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and now she thinks i'm leaving her.

She's thinks that i'm 'taking my life back'.

i've explained that i'm trying to be a better person for her, that i love her and i'm not going anywhere. we talked about how i should get help, and reading the books are part of it.

she is undiagnosed, so the fact that people (her friends who have dealt with pwBPD, her 'therapist' who is only a student and can't legally diagnose anything, and myself) think she has BPD traits is very scary to her.

she told me she wants to stop feeling this way. she feels guilty every day, and that i'm the one who is doing that to her.

i feel like i'm screwing up big-time.

Have you tried to Validate how she feels about it. If she started reading a book to learn how to deal with your behaviors do you think it might hurt a little? The book is about taking your life back, she just doesn't understand that it's more about getting back the life that you wanted for yourself with her. It's very important to Validate how she feels, don't tell her she is wrong for feeling like she does. She does feel that way and you can't change it, but you can tell her it's understandable that she could feel that way. 

I actually bought the books and my husband knows about them. He wasn't real thrilled that I bought them to learn how to deal with him, which is understandable, that wouldn't feel very good.

i've said just that, "if i found out you were reading a book to learn how to deal with me, i would feel like hit. it would hurt a lot"

and then i told her that i love her and that i am reading them because i want to be with her. that my learning and reading is so that i can learn how to better communicate with her, so that i can spend the rest of my life with her.

she is telling me that she feels like she is wasting my time, which makes her feel guilty, which makes her feel like killing herself.

i didn't know we couldn't say the s word here... .

jesus thats excatly the same thing my friend has said to me time and time again. i drives me batty! i never know what to do with that! im not trying to hurt her by helping myself so that, we can help our selves... . grr. and then little thing pop into my head like, "maybe i am wasting my time" but i dont honestly believe that... .

Well, my point was that you can't make her feel any differently about it, you can only tell her that it's ok to feel that way and reassure her that you want to be with her. You did good, it sort of keeps things at a less intense level. You can ask her why questions, why does she feel like she is wasting your time, then validate that feeling. Don't validate the killing herself, but obviously you can't tell her not to feel that way, she just does. I know it doesn't really stop the fight or her crappy feeling but it keeps things calmer and lets her know you are listening to her, which is what they usually want. They just want to be heard and understood a lot of the time.

You're not screwing up, you're bettering your self. Her seeing that book was a harsh reality to her seeing how you really feel inside about the way she treats you because she either never allowed you to express those feelings to her in a normal way or you were afraid of her reaction if that would happen. What you are getting now is the exact reaction had you of expressed your feelings face to face. She feels bad, knows what shes doing to you, wants to be seen as perfect, and projects on to you in order to maintain that perfection. "It's your fault for not telling me sooner," or "you enabled me to treat you this way." She cannot and will not accept the other side of the coin that you want to improve who you are and how you handle her crap to better both of ya'lls relationship.