So Bob we have a bunch of emails about preoccupied attachment and borderline and other kinds of things

and I grouped them together from the patrons and I thought we would read them on the air and

answer them. What do you say Bob? Let's read them. This is the Psychology and Seattle podcast. I'm

your host Dr. Kirk Honda. I'm a therapist and a professor. Who are you Bob? I am Bob. I'm your

friend from graduate school, a therapist in practice here in Seattle. Yeah. So before we get into

things, just major trigger warning as with all of our episodes. We get into various different

difficult topics. So be warned and if we get into an issue that you think, oh this might trigger me,

I would recommend turning it off. So okay. Upper tier patron Joyce from Los Angeles, she says,

does a path to recovery from borderline personality disorder have to begin as a solitary journey?

I often get the impression that in order to be a secure adult, one has to be able to establish

that secure base within themselves by themselves. Is this born from Western idealization of independence?

This can often feel painfully lonely especially during the pandemic. Bob, what do you think?

I think it's a great question and I think the answer, the short answer is yeah it might be a

response to the way we in Western, whatever culture value independence, but it's not realistic.

I think that you can't develop secure attachment by yourself. Like you actually need a

relationship and a corrective experience in the relationship in order for that to actually happen.

So okay, so you know I do this thing called DBT and it's aimed at helping people with

borderline personality disorder and it's good. It's all been lots of good data behind it. It's been

researched and it's shown to be effective, but DBT is a talk therapy which means that there is a

relationship with a personal counselor and then there's this group skills training. But let's

let that go for just a second. In the relationship with the personal counselor is the arena for

corrective experience. Now it turns out that by that by itself that is probably insufficient to

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