Dr. Banks Suicide

Karen’s first individual sessions with Dr. Banks focused on decreasing Karen’s tendencies to engage in suicide attempts and self-harm. Dr. Banks had Karen keep a diary to record when she had urges to hurt herself, why she had these urges, and how she was feeling at the times that she had these urges. They would talk about her behavior and think of ways that Karen can change this behavior in order to cope with her emotions in a healthy, safe way. Dr. Banks would make sure to help Karen to realize that her urges to self-harm were the only way that she knew how to cope with the stressors in her life. Banks emphasized that, because she had an unstable and abusive environment growing up, she never learned that her feelings were reasonable and it …show more content…
Here, Dr. Banks employed exposure therapy in order to help Karen cope with her traumatic past. In addition to the skills she has learned to help her to manage emotional stress such as doing things nice for herself or finding distracting activities, Dr. Banks wanted to reduce the capacity for the memories to produce distress. Dr. Banks uses an exposure technique that is similar to post-traumatic stress disorder in which Banks would slowly expose Karen to the traumatic memories and stimuli, or things that trigger her memories. In these exercises, Karen was asked to repeatedly to describe the events in general detail. With recounting the memories to Dr. Banks repeatedly, with increased levels of detail, her distress with the memories gradually decreased. This would eventually decrease the stress that the experiences were originally producing to more moderate levels that are easier to cope with. Lastly, the third stage of Karen’s treatment was addressing longer-term issues that would help Karen to gain self-respect and achieve career, interpersonal, and social goals. This stage was built into Karen’s treatment plan in order to reinforce the skills that she had learned in the previous stages. Karen was already learning such as self-respect and proving for herself so, she was already learning long-term …show more content…
She would show the signs of a lack of self-respect through suicide attempts and self-harm. She would have such strong emotions that, if negative and stressful enough, would end in her cutting herself. Finally, on her last suicide attempt, she got the help that she desperately needed. She started DBT with Dr. Banks and in group therapy in order to learn interpersonal skills, coping skills, ways to help her quality of life, and gained respect for herself. Over time she would stop cutting herself and apply the skills that she has been learning to her life and relationships moving forward. In the last stage of individual therapy, Karen received treatment for her traumatic past in order to make it so that the events no longer had as much of an effect on her distress levels. She also gained a new friendship through her training class for her new job and was able to use the restraint skills that she learned so that she could keep her strong emotions under control and be able to maintain healthier relationships. Overall, with the DBT method of treatment, BPD individuals can learn skills that better and can even save their lives for the