The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders : An Interactive Self-Help Guide (Paperback)

by Ph.D. Joseph Santoro (Author), Ronald Jay Cohen (Author) "It's so hard to sit down and try to write down my past..." (more)
Key Phrases: psychotraumatic stress, borderline behavior patterns, psychotraumatic experiences, Borderline Zone, Recovery Exercise, Recovery Zone (more...)

Product Details

• Paperback: 253 pages
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 edition (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572240806
• ISBN-13: 978-1572240803
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #43,126 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

306 of 314 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent self-study for borderlines, August 16, 2002

By	Bob Fancher (United States) - See all my reviews

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.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book has changed my life., September 24, 1999

By A Customer

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.

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just information; a solution, January 21, 1999

By A Customer

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.