EMIN ™

Advanced Mental Health Education

Anxiety/Depression, Self-Harm, Eating Disorders, Anorexia, BPD, Bipolar, c-PTSD | Aloneness & Emptiness | Fragmented Self & Identity




Accredited by the ACCME/APA in BPD and Advanced DBT
Accreditation Council of Continued Medical Education
(ACCME® Accredited in Complex Trauma
& Relational Neurobiology)

Member of the
American Psychological Association





EMIN ™ Blog:

20-12-23: The Emotion Revolution - A New Therapy Paradigm - Transforming Anxiety, Depression, c-PTSD, BPD, Self-Harm, Eating Disorders

Ladder Out of Emotional Hell:

1. Borderline & Emotion Dysregulation (Calming The Chaos)
("2022-01-22: added Affect Regulation Theory")
1.a Fear of Being Alone
1.b Chronic Emptiness
1.c Numb/Detached (Dissociation)
1.d Paranoia/Hallucinations, Voices

2. Unstable Self-Image or Sense of Self

3. Complex Trauma / c-PTSD / Structural Dissociation (Anxiety, Shame, Humiliation, Anger) [2, 14]

4. Is BPD The Same As c-PTSD / Complex Trauma?

7. The Neurobiology of BPD (Prefrontal/Orbitofrontal Cortex, Amygdala) (2022-03-12)



Read More: Is BPD The Same As c-PTSD / Complex Trauma?

Healing Through Emotion

Emotional/Interpersonal Neurobiology has discovered that we share 7 primitive emotional systems with animals that allow us to feel Connectedness, Pleasure, Play, Assertiveness and that can (self- or externally) generate feelings of (Self-)Care and Safety but due to circumstances (complex & developmental trauma/c-PTSD, personality disorders) these emotion systems can become disorganized and overwhelming.

This causes us to rely on primitive defenses like idealization, anger, dissociation/numbing, devaluation, clinging, addictions, eating disorders while developing anxiety and low self-esteem because you lack proper representations of the world due to impaired "mentalizing" or "mindsight", which means interpreting other people's needs, desires, feelings, beliefs, goals, purposes and reasons behind their actions (in simple terms, "making sense of eachother and ourselves) (attachment theory, self-other objects, relations theory).


"When we differentiate and link aspects of a complex system, we enable the natural self-organization of that system to move toward harmony. When either differentiation or linkage are hampered, the result is an impediment to self-organization in the form of chaos, rigidity, or both." - Daniel J. Siegel


Through integrating Emotional Neuroscience, researchers are now discovering that our primitive emotional systems are the key to balancing emotional instability and healing complex & developmental trauma (c-PTSD, BPD, Bipolar etc). This process of integration starts with us becoming aware and choosing to focus our energy and attention and becoming internal generators of the positive emotions like our Value, Self-Worth, Assertiveness, Motivation, Care and Safety systems through training them like muscles which in parallel will downregulate the negative and even traumatic emotions, this, together with our intentional focused attention and awareness training we are able to organize and create Fail-Safe brain networks (Panksepp, 2012, 2018. Sheldon, 2022).

"In addition to arriving at emotions, therapists also need to help clients leave certain painful emotions by activating new adaptive emotions that help change the old emotions. Clients need to consolidate their experiential change in new narratives consisting of new views of self and world (Greenberg, 2011).

This process of accepting emotion and changing emotion with emotion as well as creating new narratives involves understanding different types of emotions and principles of emotional change. The best way to change an emotion is with an opposing emotion." - Leslie S. Greenberg



Crisis Skills [7]:

What Are Distress Tolerance Skills? Your Ultimate DBT Toolkit [8, 13]










Dan Siegel: A Framework for Cultivating Integration:

The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. By Daniel J. Siegel.


EMIN ™: Advancing Mental Health Education and Research on Complex Trauma, BPD, Self-Harm, Suicidality, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, and c-PTSD

EMIN is an independent research organization that aims to advance mental health education. Traditional system & models often are slow to update and through independent reaearch we can accelerate the improvement in mental health around the world.

Scientific References

(Updated: 23-02-2022):

1. "Is borderline personality a particularly right hemispheric disorder? A study of P3a using single trial analysis. Russell Meares, Allan Schore, Dmitriy Melkonian. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 45 (2)" (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi /abs/10.3109/00048674.2010.497476)

2. "Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among Survivors of Multiple Childhood Trauma: A Pilot Effectiveness Study. Hilary B Hodgdon, Frank G Anderson, Elizabeth Southwell, Wendy Hrubec, Richard Schwartz. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 1-22, 2022" (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi /full/10.1080/10926771.2021.2013375)

3. "Borderline Personality Disorder, Impulsivity, and the Orbitofrontal Cortex Heather A. Berlin, D.Phil., M.P.H., Edmund T. Rolls, D.Phil., D.Sc., and Susan D. Iversen, Ph.D., Sc.D. American Journal of Psychiatry . 2005 Dec;162(12):2360-7" (https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi /full/10.1176/appi.ajp.162.12.2360)

4. "Dissociation vs repression: A new neuropsychoanalytic model for psychopathology. Clara Mucci. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis 81 (1), 82-111, 2021" (https://link.springer.com/article /10.1057 /s11231-021-09279-x)

5. "Organizing Awareness and Increasing Emotion Regulation: Revising Chair Work in Emotion-Focused Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder Alberta E. Pos and Leslie S. Greenberg. Journal of Personality DisordersVol. 26, No. 1" (https://guilfordjournals.com/doi /10.1521/pedi.2012.26.1.84)

6. "Impact of Mindfulness Training on Borderline Personality Disorder: A Randomized Trial Matilde Elices, Juan C. Pascual, Maria J. Portella, Albert Feliu-Soler, Ana Martín-Blanco, Cristina Carmona & Joaquim Soler Mindfulness volume 7, pages584–595 (2016)" (https://link.springer.com/article /10.1007/s12671-016-0492-1)

7. "The Role of Mindfulness in Borderline Personality Disorder Features. Wupperman, Peggilee PhD; Neumann, Craig S. PhD; Whitman, Jeannie B. PhD; Axelrod, Seth R. PhD; The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease: October 2009 - Volume 197 - Issue 10 - p 766-771" (https://journals.lww.com/jonmd /Abstract/2009/10000 /The_Role_of_Mindfulness_in_Borderline_Personality.9.aspx)

8. "Mindfulness skills in borderline personality disorder patients during dialectical behavior therapy: Preliminary results Nader Perroud,Rosetta Nicastro,Françoise Jermann &Philippe Huguelet. International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice Volume 16, 2012 - Issue 3" (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi /full/10.3109/13651501.2012.674531)

9. "Modern Attachment Theory: The Central Role of Affect Regulation in Development and Treatment Judith R. Schore & Allan N. Schore. Clinical Social Work Journal volume 36, pages9–20 (2008)" (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10615-007-0111-7)

10. "Emotion-Focused Principles for Working with Borderline Personality Disorder WARWAR, SERINE H. PhD, C Psych; LINKS, PAUL S. MD; GREENBERG, LESLIE PhD, C Psych; BERGMANS, YVONNE MSW, RSW. Journal of Psychiatric Practice: March 2008 - Volume 14 - Issue 2 - p 94-104" (https://journals.lww.com/practicalpsychiatry /Abstract/2008/03000 /Emotion_Focused_Principles_for_Working_with.4.aspx)

11. "A developmental, mentalization-based approach to the understanding and treatment of borderline personality disorder. Development and Psychopathology, 21(4), 1355-1381. Fonagy, P., & Luyten, P. (2009)." (doi:10.1017/S0954579409990198)

12. "Attachment Studies with Borderline Patients: A Review, Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 12:2, 94-104. Hans R. Agrawal, John Gunderson, Bjarne M. Holmes & Karlen Lyons-Ruth (2004)" (DOI: 10.1080/ 10673220490447218)

13. "What Works in the Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Curr Behav Neurosci Rep 4, 21–30 (2017). Choi-Kain, L.W., Finch, E.F., Masland, S.R. et al." (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40473-017-0103-z)

14. "The effects of early relational trauma on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant Ment. Health J., 22: 201-269. Schore, A.N. (2001)" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002 /1097-0355(200101/04)22:1%3C201::AID-IMHJ8%3E3.0.CO;2-9)






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