My mind keeps returning to this topic. I thought the video was very helpful and presented a model of what emotionally healthy and effective living might be like. Three basic factors that are needed for that.

No therapist ever addressed this, or any model, of what it might be for me to be and live with more emotional health and effectiveness. They did talk about it being important to be "authentic".

In my life I could be fairly competent and autonomous in some ways, as far as it came to getting things done physically or intellectually. But my relatedness was definitely "off". I avoided conflict by having submerged a bunch of emotions that challenged other people. Or, when I allowed myself to have, think about, and try to act with those emotions involved I was very uncool or uncouth, sometimes. Not socialized, because those basic emotions had been cut off for so long. Years and years of therapy hadn't helped a lot, and IOP programs didn't either.

I said for a long time, especially with my last therapist, that what I felt I needed was a "social playpen", where I could practice having, and sometimes acting on, certain emotions and get to experience the consequences, see and understand the results, and hopefully also learn how to moderate and integrate those emotions in myself. Without the enormous real world consequences that might happen where everybody is expecting others to be "responsible" and "adult".

I don't think I'm the only person who may need this kind of thing. Interpersonal trauma therapy probably helped me get in touch with stuff, but what to do with it after that?

If you're self-determined already, then it's not really a question, because you self-determine that. But if your relatedness module doesn't work well, as mine did not, then what? How do you help to GET it functioning? Relatedness isn't just about a relationship between a client and a T. It's about a person in relationship with the rest of humanity and the world. Even though we focus on and interact with mostly a small group of other people.

Right now, I don't have enough other people that I feel connected to, cared for by, and care about so that I have a sense of belonging. I can "fake it" -- go by the social rules so that I seem, sort of, to fit in and therefore have some sense of belonging. That's how I did it as a little kid -- because a sense of belonging was so important to me. AND because it sometimes conflicts with autonomy and authenticity, I "sacrificed" them -- unconsciously, of course. A little kid's priorities that became habitual.

Maybe all my years of therapy helped create the "condition" or maybe it was there all along and the last therapist just finally diagnosed me as having Personality Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. I think a more positive approach -- what is healthy self-determination and how do you develop it -- could help lots of people who have personality disorders, non-BPD in particular since that's what I had/have. There really needs to be something better to help us, I think.

I've been self-determined as best I could, with the defective relatedness module. But without a better one -- I'm limited in what I can do. So, frankly, if anybody could come up with something that would help, I think that would be great. I can't determine or control that, since it's outside my self. So I -- and others, I think -- need to depend on others to help to come up with something that will help. If they want to. Which some probably do. So -- having processed and said all that, I feel a little bit better "related". Still a pretty amorphous experience for me, though.