BPDFamily.com

 Was told that I should get this book that it is a big help. Has anyone read it?

I believe this was one of the first books published on Borderline Personality Disorder for lay people.  I recommend it.  There is also a board devoted to book review that you might consider looking through.

It's a classic, and worth a read for that reason alone.  But it falls into victim-blaming and misogyny more than I liked.  I objected to Kreisman's assertions that women (and children!) with BPD are abused because they deliberately seek and provoke it, or that women and sexual minorities are more likely to have BPD because the lack of traditional values has left them without a strong foundation for identity.  I know a bit about gender dynamics and intimate partner violence, and thought some of what he said was both offensive and factually off-base.  The later editions fortunately include sections about the new understanding of the prognosis for BPD, and the development of effective treatments.   

I found "Stop Walking on Eggshells" and "Loving someone with BPD" more helpful for me as a non-BP.

What are some of the issues you are struggling with in your dynamic with her?


There is a book review here: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56740.msg523499#msg523499

Note that the book was written in 1991. There has been a lot of research on BPD since then, including the development of new evidence-based treatments. DBT was developed by Marsha Lineman, as well as mentalization therapy, which was developed by Bateman. Clinicians and researchers have discovered that insight therapy, which was commonly used with BPD patients, actually made things worse, to help explain some of the stigma about BPD patients being treatment-resistant. Neuro-imaging has shown that there are neurological differences in the brain between someone with BPD and someone without, so there is a shift away from blaming BPD on bad parenting and early child abuse. Most of the more recent books discuss invalidating environments, which, for someone who is wired to be extremely hypersensitive, may feel excruciating even though the environments might not be considered abusive from an outside perspective.

Lineman is quoted in Valerie Porr's book for pointing out that when you mix and match the 9 criteria for BPD, there are 198 possible combinations for how BPD traits present. Some books will describe your person better than others depending on the behaviors you are dealing with and hoping to understand better.

It can help to read several books.