Hey. You probably have independently discovered a lot of the skills for yourself. The notion is that they are meant to be descriptive of the ways that people cope with stressful things. It is just that some people don't seem to do those things, and those people seem to have trouble coping. So the idea is that to start with you have to practice the skills practice the skills make a conscious effort to practice the skills. Over time they become automatic ways of coping just like how they are automatic ways of coping for other people.

There has been some talk of whether other patient populations would also find a benefit to the skills (even though the skills were developed with BPD in mind). I think they could really help most people just by giving them some ideas of other things to do to help them cope.

The skills training manual is something that is worked through in group therapy.

The clinicians handbook is the theory behind both the group therapy and the individual therapy.

She does talk a bit about different conceptions of BPD that have been offered etc. But the main focus is to introduce and really explain her treatment approach such that therapists can be trained to consistently apply the approach (which helps when you want to run controlled trials on the effectiveness of the approach).

Her work also fits in quite nicely with some of the stuff that is being done in psychodynamic therapy with a focus on 'mentalization' where borderline personality is conceptualised as a 'failure to mentalize when the attachment system is active'. Sounds like another way of saying 'emotional dysregulation' to me, but I guess that makes it clearer that it is in a RELATIONAL context that the emotional dysfunction typically occurs.