“She Kept Sabotaging Every Relationship… Until This Happened.”

How Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy Transforms Emotional Chaos into Coherence
Alana was exhausted. Every romantic relationship ended in disaster. Friendships didn’t last. Even her therapist was beginning to feel like just another person who “didn’t get it.”

She wasn’t lazy. She wasn’t manipulative.
She was terrified. And stuck.

When Alana began therapy with a new clinician trained in Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy (DDP)[1], things felt different from the start. Her therapist didn’t rush to offer solutions or interpretations. Instead, he asked one simple question:

What are you feeling right now—not what you think you should feel, but what you actually feel?

Alana’s instinct was to say, “I don’t know.” But something about the question lingered. Her therapist stayed quiet. Present. Curious. Eventually, Alana admitted: “I feel like I’m bad.”

Not sad. Not angry. Just… bad. A feeling she couldn’t explain. A feeling that had lived inside her for as long as she could remember.

The First Key to DDP: Reflective Awareness
What Alana’s therapist was doing is at the heart of DDP[2]. Before trying to fix behavior, challenge beliefs, or analyze the past, DDP begins by helping people slow down and observe their emotional experience.

Many individuals with borderline personality traits or complex trauma have little practice naming their emotions. They live in a constant state of emotional whiplash, jumping from reaction to reaction without time—or support—to reflect.

In DDP[3], the therapist becomes a partner in curiosity. Rather than imposing a story, they help the client listen to their own emotional signals. This is called reflective awareness, and it’s where healing begins.[4]

Alana learned to notice her emotions without immediately responding to them. Instead of texting her ex at midnight or ghosting her best friend after a disagreement, she began journaling first. Asking herself:

• What am I really feeling?
• Where have I felt this before?
• Is this a fact—or a fear?

She didn’t always get it right. But slowly, she was building the skill of awareness over automaticity—a foundational DDP goal.

The Breakthrough Moment
One day, Alana described a recent date. “He was nice,” she said. “Too nice. I knew he’d leave, so I left first.”

Her therapist didn’t correct her. He paused. And then he asked: “When you left, what part of you felt safer?”

Alana burst into tears. No one had ever suggested that her behavior might make sense—not just as sabotage, but as self-protection rooted in past pain.

Together, they unpacked the emotional history beneath that instinct: A childhood filled with emotional inconsistency. Affection one day, silence the next. Safety always just out of reach.

This is what DDP does best. It doesn’t just label patterns—it honors the emotional logic behind them and gently reconstructs new meaning.[5]

Beyond Behaviors: Into the Story Beneath the Story
Traditional approaches often try to regulate behavior. DDP goes deeper: It helps the client understand why the behavior exists and supports them in rewriting the story that gave rise to it.

For Alana, this meant seeing her impulsivity as a way to avoid anticipated abandonment. Her anger as a mask for grief. Her shutdowns as echoes of childhood shame.

With each session, she didn’t just learn skills—she reclaimed a piece of her self-story.

So, What Happened to Alana?

Six months into therapy, Alana was still learning. She still had bad days. But she was no longer drowning in them. She could name her emotions. Sit with them. Talk about them. She was slowly becoming the author of her own life—something she once thought impossible.

And it all started with a question.
Not “What’s wrong with you?”
But: “What are you feeling right now?”

CALL TO ACTION:
Are you ready to learn the skills that helped Alana—and can help your clients too?

Join us for our four-hour virtual seminar on Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy, where you’ll gain practical, evidence-based tools for helping individuals struggling with identity, emotion regulation, and trauma.

Date: Friday, June 13, 2025
Time: 9-1pm (EDT)
Click HERE to Register

This is more than training. This is transformation.

[1] Gregory, Robert J. “Manual of Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy.”

[2] Majdara, Elahe, et al. “The Efficacy of Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy in Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder: Introducing an Evidence-Based Therapeutic Model.” Studies in Medical Sciences 29.6 (2018): 1-19.

[3] Jurist, Julia, et al. “Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy.” Handbook of Good Psychiatric Management for Borderline Personality Disorder and Alcohol Use Disorder (2024): 233.

[4] Mellado, Augusto, et al. “Dynamic patterns in the voices of a patient diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and the therapist throughout long-term psychotherapy.” Journal of Constructivist Psychology 37.1 (2024): 97-120.

[5] Gregory, R. J. “Remediation for treatment-resistant borderline personality disorder: Manual of dynamic deconstructive psychotherapy.” SUNY upstate medical university (2014).