Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy for Personality Disorders Swinging from Emotional Over-Regulation to Dysregulation: A Case Study.

ABSTRACT

Many patients with personality disorders (PD) display emotional inhibition or over-regulation (EOR); others display emotional dysregulation (ED)- heightened sensitivity to emotional stimuli with difficulty toning down arousal. To date, most treatments focus on patients with ED, particularly those with borderline disorders, though some focus on EOR. Patients with complex PD often swing from periods of EOR to ED. In this paper, we describe an adaptation of metacognitive interpersonal therapy (MIT), which has been manualized for treating PD with prominent EOR and is aimed at dealing with patients fluctuating from EOR to ED. We first describe the MIT model of personality pathology and offer a summary of the procedures used in MIT to treat patients with prominent EOR. Then, through the analysis of the case of a patient swinging between EOR and ED, we describe how to adapt these procedures to complex cases.