Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality [Paperback]

Merri Lisa Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 8, 2010

An honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson’s account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out" — unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point. In recognizing her struggle with borderline personality disorder, Johnson is ultimately able to seek help, embarking on a soul-searching healing process. It's a path that is painful, difficult, and at times heart-wrenching, but ultimately makes her more able to love and coexist in healthy relationships.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (June 8, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158005305X
• ISBN-13: 978-1580053051
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #300,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Merri Lisa Johnson believes in bold lines, strange truths, off rhymes, and the art of the glimpse. She likes kittenish vignettes, ruthless sunsets, and long walks on the hard beach of relentless self-inquiry. Her newest book, GIRL IN NEED OF A TOURNIQUET, is a story about coming of age, coming out, coming to terms with grief, and becoming borderline. Follow her reflections and insatiable research on manic defenses, bizarre symptoms, the obstacle course of emotional recovery, the revision of the DSM-V, and the borderline personality of media and celebrity culture - among other random notes, stories, comments, and newly discovered therapeutic tools - by becoming a fan of GIRL IN NEED OF A TOURNIQUET: A BORDERLINE PERSONALITY MEMOIR on Facebook.

Johnson is currently at work on her next critical memoir, ALTERED, a close look at addiction, disorganized attachment, imago therapy, and the first year of her very own borderline/narcissist marriage. Her essays have also appeared in Sex and Single Girls (ed. Lee Damsky), Herspace: Women, Writing, Solitude (ed. Jo Malin), and Homewrecker (ed. Daphne Gottlieb). She currently lives in South Carolina with the great loves of her life - her partner Stace and two loyal shih tzus, Millie and Lola - in a 1920s-era craftsman bungalow fondly known among family and friends as The Haney-Johnson Halfway House for the Bright but Broken-Hearted.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Intense, unique.... in need of a sequel . June 9, 2010

By PerpetualStudent

Format:Paperback

If you want an intelligent, keen, ornate, and compelling, wonderfully disconcerting story about strands of life untangled by the author through creative and melodic prose- This is the book for you!
But, if you want a straight memoir, the kind that is comfortable, written by Donald Trump or the latest one hit wonder's ghost writers- this isn't the book you want. If you want to know more about the clinical intricacies of borderline personality disorder- this isn't the book you want.
With this memoir, the reader gets a window into a mind full of prisms that refract, one-way glass, and mirrors that reflect before they shatter. It is an amazing book, a fantastic read. I especially enjoyed the variety of other "sourced" material. The only critique I could offer, and it is so minor as to be negligible (not to mention that I am certainly not qualified to critique a personal creative decision), I would have changed the word "of" in the title to the word "with." I can't wait to see what comes next from the mind of this author. I hope it is equally exciting, disquieting, troubling, and true.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A look into the disorienting, disorganized world of Bordeline Personality Disorder November 16, 2010

By Beth Cholette #1 HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Note: I received a free copy of this book to review for the web site Metapsychology Online Reviews; you can read a more complete version of my review on that site.

In her new memoir, college professor Merri Lisa Johnson provides readers with a chance to vicariously experience the rollercoaster ride of someone living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Johnson creates this effect through her staccato writing style, which includes short paragraphs of her own text interspersed with quotes from poems and song lyrics, citations from major works in both psychology and the self-help and the self-help literature, various relevant definitions, and graphic black slashes (likely representing self-injury, often a feature of this disorder). Although somewhat disjointed and disorganized (Johnson does not always proceed chronologically), this method certainly does provide an accurate portrayal of the borderline personality.

For the majority of TOURNIQUET, much of the confusion, panic, and chaos in Johnson's life centers around her affair with a married co-worker, Emily. Johnson clearly recognizes this relationship as being CO-DEPENDENT (she often capitalizes words or phrases for emphasis). She is able to see herself as enmeshed with Emily and neurotically attached to her, yet she is unable to perceive a way to break free from this self-destructive path. About two-thirds of the way through the book, Johnson finally makes the connection that her symptoms are consistent with BPD. Not only does this help her to view her relationship with Emily in a new light, but also she is able to better understand her behavior in subsequent relationships--including a brief fling with one of her students--in terms of this diagnosis....

At this point, the book shifts, and Johnson starts to delve into her family background. She has already mentioned how her father left her mother--alluding to her mother's careless, selfish behavior--and how she grew up with a series of stepmothers. Now, she focuses more on her two younger sisters, who had the misfortune to be raised by their negligent mother after Johnson and her father left the household. In what feels like a bit of a departure from the rest of the book, Johnson launches into a somewhat clinical discussion of BPD, using this as a springboard to reveal that her sisters both share this diagnosis; she goes on to describe how the disorder has manifested itself slightly different for each sibling.

Johnson ends her book rather abruptly: in one chapter, she is in the midst of detailing her efforts to free herself from Emily, and in the next, she is settled down with a new spouse, with no indication whatsoever of how she made the transition from Point A to Point B. Although Johnson clearly makes the point that even in a stable relationship, she will always struggle with the instability that comes with being borderline, unlike her sisters, she seems to have learned how to live with her diagnosis--I think her readers would have liked to have known more about how she reached this point of resolution. Overall, Johnson's story is definitely an engrossing one. This book is likely to be particularly of interest to those living with BPD, but it may also appeal to general readers who would like a glimpse into this disorienting, disorganized disorder. Read more ›

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Loop of Feelings July 2, 2010

By Eileen Granfors TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

You may not know you have a friend or co-worker with Borderline Personality Disorder; you only know that person is difficult, obnoxious, odd. Maybe you have it yourself and wonder why you feel lonely and empty constantly. Maybe you are BPD diagnosed. Maybe you are simply interested in psychological issues. In "Girl in Need of a Tourniquet," Merri Lisa Johnson opens her heart and head to give others a look into both the science and the sociology of the BPD patient.

The book is odd in organization with poetry, song lyrics, charts, scientific quotations, and personal anecdotes somewhat randomly accrued. Each one helps to explain why Johnson was once "a girl in need of a tourniquet." (title from a song lyric) One psychologist said that a Borderline has no emotional skin, and therefore, when emotion is felt, usually rage, the rage will continue until the patient basically bleeds out.

The book recounts Merri's disastrous love affairs with the wrong men and the wrong women. It explains her need to be perfect. She sets a goal to become "the perfect BPD patient,"- an in-joke. BPD patients are notoriously difficult patients due to their incessant and unreasonable demands for attention.

Johnson does not spend a lot of time with finding her parents at fault though she lived a chaotic childhood. She does use her knowledge and research to show the effects of a child's attachment disorders based on that chaotic childhood where the biggest fear is abandonment. The wounded child never overcomes that primal fear, that lack of security.

Johnson luckily found love in her spouse, Stace. She tries to help her sisters, and through these surviving loves, she begins to save herself from self-destruction.... She began to face the challenge of learning to live beyond her BPD through acknowledging that she is not perfect. A number of chapters assess her sexuality.

This is not a fully clinical study of BPD, but it is a guide into the mind of someone who has spent her life trying to understand why her rages and tantrums threaten to extinguish her life through drugs, alcohol, and cutting. "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me" is quoted often. If you know someone with BPD or suspect it in yourself, this is a prescriptive book for borderlines.

"Girl in Need of a Tourniquet" matches "Girl, Interrupted" as an excellent guide into the mind of the borderline. Read more ›

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Book But Could Be Better October 6, 2010

By Miss Kay

Format:Paperback

While I definitely don't doubt that people who have Borderline Personality Disorder or those who know someone who does will get something out of this book, I just found it a bit hard to follow at times. The author, in true Borderline fashion, does jump around from topic to topic quite often and from emotion to emotion. While I did appreciate the honesty of the book, it made it a bit hard to really get absorbed in the topic because the topic was always changing - and always done quickly.

This book is written more in a "lyrical" manner than as a prose. If I were to describe it, I'd call it poetic prose. There are random words in different fonts, different text spacing and alignment, and bolding for the emotions she felt strongly. All of that comes together to make a neat, "frenzied" effect like the author was going for. It definitely makes the book stand out among other psychology books.

However, where I really believe this book fell short was in the plot and story. Yes, it's a Memoir, and of course, I respect that and wouldn't expect the author to fib on details, but at the same time, I wish she had included more of those details. The book starts off with a short explanation of her childhood, but then we jump into her adult life. In her adult life where we spend most of the book, we spend most of that time learning about the relationship between the author and her lesbian (married to another woman) lover. This brings the author on many ups and downs and really helps exemplify what someone with Borderline Personality Disorder feels in a relationship/about attachment. However, that's about where the good example stops....

I wish the author would have included anything about how her mental condition affected her work, her regular day-to-day activities, or basically anything just aside from her relationship with this one woman. (And a couple people after the woman.) It was an amazing insight into her relationship, but I feel like Borderline Personality Disorder is about more than just the relationship. The last part where it fell short is really when it came to treatment. We get to read about the author's reaction to her therapist telling her she has BPD, but we don't get much afterwards. We don't get to learn about the treatment or her therapy to help her become stable. Instead, the start of a new chapter is when she's married to another woman and stable.

It's not a bad book though - it just didn't quite meet my expectations of really learning what it's like to live with BPD. The book took me about two hours to finish (but I'm a fast reader), but it's an easy read, and while it didn't hook me like other books tend to, it still was an interesting insight into someone with BPD. If you are interested in reading about that insight, I'd recommend the book. Read more ›