Customer Reviews

The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Some persons with BPD really cannot use therapy very well, and in many parts of the country--outside the NYC and San Francisco and a couple of other major urban centers--it is hard to find therapists who really know how to work with borderlines. Indeed, many therapists don't even recognize BPD when it's right in front of them, especially if the borderline is talented (as so many are) at knowing what the therapist wants to see in order to think well of him or her. Especially when a very smart BPD, having spent a lifetime at pleasing authority figures and cajoling them into the role of caretaker, encounters a rather less smart therapist, the stage is set for a folie a deux, with the therapist ratifying the patient's pathology and falling into something like the role of worshipful caretaker.

Thus, self-study is sometimes the best route for the BPD who is serious about getting better.

Self-study is always helpful for the BPD, even the BPD who has a savvy therapist--that is, a therapist who does not want to be a hero or the sole source of help. (If your therapist doesn't like the idea of your doing self-guided study, run.) For that purpose, too, this book is excellent.

The authors have constructed some absolutely brilliant exercises, and they guide you through the kind of structured work that BPD's need in order to acquire inner order in place of their terrified chaos.

If you're a therapist who works with BPD's, look at this book as something you might want to suggest that your patients buy and use in conjunction with therapy. If you are, or have reason to suspect, you suffer BPD, have a look--especially if therapy hasn't worked so well for you.

In my experience as a therapist, I found that patients with BPD are often the most intelligent, gifted, and tragically damaged of patients--but that precisely because their inner lives are so chaotic, they are better able to acquire good structure than "more functional" patients who had well-developed maladaptive structures already in place. Taking apart a long-reinforced structure is very hard, while building from chaos is, in a sense, free of that task. This book can help with finding authentic structure, in an autonomous process that minimizes some of the dangers of BPD-in-therapy.

I have come to believe that two things, not taught in textbooks, indicate whether a BPD can get well: courage and a good heart. If you have those things, you should never let anyone, therapist or otherwise, discourage you from the path to a whole, integrated life. If you have those, buy this book at help yourself toward a life free of the horrors of your early days.

After reading only the first chapter I knew it was for me. I could feel the feelings of Samuel like it was me he was writing about. I always knew I was diagnosised borderline but never knew what it meant, except for seeing things black and white. I never knew where the feelings came from. This book as helped me to understand myself and where my feelings came from. NOW I can truely begin to work on my recovery.

For years now, I have been told that I have Borderline Personality Disorder. I was never told what I could do to heal myself though. Thank God I found this book because not only is it informative but it gave me solutions, specific activities that I could do to realize where my problems came from and how to overcome them. I recommend this book to anyone who is tired of suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.

I am amazed at the amount of information this book provides. Unlike other books on borderline personality disorder, this book has treatment aspect of the disorder. I think other books on the same subject had more descriptions of how bad the disorder is and don't even mention any treatment.

This is one of the best self-help books I have read. It is an intelligent, thorough, clear introduction of borderline personality disorders. It is designed to assist the reader in progressing through the illness at the same time they increase their understanding of the illness. The journal exercises are clear and very helpful. The writing is professional and well documented. This is very, very well designed and well written book. Worth every penny I paid for it and the two weeks I spent reading it very carefully.

I found the book very informative and has lots of great ideas but would be a better tool with the help of a counselor, I have BPD and couldn't begin to finish the book

This book packs more information than any other book I have read on the subject (and I have read all I can find). The Recovery Journal that is suggested you complete and other exercises were very healing. I would highly recommend this book for anyone suffering from BPD and/or their family members.

I know Santoro had his heart, angry or not, in the right place when he wrote this guide. However, as a person who suffers from BPD, I found it to be extremely complicated. I also found parts of it to be very similar to Marsha Linehan's DBT workbook. Santoro's book would be best utilized in a group setting. Using it on your own, I'm afraid, could be discouraging to a tender psyche.

As a PhD student in Counseling Psychology and as a training clinician, I found this book to be highly informative regarding the symptomatology and intrapsychic conflicts of borderline clients. The book provided both DSM-IV criteria for borderline clients as well as therapeutic exercises, which makes it helpful for both clinicians and clients. The exercises are excellent tools and guides for therapeutic interventions with a population of clients for which there is a scarcity of methods available. More importantly, the autobiographical narratives of Samuel were emotionally touching and would certainly captivate a borderline audience. Since one optimal method of learning is to make the material personally meaningful, this book will certainly help the borderline population learn about themselves. Excellent job Dr. Santoro and Samuel!!!!!!

Being BPD myself I found this book revealing so many things, which I felt, yet could not place. I also find it a very good book for non BPD's as it considers both sides and it not a manual for borderline "bystanders" as 'Walking on eggshells" is.
This book can be such a great soother when you feel at your worst and still stay not let you go of the rails. I have not read it from a to z , as it is just too much for me. I've had it for over two years, and it is still revealing.