Lineman is a skilled writer that takes you through her arduous journey to health and success. This is a wonderful read for mental health professionals and family members of those with mental illness. It gives a glimpse into the experience of mental illness while also instilling hope.
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About the author
Marsha Linehan tells a harrowing story of what she had to survive to invent DBT
This is the story, the narrative, of a survivor, Marsha Linehan, an innovator in the treatment of borderline personality disorder (BPD) using a method she and her team invented called Dialectical Behavioral Treatment (DBT). Linehan has written a memoir, not a treatment manual (separately noted in the complete post). Her memoir contextualizes the diverse interventions used by DBT such as acceptance, distress tolerance, emotional regulation skills, self soothing skills, communication skills, limit setting skills, assertiveness training, and so on. She attempts and largely succeeds in connecting the dots between DBT and its skills and the key events in her life, many of which had not been publicly available.Linehan is on a tear – standard behavioral therapy doesn’t work with the most seriously distressed (suicidal) patients and cognitive behavioral therapy has serious issues, too. You have to get a person whose life and all-available-evidence “prove” that “all the good one’s are taken” or “life sucks” to be reasonable and admit that “some of the good ones are not taken” or “life does not have to suck at all times.”The thing about the iceberg [of life] is that it’s the iceberg “all the way down.” The visible part of the iceberg is not a different iceberg than the less visible part submerged beneath the water. The behavior is visible, but the biology is not visible, what the individual had to survive is not visible, how the community reacts to the individual of is not visible. But unlike – or perhaps just like – the iceberg, research treats these all as different siloes. It is true that we all – including Linehan – now speak of the bio-psycho-social individual and express authentic commitment to integration. But the effort required to integrate just shows how dis-integrated the entire phenomenon is.The tip of the iceberg does not regard itself as distinct from the iceberg. The “tip” is our abstraction. Likewise, with behavior. Linehan demonstrates this compelling as she takes the psychoanalytic distinction of “introject,” operationalizes it, and shows collects evidence that DBT improves measures of introject over against a stricter behavioral intervention. Amazing.How shall I put it delicately? Like every other individual, Linehan has a privileged access to her own first person experience – the golden light moment, the blue hydrangea moment. She also has many advantages in interpreting what that experience means, since, like every other individual, she knows a lot about her own history that others might or might not know. But as to what the experience “really means,” one individual has as good a chance of getting it right as another once the experience has been captured and reported. At first she says “The golden light means God loves me”; but then, since that experience was like [felt like] her love for Ed [a person who she actually loved deeply], she reinterprets the golden light to mean “I love God.” So she has to continue searching for God’s love for her, which brings us to the blue hydrangea by which time the meaning of God and of love have shifted. Hence, the title: Saint Linehan.But wait. Her Zen experience will eventually have taught her this is just another Zen koan – it is like the ambiguous Gestalt image the duck-rabbit where the rabbit’s ears and the duck’s bill and the figure spontaneously reverses – perhaps she got it right the first time – “God is God” and “love is love.”In short, Linehan is really slinging it here, and there is nothing wrong with that. It works. Her rhetoric is that of the beginner’s mind after long struggle. She is irreverent, assertive, disruptive within limits (and without), empathic, highly empathic, and contrary within limits (and without), innovative, all DBT skills, and we thank you, Marsha, for being Marsha.
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2024
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2020
Linehan is on a tear – standard behavioral therapy doesn’t work with the most seriously distressed (suicidal) patients and cognitive behavioral therapy has serious issues, too. You have to get a person whose life and all-available-evidence “prove” that “all the good one’s are taken” or “life sucks” to be reasonable and admit that “some of the good ones are not taken” or “life does not have to suck at all times.”
The thing about the iceberg [of life] is that it’s the iceberg “all the way down.” The visible part of the iceberg is not a different iceberg than the less visible part submerged beneath the water. The behavior is visible, but the biology is not visible, what the individual had to survive is not visible, how the community reacts to the individual of is not visible. But unlike – or perhaps just like – the iceberg, research treats these all as different siloes. It is true that we all – including Linehan – now speak of the bio-psycho-social individual and express authentic commitment to integration. But the effort required to integrate just shows how dis-integrated the entire phenomenon is.
The tip of the iceberg does not regard itself as distinct from the iceberg. The “tip” is our abstraction. Likewise, with behavior. Linehan demonstrates this compelling as she takes the psychoanalytic distinction of “introject,” operationalizes it, and shows collects evidence that DBT improves measures of introject over against a stricter behavioral intervention. Amazing.
How shall I put it delicately? Like every other individual, Linehan has a privileged access to her own first person experience – the golden light moment, the blue hydrangea moment. She also has many advantages in interpreting what that experience means, since, like every other individual, she knows a lot about her own history that others might or might not know. But as to what the experience “really means,” one individual has as good a chance of getting it right as another once the experience has been captured and reported. At first she says “The golden light means God loves me”; but then, since that experience was like [felt like] her love for Ed [a person who she actually loved deeply], she reinterprets the golden light to mean “I love God.” So she has to continue searching for God’s love for her, which brings us to the blue hydrangea by which time the meaning of God and of love have shifted. Hence, the title: Saint Linehan.
But wait. Her Zen experience will eventually have taught her this is just another Zen koan – it is like the ambiguous Gestalt image the duck-rabbit where the rabbit’s ears and the duck’s bill and the figure spontaneously reverses – perhaps she got it right the first time – “God is God” and “love is love.”
In short, Linehan is really slinging it here, and there is nothing wrong with that. It works. Her rhetoric is that of the beginner’s mind after long struggle. She is irreverent, assertive, disruptive within limits (and without), empathic, highly empathic, and contrary within limits (and without), innovative, all DBT skills, and we thank you, Marsha, for being Marsha.
Marsha Linehan tells a harrowing story of what she had to survive to invent DBT
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2020
This is the story, the narrative, of a survivor, Marsha Linehan, an innovator in the treatment of borderline personality disorder (BPD) using a method she and her team invented called Dialectical Behavioral Treatment (DBT). Linehan has written a memoir, not a treatment manual (separately noted in the complete post). Her memoir contextualizes the diverse interventions used by DBT such as acceptance, distress tolerance, emotional regulation skills, self soothing skills, communication skills, limit setting skills, assertiveness training, and so on. She attempts and largely succeeds in connecting the dots between DBT and its skills and the key events in her life, many of which had not been publicly available.Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2020
Linehan is on a tear – standard behavioral therapy doesn’t work with the most seriously distressed (suicidal) patients and cognitive behavioral therapy has serious issues, too. You have to get a person whose life and all-available-evidence “prove” that “all the good one’s are taken” or “life sucks” to be reasonable and admit that “some of the good ones are not taken” or “life does not have to suck at all times.”
The thing about the iceberg [of life] is that it’s the iceberg “all the way down.” The visible part of the iceberg is not a different iceberg than the less visible part submerged beneath the water. The behavior is visible, but the biology is not visible, what the individual had to survive is not visible, how the community reacts to the individual of is not visible. But unlike – or perhaps just like – the iceberg, research treats these all as different siloes. It is true that we all – including Linehan – now speak of the bio-psycho-social individual and express authentic commitment to integration. But the effort required to integrate just shows how dis-integrated the entire phenomenon is.
The tip of the iceberg does not regard itself as distinct from the iceberg. The “tip” is our abstraction. Likewise, with behavior. Linehan demonstrates this compelling as she takes the psychoanalytic distinction of “introject,” operationalizes it, and shows collects evidence that DBT improves measures of introject over against a stricter behavioral intervention. Amazing.
How shall I put it delicately? Like every other individual, Linehan has a privileged access to her own first person experience – the golden light moment, the blue hydrangea moment. She also has many advantages in interpreting what that experience means, since, like every other individual, she knows a lot about her own history that others might or might not know. But as to what the experience “really means,” one individual has as good a chance of getting it right as another once the experience has been captured and reported. At first she says “The golden light means God loves me”; but then, since that experience was like [felt like] her love for Ed [a person who she actually loved deeply], she reinterprets the golden light to mean “I love God.” So she has to continue searching for God’s love for her, which brings us to the blue hydrangea by which time the meaning of God and of love have shifted. Hence, the title: Saint Linehan.
But wait. Her Zen experience will eventually have taught her this is just another Zen koan – it is like the ambiguous Gestalt image the duck-rabbit where the rabbit’s ears and the duck’s bill and the figure spontaneously reverses – perhaps she got it right the first time – “God is God” and “love is love.”
In short, Linehan is really slinging it here, and there is nothing wrong with that. It works. Her rhetoric is that of the beginner’s mind after long struggle. She is irreverent, assertive, disruptive within limits (and without), empathic, highly empathic, and contrary within limits (and without), innovative, all DBT skills, and we thank you, Marsha, for being Marsha.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2024
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2024
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2020
I struggle with mental illness, BPD being one of my diagnoses. DBT, created by Marsha Linehan has taught me how to take control of my life. How to finally come to terms with my past. And how to use my past as a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block. It has taught me self-awareness. I struggle with suicidal ideation from time to time and Marsha's book "Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir" has made me realize that I am not alone. Marsha Linehan is my inspiration and I am so proud of the work she has done. She is a living master of these skills carving the way for many of us who don't wish to live in this hell anymore. She has had a rough life, but despite her hardships she continues to be a living example for those who feel like life is just not worth living. Marsha Linehan, the developer of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, inspires me in more ways than I can count. I really look up to this woman as my role model and am so grateful to the amount of effort Marsha put in into her own recovery and developing DBT to help guide strangers out of what is seen as a life of hell. Her book is raw, inspirational and my recommendation for all to read if you want to get out of the hell you're in. Never have I read a book so inspiring as this one. This is by far the best book I've ever read.
Thank you Marsha for your story and being a light for the world. You are an inspiration to me and to many I know.
Raw, Inspirational and a Definite Must Read kind of book
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2020
"If you are a tulip, quit trying to be a rose. Go find a tulip garden."Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2020
I struggle with mental illness, BPD being one of my diagnoses. DBT, created by Marsha Linehan has taught me how to take control of my life. How to finally come to terms with my past. And how to use my past as a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block. It has taught me self-awareness. I struggle with suicidal ideation from time to time and Marsha's book "Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir" has made me realize that I am not alone. Marsha Linehan is my inspiration and I am so proud of the work she has done. She is a living master of these skills carving the way for many of us who don't wish to live in this hell anymore. She has had a rough life, but despite her hardships she continues to be a living example for those who feel like life is just not worth living. Marsha Linehan, the developer of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, inspires me in more ways than I can count. I really look up to this woman as my role model and am so grateful to the amount of effort Marsha put in into her own recovery and developing DBT to help guide strangers out of what is seen as a life of hell. Her book is raw, inspirational and my recommendation for all to read if you want to get out of the hell you're in. Never have I read a book so inspiring as this one. This is by far the best book I've ever read.
Thank you Marsha for your story and being a light for the world. You are an inspiration to me and to many I know.
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Top reviews from other countries
deberah kearns
The best book I have read about Borderline Personality Disorder and its treatment!
Reviewed in Canada on October 2, 2024
Fititodamian
Resuelve los misterios del sufrimiento
Reviewed in Spain on January 19, 2022
Fititodamian
Reviewed in Spain on January 19, 2022
Es una experiencia de primera mano de una persona que ha sufrido mucho, y ha encontrado un camino para salir de su laberinto de infierno emocional.
Si te interesa el tema de las autolesiones y el la conducta suicida, deberías plantearte leerlo.
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