Emotion Dysregulation in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Literature Review

Abstract

The goal of this literature review is to describe the state of art related to emotion dysregulation in BPD and to illustrate a possible descriptive model. As of today, no consensus in literature is reached, but, from a conceptual point of view, most of the authors agrees with Linehan’s theory in understanding emotion dysregulation both as affective instability and as a frequent recourse to dysfunctional regulation strategies. The latter is what emotion dysregulation is from an operational point of view. The descriptive model explained in this paper is a possible way to bridge the conceptual and operative views of emotion dysregulation in BPD.

Keywords

• emotion dysregulation
• BPD
• affective instability
• dysfunctional strategies