The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder: New Tools and Techniques to Stop Walking on Eggshells Author: Visit Amazon's Randi Kreger Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1592853633 | Format: EPUB
The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder: New Tools and Techniques to Stop Walking on Eggshells Description
Review
This book offers hope for those who think their situation has none.
--Rachel Reiland, author of
Get Me Out of Here (Rachel Reiland)
About the Author
Randi Kreger is the co-author of Stop Walking on Eggshells and The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook. She operates www.bpdcentral.com, one of the top web-based resources for those living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and their families. Founder of the Personality Disorder Awareness Network, Kreger is frequently invited to lecture on BPD and related issues to clinicians and laypeople.
- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Hazelden; 1 edition (September 15, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1592853633
- ISBN-13: 978-1592853632
- Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
My wife, I suspect, has BPD, and I read Randi's book, "Stop Walking on Eggshells", about a year and a half ago. I then participated in Randi's on-line support groups, and generally attempted to follow some of the advice in that book and on that site, without much success, frankly. This new book is helping me much more in understanding and empathizing with my wife, but I still think it doesn't quite get what is the most effective means for interacting with a borderline.
It's hard for me to explain the overarching problem I see with the book so I'll focus on one example. "Power tool #5: reinforcing right behavior" makes the point that, when a BP's traditional behavior does not get the reward they seek, they frantically repeat the behavior in an effort to get the reward (which Randi refers to as an *extinction burst*). My impression is that, for Randi, the "reward" is that the non complies with the borderline's desires, or accepts the abuse, or gets attention, and so on.
Rather than a focus on what is the actual emotion that the borderline is trying to communicate (albeit very ineffectively--that is why they call this a disorder, and specifically a disorder of emotion regulation), Randi is focused in this section on the behavior that one might want to stop, using "limits." She provides several examples of borderline behavior that one might want to stop, such as them calling you at work many times a day, or saying hurtful things to you. She describes "setting a limit" for each (for the first, explaining that you can take a maximum of 3 calls per day from the BP aside from emergency calls, for the second explaining to your BP that the conversation is uncomfortable and that "I'm going to my room.
I thought nothing could ever top the first book Randi Kreger co-wrote ("Stop Walking on Eggshells") but her newest book does it---I wish I could give ten stars instead of five. This seemingly simple book is one of the top five most useful books I've ever read in my life---I've already reread it twice, and will be reading it again in the years to come to help keep me in the right mental place. If you want to not only understand emotionally troubled people, but also do something concrete to help yourself, push the button and order this book right now.
There are so many powerful and easy-to-use tools provided in this book that it's tough to figure out which ones to mention in this review. They all give concrete answers to the seemingly unanswerable question that always arises whenever you're faced by a troubled personality--what do you do about it?
For example, I've always heard that you need to "set firm limits" with people who would overstep your boundaries. But personally, I never really quite understood what the word "limits" actually meant, and I certainly didn't know how to set them. Nothing I ever read on the topic helped much, because what little I found was so vague.
But Randi gives example after concrete example of what limit setting actually means in a variety of situations, emphasizing throughout that it's important to understand your own greater sense of what's fair and right for yourself as well as for others. Her chapter on uncovering what keeps you feeling "stuck" provides a terrific explanation of a problem in relationships with people who are troubled. In the chapter on communication, Randi describes precisely how to communicate and actually be heard.
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