Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

This book has been great! It is the closing chapter on my irritation and misery on this subject. This book has provided me with closure, it took me 33 years to put a name to this UGLY FACE. But I never stopped researching. And that is so important. This is an extremely well written book that does not bog you down with a bunch of clinical terms. It definately served to validate my current emotions, crazy childhood, and gave me the words to describe my fragmented teenage years.I mean this book is literaly a fairy GODmother to anyone looking for guidance and advice on such a complex issue. It covers everything from how others will react to you sharing this information, from grieving to dealing with anger and resentment. This book really shows you how to move out of the mindset of a victim or feeling like the bad person to allowing you to see that you are none of those things; you just had to put up with some overwhleming circumstances. I have coupled this book with counseling twice a month and I feel like a brand new person in just a few months.Now I am living my dreams, because I was able to clear the mental blockage and go forward. The excercises are great, but don't stop reading, just bc you have not completed them. For me, I have been journaling for about 3 years heavy now, so many of the journaling activities were things I had already discussed with myself, so I was able to just read straight through and do some activities that felt neccessary!My mother is BDP and I just remember feeling angry, frozen, misunderstood, and emotionally ran down during my teenage years. I put others before me, I was always in the midst of confusion she caused at church or in her circles. She would look to me like I knew what to do all the time? She was very lonely and always making me sad with a focus on very negative things. She was always looking for sympathy and attention. I felt like someone took the best years of my life, so I went to college, got a good job months later, and never came back home to live (although in state). I am blessed to be a successful woman with really nice things and a new outlook on life using my creative side now. I gave up being overly responsible for others, putting people first, denying my own needs, learned some boundaries with people, and dealt with love addiction issues. I'm single and better off now that I have worked on me, and I'm ready to move into other areas of my life. Considering marriage and kids as I avoided that just because I never felt like I never had my own life fully until now. My heart has been opened.I do not feel like I have to pretend to have everything under control, I am happy to say that I don't know things. I am happy that I conduct myself as "the adult" with my mother and I am no longer angry, overly sensitive, and baffled by her tricks/lies. I have become a model and leader to my family and friends just by learning how to react to my mother's nonsense instead of letting it get the Best of me. I am still working on forgiveness, but at this point in my life I am managing and GOD has bought back the years of my childhood! Please! If you have a parent(s) that wears you down with guilt, in their own world, suffers from any type of addiction, this book will show you how to begin to parent yourself, and get you past your knee jerk reactions and confusion!GOD BLESS YOU and I hope you are set free, because it is truly beautiful on the otherside. You just have to do the work!

Having surviving yet another bad "incident" with my 83-yr old mother last month, I decided it was time for me to get help. I went first to my GP for a referral, and was asked to describe the situation. After sharing a couple of "Mom stories", the GP commented that it sounded as if my mother has "Borderline Personality Disorder". I'd never heard that term before, and didn't understand what he was saying.Then I found this book. What a revelation - it's like the authors have written the story of my mother, my childhood, my family, my life.The healing starts in chapter 1 - where the authors list 9 characteristics/symptoms of a BPD parent, describing each in plain English - and THEN laying out how those behaviours affect a child. I found this very helpful because as much as I really DO want to understand my mother's behaviour, I also need to consider how I've been hurt and what I need to do to recover. From the beginning, I could see that this book would be focusing on the child (me), not the BPD parent.Where the authors discuss forgiveness, I'm pleased to see they acknowledge that some people just can't forgive; the wounds are too deep. I'm also pleased that they talk a good deal about what forgivenness ISN'T. Perhaps we can forgive - but reconciliation? That's another story.Ending the relationship with a BPD parent may be the best thing we can do for ourselves. The authors have acknowledged that the BPD parent is not going to change. That means the abusive behaviour is going to continue. Of course if the parent acknowledges the problem and makes an honest effort to change, that's a different situation. But most BPD sufferers (and yes, these people suffer, too) won't make that effort. So where does that leave those of us who are the targets for abuse? In the chapter on "Communicating and Setting Limits", the authors acknowledge that severing the relationship permanently may be necessary. I wish they'd spent more time on that - even devoted a chapter to it. The nightmare doesn't automatically end for those of us who choose to end the relationship.I don't believe this or any book can, on it's own, enable those of us raised by BPD parents to heal ourselves. I firmly believe that professional guideance - a therapist - will be required at some stage. But this book is an excellent place to start. It gives us clarity, focus, and a vocabulary to use when describing what we've experienced.

Totally acurate, complete and to the point.

O livro é um excelente recurso de auto-ajuda. Cada capítulo cobre um tema comum entre filhos de pais borderline, terminando com exercícios e provocações que podem ser facilmente seguidas. Mas ZERO ciência - nada que ajude a entender o lado psico/neurológico do transtorno.

Took me some months to read because it was hard for me to overcome my past (and even my present). It's a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone with a BPD parent.

At 56 I am still trying to cope with my dysfunctional, controlling and abusive family. I started counselling in my 20's, but no one ever really got the plot of the complexities involved. This book hits the nail on the head, and I had a lot of 'aha' moments where I thought, this author really gets it. It is good to finally get some validation. Generations of bad behaviour patterns, with 3/4 of my grandparents being totally dysfunctional.... the book has been so helpful, I am about to start reading again, all the passages I highlighted, to keep reinforcing myself that I am on the right path, and not to keep doubting myself when I have siblings screaming at me to stay in my box, with my allocated child number four, mask on. I still have trouble saying my name in a group, sad really, as I was taught to never speak, have needs, but only to be an audience, and to feed egos. Highly recommended.

I say that a lot - "must have," but for sufferers, family members, friends and the curious, there is simply no good information on dealing with BPD. I may have had a borderline parent (back then, BPD wasn't recognized) but I really picked this up just to try and expand my knowledge on the subject. It served the purpose. Can I say it's a survival guide? Don't know - I'm the sufferer, not the outsider, and in my experience both see things differently. However, I can say that with a disease as multi-dimensional as BPD the best advice I have is to absorb everything you can, and apply what is relevant to your situation. No two BPD patients are the same, and some are almost opposites. If you have BPD or love someone who does, this is definitely one to have, but don't stop here. I have yet to find the BPD book that really "nails" it from my perspective, YMMV.