Life in a Bind – BPD and me

My therapy journey, recovering from Borderline Personality Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I write for welldoing.org , for Planet Mindful magazine, and for Muse Magazine Australia, under the name Clara Bridges. Listed in Top Ten Resources for BPD in 2016 by goodtherapy.org.

Tag Archives: the pros and cons of cbt


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My past experience of CBT – Part 2

A little while ago I posted a link to a short article I wrote on a positive experience I had of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) around fifteen years ago. In this second article, I describe a very different experience which took place around six years ago, during the period when my mental health was at its worst, and just before I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder:

https://healthunlocked.com/mental-health/articles/how-therapy-helped-me-through-postnatal-depression

There are a large variety of therapeutic models, and for the last five years I have been in open ended psychoanalytic psychotherapy, with a significant emphasis on the healing nature of the therapeutic relationship. Across these two articles, I aim to show briefly my belief that “having the right tool for the job, is just as important in therapy as anywhere else. Sometimes that tool is the application of a structured model such as CBT; and sometimes it’s the experience of a transformative and trusting relationship”.


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My past experience of CBT – Part 1

Though I’ve written extensively over the last few years about my experience of open ended psychoanalytic psychotherapy, I’ve never really described my brief experiences with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), the first of which occurred more than ten years ago, and the second of which occurred around six years ago. As with the many other different modes of therapy, I think it works well for some people and some situations, and less well for others. It was successful for me the first time, but utterly unhelpful the second, and I believe I now understand the reasons for that difference.

I recently wrote a couple of brief articles for the site Health Unlocked, about these two experiences of CBT. The first details my positive experience, and what I found valuable about the process, and can be found here:

https://healthunlocked.com/mental-health/articles/how-cbt-helped-me-get-out-of-my-head-and-see-different-perspectives