Seeking Best Loved Book Titles

[newfreedom]

Dearest Fellow Lovers of Good Books:

I am putting the finishing touches on my Amazon book order. (I seriously     my books).  We don't live in the US,  so I want to be sure I don’t leave anything out of this order.   I’m interested in learning what are your favorite, most loved books... good reads for nons/adult children of BPDm…..you know books that you want to highlight every other sentence.   

Here’s what I already have or have ordered:

Stop Walking on Eggshells

UTBM

The Gift of Fear

Betrayal Bonds

Mean Mothers

Why Does He Do That

Please feel free to add any comments about your loved book.

Thanks for any suggestion,     nf

[Japanese Doll]

toxic parents by susan forward

emotional blackmail bt susan forward

will I ever be good enough by Karyl mcbride

free from lies by alice miller

I read all of the above and they are good.  I would like to buy  the following:

understanding the BM by Christine Lawson

mommie dearest by christine crawford

I am not sure whether the above two books are good.  I havent read them.  But I was told they are good.

Japanese Doll

[bpdfamfan]

I     my books too 

The ones you've mentioned are great (I just bought Why Does He DO That & haven't read Mommie Dearest)

but two more I thought of are

The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis & Treatment by Pressman & the Wizard of Oz & Other Narcissists by Payson.

Not sure if they look interesting to you but I liked them 

[sandpiper]

Hmmm...over the last five years I've managed to fill a shelf in my home library with books on PDs, abuse, healthy relationships, and recovery.  And its growing.  It can feel a little strange when a friend comes to visit and says 'Wow, what a lot of books, can I browse?'...it feels a bit like I've got the family skeleton on display in there but strangely enough even NORMAL people - those who I thought of at school or uni as having normal families - are drawn to that shelf and they'll come back with 'Wow, this is my father/grandmother/mother-in-law - can I please borrow it?'

Invariably they end up buying whatever they've found and later they say it opened their eyes and changed their lives.

And I have someone else in my life who 'gets it'. 

I read 'The Gift of Fear' recently and I agree with whoever said here, a while ago, that the author focussed way too much on the problems of celebrities and their stalkers and it would have been much more useful to us if he'd focused on the kind of thing we get to deal with in day to day life.  Somehow I can't imagine a SWAT team and helicopters zooming all over the hill around my property whenever I think I'm in danger.  I thought that there were probably two chapters towards the end that were relevant to my situation and the rest of the book could be summed up with 'Trust your gut.'  The chapter where he talks about their strategies to push their way into your life, i.e. Loan Sharking is good.

The ones that I think are essential reading matter:

Lawson - Understanding the Borderline Mother

Beverly Engel - Emotional Abuse or The Emotionally Abusive Relationship (or any of her other books on abuse)

Pressman and Donaldson Pressman - the Narcissistic Family

Lundy Bancroft - Why does he do that?

Susan Forward - Toxic Parents/Toxic In-laws/Emotional Blackmail

Sandra Michaelson - 'Is anyone listening'  (healing and learning better patterns of communication and relating)

I have a stack of others on my shelves, which include several of those listed and, I'm guessing, there will be more of the titles in my collection listed after this - I found out about all of them through contacts here over the last five years or else through looking through the resources at the end.

One that I don't have but got from the library - its a text book that was out of print and hopefully the revised edition is out now - is Aphrodite Matsakis' book on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I think that's the title, its listed on her website. I got a lot out of that one.

I'm planning to read Judith Herman's 'Trauma and Recovery' soon, as I keep hearing good things about it.

'Surviving a borderline parent' is good for recovery.

And the Harriet Lerner books i.e. 'the dance of anger' were really useful for me to learn about triangulation etc and how to change my own patterns so that I'm not getting caught up in the games.

I have two Christina Crawfords in my collection and I am so GRATEFUL to her for her courage in speaking out about her experience.

I love these 'my favorite book threads'.

I was just wondering what to read next.

[sandpiper]

'The Artist's Way' - by Julia Cameron.

Golly, how could I forget that one.

Probably not as early reading for newbies, but its a wonderful tool for recovery.

I worked through it with my group, about 8 months after I started here.  We got so much out of it and it really helped to shift things.

A valuable resource for when you're at the stage where you're ready to start moving on and focusing on you.

She suggests that you write three pages of a journal each day (as a kind of exorcism/rubbish removal thing) and gets you to go on an 'artist date' each week.  Which is essentially just finding one hour each week that is just for YOU.

Its essentially a 12 week course in recovery with a few homework exercises each week that plant the seeds of change.

i.e. homework might be 'List 10 things you've always wanted to try but were afraid of' and 'clean out your sock drawer'.

The sock drawer exercise or whatever it was set my entire group off on this massive clutter clean out.  One of our group ended up repainting her house and redoing her kitchen.  We had all been flat and exhausted and unmotivated to look after ourselves, in one way or another and wow, did that book set a fire under that. 

[an0ught]

Fruzzetti - The high conflict couple

Fruzzetti is both a DBT expert (was part of the first DBT team) and readable. It is short and clear and very much to the point. While the title looks like a book for couples it is really a book about how emotions work and what we can do to control them.

[blackandwhite]

Below is the Coping and Healing Board reading list to date--lots of overlap with what has been mentioned so far. (It's posted at a sticky topic near the top of the threads for this board.) I'm always looking for good additions. 

B&W

Top Book Recommendations for Your Library -- a general list for bpdfamily.com members

Books for Learning and Healing

Surviving a Borderline Parent

A manual for understanding the impact of growing up with a borderline parent and recovering from many of the effects; includes information and exercises, the review includes comments from the co-author. This book gives you the validation you probably never had, and gives solid, practical ways to overcome the effects of growing up with a BPD parent.

Understanding the Borderline Mother

"the first book I ever read that truly described my mother.  It was a very emotionally hard read, but well worth it" -- a member

Many members describe reading this book as a powerful experience, reaching into their childhoods and bringing to the light things they thought nobody else could ever know. Profound and insightful, the book can be emotionally overwhelming for some. Take it slowly if you need to.

Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life

An extremely helpful book for adult children of BPD parents who are going through the painful stage of revisiting their childhoods with new understanding, on the path to healing. Important note: The author recommends confronting your abusive parent(s), which is not always advisable when a parent is a BPD sufferer. Whatever choice readers make about confronting a parent, the chapters on the different kinds of abuse and other sections will provide validation, information, and comfort.

Healing the Shame That Binds You

For the adult children of BPD parents, an understanding of what the author calls "toxic shame" helps to explain the damage done by a parent whose illness caused him or her to view a child as wrong or flawed--and to find a path forward to healing.

The Gift of Fear

People raised in families with personality disordered members often never developed or lose their self-protective instincts. The Gift of Fear provides critical information and strategies for fostering in adulthood this life-saving awareness that may have been underdeveloped in childhood.

Articles for Learning and Healing

Article: Borderline Personality Disorder - A Clinical Perspective

Article: Children of Mothers with Borderline Personality Disorder


Workshops for Learning and Healing

Workshop - US: What it means to be in the “FOG”

Workshop - BPD: Understanding the Waif, Hermit, Queen, and Witch

Workshop: How a dysfunctional childhood affects our development

Workshop - BPD: Problematic mothering/parenting


Books for Coping with a Personality Disordered Relative

The Essential Family Guide to BPD

Like the classic Stop Walking on Eggshells by the same author, The Essential Family Guide is a very good introduction to BPD. It also has more information about a variety of family relationships and also good coping strategies.

Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting over Narcissistic Parents

Realistic and practical, this book assumes that, for whatever reason, you plan to continue your relationship with a narcissistic parent. By providing insight into the your parent's motivations and behaviors, it helps to depersonalize the hurt. It also gives very specific, concrete advice for how to protect yourself from your narcissistic parent.

A Balanced Life: 9 Strategies for Coping with the Mental Health Problems of a Loved One

In readable, down-to-earth prose, A Balanced Life teaches family and friends what they can expect from those they love who have mental health problems. Tom Smith lost his own daughter, who was bipolar, to suicide, so he shares insights from personal experience that are helpful to any family member who is coping with or caring for a mentally ill relative.

Taking Care of Parents Who Didn't Take Care of You

Very helpful for adult children of personality disordered parents who choose to provide elder care.


Articles for Coping with a Personality Disordered Relative

Article: How To Manage a BPD Relationship


Workshops for Coping with a Personality Disordered Relative

Workshop - BOUNDARIES: Upholding our values and independence

Tools: US: Do not allow others to 'rent space' in your 'head'

Tools: How to take a time out


Books for Working on Ourselves

The Ultimate Guide to Transforming Your Anger: Dynamic Tools for Healthy Relationships

People who cope with BPD family members are often left with a legacy of anger--underexpressed, overexpressed, or coming out at the wrong time. This book helps you to become more observant and intentional in your handling of anger, so it no longer controls you.

The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships

Not just for women, this book is a priceless source for information on triangulation, and how anger and other bad feelings are passed from person to person. Although not explicitly about BPD, adult children of BPD parents will recognize family dynamics and get clearer on how a BPD family member can create chaos in other family relationships.

The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman's Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships

The genogram concept is extremely helpful to seeing family patterns across generations--where you fit in and how you can act to stop perpetuating an unhealthy legacy of personality disordered or other unhealthy behavior.

Codependent No More

This book will help anyone who is thinking or feeling responsible for other people, feel it is your responsibility to help other people solve their problems, feel needy people are always attracted to you, and feeling unappreciated or used; or you have weak boundaries with the people in your life; you have dependency issues; poor communication; and low self-worth.

Full Catastrophe Living

Growing up in a BPD environment, we become highly reactive. Our emotions may be numbed or feel completely overwhelming--or a little of both. It is hard to solve problems and move forward with your healing and your life until you can achieve a feeling of calm and some "clean white space" to work on things. Full Catastrophe Living teaches the practice of mindfulness--taking an observer stance--in a simple and accessible way.

Articles for Working on Ourselves

Article: Controlling Anger -- Before It Controls You

Article: Stop Being Tortured by Your Own Thoughts

Article: Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking

Article: Ten Ways to Untwist Your Thinking

Article: On-Line Cognitive Behavioral Treatment Therapy

[BMama]

The first book someone ever recommended to me:

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, When to Say No to Take Control of Your Life  by Cloud and Townsend

Also, I have

If You Had Controlling Parents: How to Make Peace with Your Past and Take Your Place in the World  Dan Neuharth

I had both of these before I knew anything about BPD, just that I knew I needed help dealing with my mother. 

Both very good.

[temp101]

An always favorite will be SWOE.

I was more impressed with "Codependent No More" than I expected to be. Despite it's title (How to Stop Controlling...), it's really compassionate to co-dependents.

"Share the Care: How to Organize a Group to Care for Someone Who is Seriosly Ill"

I have an unusual reason for liking this book. When both my SIL and I had bad Fibro at the same time, reading this book helped me learn to ask for others help ... and also offer to return the help to whatever degree I was able. I also learned that you cannot lean on one person -- once source of support --  too much as they will burn out in caring for you. (Sounds like our experience with BPDs, does it not?)

When I first got Fibro, I was with a very abusive BPD man (not current H). I didn't know how to ask for help from friends; and I didn't think I had anything to offer in return. It was some time after I left him that I found this book. (Even though the book is about forming caretaker groups, I used its philosophies in a less structured way. This book touched my heart in the way that it pointed out recipient's of help often feel terrible guilt -- that can make them grumpy because the power to navigate their own lives is gone.) Those who are disabled or in emotional anguish and living with someone with BPD might find some comfort in creating circles of "support exchange."

I have a feeling that in the future, some of the ideas in this book could be adapted to create a support caretaking group for someone with BPD or other mental disorders. In the interim, I have used it to handle my uBPDh's "disordered" symptoms by distributing my need for moral support amongst various family and friends (and only to the degree that I trust them.) In return, if they need a listening ear, I'm there for them. (And they do take me up on it.)

Another one I'm nearly finished reading is, "Is it You? Me? Or Adult ADHD?" So many of the symptoms of BPD and ADHD overlap, that this book can be helpful in learning more about how to deal with BPD too (lack of empathy, forgetfulness, black& white thinking, etc.) What's new in this book is a look at co-dependency from a different angle. That it's not co-dependent to help someone who cannot schedule their own time, and cannot keep appts., to stay on track.

Once the person is to the point of taking care of themselves -- and you don't release the reins -- then it's time to look at controlling behavior. But not before.

(When you compare the criteria in SWOE against the criteria in this ADHD book, you will discover that they are still two distinct conditions -- but some BPDs may have both to some degree, vice-versa.)

[allergictodramaSD]

I've found many of the books listed above useful, especially SWOE and Susan Forward's work. 

One that hasn't been mentioned is John Oldham and Lois B. Morris's The Personality Self-Portrait: Why You Think, Work, Love and Act the Way You Do.  As the title suggests, the main thrust of the book is to identify your own combination of 13 normal personality "styles."  The book includes a sympathetic but clear-headed description of the strengths and weaknesses of each style in romantic, family, and work contexts as well as suggestions for coping with others with that style both in intimate/family relationships and in the workplace. 

The part that comes in handy for those of us with family members with BPD (and other personality disorders)  is that each discussion of a normal style is paired, at the end of the chapter, with the personality disorder that represents the dysfunctional extreme of that style.  While they do offer some coping tips in this section as well, the authors (one of whom helped write the section on personality disorders for the DSM III-R) don't pull any punches in describing how difficulty coping with personality disorders can be.  For instance, the advice on "coping with borderline people" reads, in part: "most important, you must understand your own limits.  Tell Borderline people that you love them *but* you cannot be for them everything they need you to be, and you cannot be responsible for everything they do to themselves.  Encourage them to get help; insist, if you can.  If your family life is in chaos, seek help together" [obviously, this advice is aimed more at a parent or partner of a person with BPD -- especially the low-functioning sort -- than an adult child; while the book doesn't explicitly discuss the no contact option, there's nothing that would rule it out, either.  The focus is definitely on individuals respecting their own and others' innate temperaments, and, absent major dysfunction, the right of each person to set the boundaries appropriate to his/her own personality style, and to choose to interact with those who complement that style.]

While this is not an entry-level book on BPD or personality disorders in general, it offers a nice mix of accessibility/readability (the personalities are illustrated through stories involving a recurring cast of fictional characters) and solid information, as well as a balance of hope and realism (people do change, but with difficulty, and only if they're willing; partners and other family members can't make them willing, and, sometimes, it doesn't make sense to wait around for the person to reach that point).  It's useful for self-reflection (remember, it's mostly about normal variation in personality), and, for children of personality disordered parents, could also be useful, I suspect, in quelling fears that sharing some traits with a parent -- or realizing that a partner or child has some of the same traits -- means that we or our family members have the same disorder. 

Since it's not really a how-to/coping book, or a primer on BPD, it's probably not a candidate for your first book order, but it might be useful somewhere along the way, when you're ready to take a step back to look at yourself and the rest of the normal world, and try to understand how it both intersects with and stands apart from the PD world.  Sometimes, a reminder of what the range of normal behaviors looks like, and where the lines between normal and dysfunctional lie, is refreshing. 

[pooh2]

Here's a funny one but still a favorite...  Secret Life of Bees.  Not a book about surviving BPD..  it is about finding love and mothering in other places..  Loved it!  Cried then entire time I read it.

[sandpiper]

Wow, yes, I forgot the book on boundaries that someone put me onto when I first came here.

I have heard good things about the Cloud book on the topic, but the one my group read was Black and Enns 'Better Boundaries, Owning and Treasuring your life.'

A friend read it and complained it was repetitive.

I didn't find it that way, but as it was something I read very soon after I came here, and I was quite distressed and confused, if it was repetitive then it probably served me well by drumming a few good boundary messages in. 

One of the best things I read here was something called 'The Wolf Pack Post'.

Someone's T had used it as an analogy for how dysfunctional/abusive family systems operate, and it really helped me to understand why there is no unity within the family of the PD.  There is just the Alpha Wolf, and everyone within random surprise biting range - and the Scapegoat, that the entire pack like to turn on - apparently having a scapegoat for everyone to attack reduces tension in the group and allows a focus for the group's anger.

THAT was my family.

I have no idea where that post has gone, but if anyone wants it, just start a thread and ask - someone here will have it, for sure.

[BMama]

^That may be a good thread to expand upon.  I can totally see that dynamic in my family.

[newfreedom]

Bmama,

Yes I agree, do you want to start one or shall I?

^That may be a good thread to expand upon.  I can totally see that dynamic in my family.

Wow, that was a huge amount of really useful information, thanks to all of you!         

Has anyone read Mean Mothers?   What did you think?   

[BMama]

Go for it, NF, or SaNPDiper.

Or have you and I missed it somewhere?

[newfreedom]

SaNPDiper,

Would you be willing to start a new thread about wolf pack since you know more than me about this?   I'm sure it would benefit many of us...   

[healinghome]

Here's a funny one but still a favorite...  Secret Life of Bees.  Not a book about surviving BPD..  it is about finding love and mothering in other places..  Loved it!  Cried then entire time I read it.

i lurved this film and book.  so moving when we see how a good and real mother/s behaves.

i'm thinking of getting the 'boundries' book, is it any good?

[BMama]

^I love it. 

I went to lunch one day a few years ago with my new supervisor.  He came on as president of a small family owned company, but was a part time pastor, also.  He took everyone individually to lunch to get to know us all...I thought it was nice.  He asked about our family, what we did since high school, etc.  I was in the middle of some drama with my mother and little brother, and being the awesome listener he was, I had diarrhea of the mouth and probably told too much.  However, he sat there and said...I want to recommend this book to you...

It's spiritually based, and it talks about boundaries with your spouse, family, husband, work, and even yourself.  Sadly it took me 7-8 more years to figure out the whole BPD thing, but that book put me onto the control issue which led me to the "Controlling Parents" book I mentioned.  I got "Boundaries" back out again and re-read it, actually both books.  They make even more sense now that I know about BPD.

[healinghome]

i think i might give the book a go.