Customer Reviews

Borderline Personality Disorder in Adolescents: A Complete Guide to Understanding and Coping When Your Adolescent Has BPD

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, I am NOT advising anyone to replace any treatment with this book.

I'd simply like to guide parents who, like us, may have been chasing their tails in search of a proper diagnosis and treatment for your teen to this new source of help and hope. Unlike many mental health care professionals, Dr. Aguirre truly attempts to understand the BPD teen and their families, rather than label and medicate.

Last year we spent over 18K on treatment for depression, bipolar and/or PTSD, all the while knowing BPD was her afflication (family history). Only to have our asthmatic honor student move in with the boyfriend, drop out of school, start smoking and get 3 tatoos - last month.

Reading this book has changed our lives in a matter of days. Dr. Aguirre really 'gets it'

and once I was able to speak that understanding truth with my BPD teen - she lit up! She is impressed with his knowledge of BPD depression sometimes not being anything like classical depression. She says her lows are due to feelings of shame and guilt, "I never have a I can't get outta bed sadness." She also agreed that while she is able to pass advanced English courses and write beautiful stories, she lacks the ability to express her feelings. It felt so good to she her finally feel understood.

I know that we still have a long way to go and lots more work to do but this book gave me hope that we are finally headed in the right direction.

Thanks Dr. Aguirre!!!

As a child psychologist, I get very tired of the neo-Freudian mumbo-jumbo that is often associated with this diagnosis. Not only is such an approach not not very effective, but you have to buy all sorts of (ahem) crapola to even start in on it.

This book is a real relief. When I got it I assumed it was just more Freudian malarky, but it isn't. Very CBT and DBT oriented, at least in practice, and I highly recommend it.

This book is right on the money. I was growing so tired of telling psych professionals, "no....my daughter is not bi-polar". Now I know that they are scared of the taboo of BPD. Now I know how my daughters thoughts and emotions work. Now I know that other people have it harder than I do, SO FAR. This book opened my eyes to a lot. I don't know yet if it will help my little girl, but it has already helped me.

Finding any valid information on BPD in adolescents is close to impossible. We have a 15-yo daughter in a therapeutic boarding school after trying every outpatient treatment available. While our daughter has not engaged in any serious external behaviors, she has lived the last years in a constant state of dysphoria and wild attention-seeking schemes. She's was diagnosed with bi-polar w/psychosis when she was 12 and has since been diagnosed w/BPD as well. Dr. Aguierre's experience in treating adolescents w/BPD provides not only a valid perspective, it also gives very practical advise. This is a must read book!

This is a well-written and compassionate book about treating adolescents with borderline personality disorder. Fortunately, I am not the parent of a borderline child, but my mother has BPD and the symptoms are the same; she behaves like some of the teenagers in this book!

Dr. Aquirre describes the characteristics of BPD clearly and concisely and explains the treatment options available. He has tremendous sympathy for parents and family members of these disturbed children and it's worth reading this book for the feeling of emotional validation alone. As the child of a borderline parent, I feel that parents should try their hardest to make sure their teenagers don't carry carry this terrible personality disorder into adulthood.

I am so grateful for Dr. Aguirre's extensive research that went into this book. There is so little on the subject as relates to adolescents, and this is such an important work. I highly recommend it almost daily in my coaching practice.

Tami Green

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The subtitle says the book is a "complete guide to understanding and coping . . ." I give it 5 stars for the understanding part, but 1 star for the coping part. I was looking for parenting advice, but didn't find any aside from therapy information--which is helpful, but not quite what I was looking for. What the book does include is spot-on, but it is missing practical advice for parents who live in almost as much pain as their BPD kids.

This book purports to address the lay audience, specifically parents. In truth, it is written in a manner that is more suited to a clinician working with adolescents with this disorder. It's relatively dry and inaccessible for the average reader. It also doesn't offer much in the way of useful advice and is loaded with theories (none substantiated) about what may cause this condition. Therapists may find it useful, however.