What Managing Borderline Personality Disorder Taught One Executive

When I heard her talk at Google last week, Dr. Kellie A. McElhaney from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business posed a provocative question to the crowd. Have you ever been called “too” something? And has it not been intended as a compliment? 

When executive Bryce Seto went through a 360 Feedback exercise as part of his MBA curriculum, he learned he ranked high on the passion scale. Like a lot of us, Bryce has gotten the message that he is “too much”- but his passion and drive brought him to where he is today. And yet, his emotions can get large and scary. ”That's kind of a double-edged sword. So that comes out really well in a startup environment or if I'm pitching an idea or in the boardroom, I can get people to get excited and to take action. But on the other side of that is this inability to manage my emotions, so to speak. So it means if I don't agree with something, I might lash out in a way that isn't very good for my career or just not know how to calm myself down and just kind of manage my way through difficult times… and that did come out in my feedback from a lot of people just saying, Hey, I can be reactionary. I can be a little bit more direct instead of managing the relationship; I might be too intense about making my point.”

Bryce Seto has Borderline Personality Disorder, which is characterized by big emotions and mood swings and sometimes compulsive, risky or irritable behaviors. Loneliness and depression can also accompany BPD. And so Seto is extra aware of how his emotions play into his management. Through Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and other tools Seto has now spent years learning how to regulate his emotions, mastering distress tolerance and mindfulness. Seto says, “When I think about BPD, it's not the thing that defines me. It's not something I can ignore. It's just a part of the puzzle of who I am and I have to bring it with me no matter where I am.”

Seth’s BPD means he can be quicker to react, and might have bigger emotional reactions than others. For many years, Seto realized he sought chaos as a way to help regulate all the big swings.  “I feel like I’m most comfortable in chaos,” he says.

“I almost have to create a chaotic environment in order for me to be comfortable. I come from a very untraditional background. I didn't finish my undergrad. I dropped out my first semester of university. I just felt like this wasn't for me. None of my family went to school. I got a bunch of random sales jobs, mostly retail until I was able to leverage that into getting an office job as a sales development rep at a tech company. And in this job I remember every single day for a year just bouncing off the walls, wanting to get out of there. I had so much anxiety. I felt like a stray cat that somebody let in and was trying to domesticate. I was like, this is not for me. Just that structure, that nine to five being in the office and the chit chat and the coffee, it was just like, oh, I don't like this.

Even if we don’t have Borderline Personality Disorder, many of us seek novelty and chaos in order to manage— or avoid—  our anxiety and big emotions. This week, I came home after 4 weeks of constant travel, novelty, and big events. At home, I felt empty and rattled. All the anxieties I’d been able to put off came flooding through. I just wanted to get back out on the road because it felt easier than feeling all my feelings. 

But here’s the thing: as leaders we need to be able to settle, to stay steady and consistent. We can’t seek novelty or freedom all the time. As parents too. We may want to keep running but we can’t. And so how do we learn to settle down?

Seto went through a lot of depression and anxiety before becoming able to sit still with himself. Listen to our podcast interview:

Bryce Seto says, “If I were to distill all of it down to what all this has taught me over seven years of therapy and all the work that I've been doing, it's just this ability to be aware. And as someone with BPD, it's knowing that my emotions or my thoughts are not me. They're just something that's happening to me. And if I'm aware of those thoughts and those feelings, it allows me to then know how to manage them.

I can say: I'm stressed right now. I'm feeling angry right now. It doesn't mean you need to act on your anger. It means that this is your feeling now. You have a choice as to whether you want to act on that feeling or you want to regulate your way through that feeling so that you can have a more productive conversation or a more productive environment with your surroundings than you would've had. You have just impulsively acted on those emotions. So that awareness is so key for me, the first step is just understanding as to where am I at, and then, okay, this is where I'm at now. I know what I need to do to deal with it.”

You might want to look into DBT, and here are two really helpful tenets of DBT I often use, just as a layperson:

Mindfulness: I can notice my thoughts and feelings and emotions and not judge them. When I can name how I’m feeling, I can take away some of the power these feelings and emotions have over me. As Bryce says, My emotions and thoughts are not me.

Distress Tolerance: Distress tolerance means we accept reality without trying to change it. We try not to jump into unhelpful behaviors that might temporarily help us not feel discomfort or pain. We feel distress mindfully and reduce our own distress through tools. There are lots of distress tolerance techniques and different ones work for different people. I like these three:

Intensive movement: disrupting your physical state can help manage big emotions! I run up and down stairs! 

Distraction: Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. Cat videos on Instagram can really help. So can calling a friend and asking, “Please distract me.”

Self soothing: Tell yourself, “I’m going to be good to myself,” and do something you find calming. When I’m really anxious I ask my daughter if we can color together. 

Morra

PS: More about DBT: https://dialecticalbehaviortherapy.com/