[.ca] Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her ... (ISBN 0765703319)

This book changed my life:
As the daughter of a borderline mother, I have spent the last 46 years struggling to understand why our relationship was so contentious, why I was always the 'bad' child and why I never felt comfortable expressing my own feelings to her. The book was given to me by a friend after my mother, a diabetic, self-induced a coma when I wanted to have Christmas dinner at my house rather than hers. Page after page was filled with experiences of other BPD children that were strikingly similar to my own-there were more than a dozen "Oh my God-that's her!" moments. This book brought everything into crystal clear focus and enabled me to deal fairly and lovingly with my mother-and help to keep me from using those same cruel weapons on my daughter. This book is a life saver!

Not Light Reading:
This book is intense, especially if you happen to be the child of a mother with Borderline Personality Disorder. The author breaks types of Borderline mothering into categories, recognizing that often times categories overlap. Well described and I would have liked to have seen more suggestions for healing at the end. In any case, approach this with care, it is perhaps best read under the care of a therapist or psychiatrist.

Frighteningly accurate:
As the "no good" child of a borderline mother, this book was very helpful as well as frightening. If you are the child of a borderline, I would highly recommend that you read it in the context of therapy. It is clearly written, easily understood and to the point. However, it spends far more time defining and diagnosing than explaining how to transcend BPD challenges. Perhaps this was not the purpose. Regardless, there were a few statements about how often anxiety and depression are lifelong battles for children of borderline mothers. I haven't found this to be true on a personal level and hope others understand that the anxiety or depression felt from growing up with a borderline mother can be controlled and eradicated almost entirely. Overall a very good book, comprehensive and very accurate. I found it very helpful but had to take it in small doses.

RISE ABOVE YOUR RAISING - MOOD DISORDERS & ANGER:
I strongly recommend this book for anyone seeking to find help with mood disorders, identity issues, self-esteem issues, reoccurring unresolved anger and troubling relationships. Excellent compliments to this book are: The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders: An Interactive Self-Help Guide by Joseph Santoro and Ronald Cohen; Treating Attachment Disorders: From Theory to Therapy by Karl Heinz Brisch and Kenneth Kronenberg; Living with the Passive-Aggressive Man by Scott Wetzler; The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert Pressman; Emotional Blackmail: When People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation and Guilt to Manipulate You by Susan Forward and Donna Frazier; Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents by Nina Brown; Toxic Coworkers: How to Deal with Dysfunctional People on the Job by Alan Cavaiola and Neil Lavender. And if you want to pursue the subject even further, you may be interested in reading The Narcissistic / Borderline Couple: A Psychoanalytic Perspective On Marital Treatment.

I love this book:
It is written clearly and concisely. I have been trying to understand my mother forever and now I do understand her, at least more then I ever did. I found certain parts very hard to read, especially when I was reading the part about the which ! I think that any professional need this book to better understand these mothers and even just to understand B.D.P and the pain hidden behind the behavior. I truly thank the authors for this fascinating book.