes negative thoughts about the past, while worry includes negative thoughts and expectations for the future.

When emotions turn into personality disorders

As you can see, RNT is very unusable. Previous research by Spada et al. The quotes was based on people with borderline personality disorder (BPD), indicating that they tend to engage in various forms of RNT, such as reflections and reflections related to anger, interpersonal situations, anxiety, and stress. Indeed, some research recommends that these counterproductive thoughtfulness methods foretell the severity of BPD symptoms beyond grief, anger, and commonly negative feelings.

The evidence for thinking and BPD forms the basis of the so-called “emotional cascade model,” in which a person experiences an event that triggers a negative emotion (such as an argument with a partner) and then reproduces it. ‘event through reflection in an attempt to figure out what just happened. Unfortunately, this major overhaul “will backfire and lead to increased stress,” which in turn will lead to impulsive behaviors such as self-harm or drug addiction “to avoid or get a crisis. Relief of Suffering ”.

Escalation from a negative encounter to risky behavior can also include other types of deregulated behavior, such as overeating.

Related: 7 ways to test if your personality is humiliating you

In addition to thinking, people with BPD also have certain thoughts about thinking, or what is called “metacognition.” If you think that meditation is a good idea because it will help you “sort out” your thoughts, you will clearly be inclined to engage in these mental activities. Plus, if you feel like you can’t control your mind to turn off those thoughts when they turn out to be counterproductive, you will also experience side effects besides the thoughts themselves.

In reviewing the previous literature, the research team noted that much of this work was based not on samples of people diagnosed with BPD, but on samples of university students. In addition, previous studies did not include people with other personality disorders and did not go beyond the correlation approach. Spada et al. believe that people with a narcissistic and antisocial personality disorder may also engage in this type of unproductive thinking and impulsive behavior after experiencing a negative interpersonal situation.
Testing the emotional waterfall model

By comparing a sample of 186 outpatients diagnosed with personality disorders (PD) and 372 patients without personality disorders (non-PD), mean age 37, Spada and colleagues attempted to establish whether group differences would be in key indicators of thinking, anxiety. , metacognition and distress. The three largest categories of personality disorders in the PD sample were borderline (26%), avoidant (23%), and obsessive-compulsive (18%).

You can test yourself against the metrics that Spada and his team have applied to their PD groups and other groups with the following samples:

Anxiety: “As soon as I finish an assignment, I start to worry about everything I should do.”

Rumination: (observed rarely or almost always): “Think about how lonely you feel; “Think how angry you are with yourself. ”

Metacognition: “Worrying helps me to get rid of future difficulties”, “I cannot ignore my eager feelings.”

Standard measures of anxiety and depression used by the authors included self-reports of things like “feeling dizzy and dizzy” (anxiety) and “I’m so sad or unhappy that I can’t bear it” (Depression).

As predicted by the authors, the PD group had higher scores for thinking and anxiety, as well as anxiety and depression, than the non-PD group. In addition, rumination scores correlated with the severity of PD symptoms, which means that the more symptoms a person had, the higher their rumination scores. Taking a closer look at the role of metacognition, Spada et al. reported supporting their role in “activating and maintaining inappropriate coping strategies (eg, thinking and worrying) that escalate psychological stress.”

It is important to remember that, as with other research in this area, there were no trace elements in the schema, so it was impossible to determine cause and effect. However, no matter what triggers the emotional cascade, its effects cause people with PD to experience a continuous and escalating cycle of distress as they focus on negative thoughts that they believe are not there. be able to control.

How to turn off your emotional waterfall

Even if you don’t have a personality disorder, the research team’s findings indicate why and how to stop your thinking. You can start by noticing how you replay an incident like this ill-fated joke over and over again. Then ask yourself if you enjoy continuing to rethink the situation. Are you getting better or worse?

Now turn to your ability to carry out daily activities, especially those involving planning and concentration. Do you find yourself staring at your desk and wondering what you had to work on? Are you trying to pour coffee from the coffee maker, but find that you have turned it on, but still haven’t filled the water tank? Do you tend to knock things over because you are not watching what you are doing? Assuming that your memory and attention are functioning perfectly when you sit down to complete an assignment, your thought processes may be interfered with by certain tendencies to think.

If you know or have been diagnosed with someone with a personality disorder, Spada et al. the results can have even more direct benefits in your life. The authors note that there is a special type of therapy aimed at metacognition, in which people learn to feel and restrain their constant thoughts and their fear of not being able to control their thoughts. Part of this process may involve what they call “detached attention,” where you notice these mental experiences but allow them to float without causing undue anxiety.

Thus, this study of rumination and personality disorder provides intriguing insights into how thoughts and emotions might interact with each other to exacerbate anxiety and depression. Rather than succumbing to this cycle, you can take control and find ways to steer your thinking in a more productive and fulfilling direction.